The 5th Generation Radion has been out for some time now, and since the hype has seemingly died down a little bit and you are actually able to order them we wanted to share our experience with both the XR-15 Pros and XR-30 Blues that we use in-store. We also still have two tanks running on Gen 4 Radions. We also want to share our experience with the new Mobius app and its features.
The Good:
Overall the light is somewhat similar, they use mostly the same colors and you are able to get a very similar spectrum. The LEDs are spread across the entire fixture which seems to help with heat dispersion and spread, it greatly helps to limit hotspots especially when compared to the Gen 4 Radions. They have good par output and the Mobius app has some nice features that make it much easier to connect compared to the eco-smart live website. You are able to select various preset templates like the AB+ schedule and the PHX14 schedule as well as an LPS/Soft corals and Radiant color template. You are able to simply set an on and off time and it handles all the ramping up and down on its own. As far as the connectivity it is much better to connect to them via bluetooth rather than directly plugging in the light to a computer or attempting to connect them to the reeflink over wifi. For the most part, the lights just pop up in your bluetooth menu.
The Bad:
All lights have downsides no matter which one you are looking at, and while I do have issues with the Radions I would happily buy them again in a heartbeat! However, the main issue I have with the lights comes from a controllability perspective, unlike eco-smart live on the computer you are unable to finely tune your schedule with the fine-tuned click of a mouse, you instead are forced to move around points that you can’t even see because your finger is covering them. My biggest pet peeve with the Mobius app is that the lighting schedule is displayed sideways! However while the graph is horizontal all of the writing is still vertical, this makes it very hard to operate especially for a touchscreen device. Overall outside of the preset templates it is very difficult to manually create a schedule.
The Ugly:
Typically the radions all work well, however, there are several bugs in the software of the devices. The biggest issue that we have had with our Radions has been with the lights randomly turning off or not turning off after putting them in live demo mode to adjust the lighting spectrum. After adjusting the spectrum there is almost always one or two lights that will not revert back to their schedule or will not turn on at all. Another issue we have had has been when adjusting the lighting on one tank the lights setup as another tank will also change their spectrum. For some reason when I adjust my SPS tank lighting it will affect the rest of my lights, however, when I adjust the other tanks my SPS tank lights will not change. While just a minor issue it does get annoying especially for such an expensive set of devices!
Conclusion:
Overall the new Radions are a very powerful and capable light with a few software bugs that can be fixed remotely with a simple update. So the question you’ve all been waiting for, should you buy them? Yes and no. If you have a working set of Gen 4 or even Gen 3 Radions and your tank is running well I would not upgrade unless you find a good deal on a used one or your lights go out. However, if you are in the market for a new light I would highly recommend purchasing these Radions as they are very simple to set up and except for a few use cases like a store perform with no issues. At this price point, there is no other light on the market that has the reputation that Radions do and for a good reason, their lights are built well and made to last. The new LED layout helps to create an even blanket of light that helps to prevent high and low light points offering an almost T5 like spread effect.
