They are a piece of garbage if you ask me. I had 4 V4 Gen 1 and have now replaced with 4 GHL Mitras and there is absolutely no comparison. German engineering vs cheap Chinese and awful customer service. This was my full experience a few years back which I posted in the Orphek feedback section on UK reefing board as that is where I’m based:
I thought I should I post my experience with the 4 Orphek V4 Gen 1 lights I purchased directly from Orphek in Hong Kong a little over a year ago.
The lights are amazing, when they work, but I have had a pretty bad experience with the way they support the product. In addition, the latest communication with the owner has been quite testy, given that he is now threatening legal action because I want to share my experience. Lastly, this is not a reflection on Tony on here who has only become involved very recently and has always tried to help out and be supportive.
Nonetheless I will try and be as factual, and balanced as possible with my account, for which I have extensive email communication with the company to prove all of this.
Anyway, after having done a lot of research and being very excited about the Orphek V4s given the very positive reviews I had read, I decided to take the plunge and ordered the lights back in May of last year. The communication was good during the process and the lights were shipped out a few weeks after my order.
Problem 1:
Upon receiving my lights, and having Vince from Aquarium connections mounting them for me, we discovered an initial problem where one of the lights was not turning on. I emailed Orphek immediately and Ofir (presumably the owner) came back saying the lights are built like “Lego” and can easily be fixed and that I should just read a manual he had attached to the email to figure out the problem. Luckily, James, one of the other Orphek representatives then also came back immediately explaining that perhaps the power cable may have become loose inside the light and to check that. So I opened the light, and as per James’s suspicion, the main power cable had come loose, and just needed to be screwed into the main PC board again which is what I did. Problem solved!
Problem 2:
Anyway, after that problem was fixed we then realised that on two of the lights did not have all the Leds go to full power despite having set them all to 100%. Anyway, I emailed the company again and to be fair the response was very quick. However, Ofir suggested the lights were working fine and it was just me who could not see some of the wavelengths because they are not visible to the human eye, despite two of the lights working properly and two of them not, and all of them and all the channels turned on to full power. Again, James jumped in the email comunicaton and after several diagnostic emails back and forth he asked me to check the power supplies they shipped with the lights. Low and behold, two of the Meanwell power supplies were the wrong ones, presumably for a different Orphek light. James immediately offered to ship two correct ones to me and finally a week lather they arrived and the lights worked fine. Anyway, problem 2 solved a few weeks after having received a brand new product.
For a long time I was very happy with lights because as per the many online reviews, including the BRS video reviews, the light spread, colour rendition, shimmer, easy to use interface, and actual coral coloration and growth was amazing. From a performance perspective they are the best light I have ever had, and I have been in this hobby for 30 years now.
Problems 3, 4, and 5:
Fast forward to January of this year and I noticed that a number of leds on two of the four units were not powering up. Again, I emailed Orphek and again in all fairness the response was almost immediate. However, what then ensued (I will spare you the details) was a lengthy email communication where again at first I was being accused by Ofir of not being able to see certain wavelengths of the lights. Anyway, again James jumped in and informed me he was going to hospital the next day and someone else on their team would get back to me. So the next day Kris came back and he was extremely helpful, again vie email, in going through several diagnostic steps which involved opening the lights, testing various cables going to the PC board, switching PC boards between one of the functioning and non-functioning lights, running a jumper cable between each and every led light until we finally ascertained the following after several hours of my time and over several days:
- One of the PC boards was faulty and needed replacing
- One LED light on one of the lights was faulty which caused one of the channels not to work and needed replacing and the new one soldered onto the board again
- Two led lights were faulty on the other light causing two of the circuits not to work and agin requiring the Leds to be replaced and new ones soldered onto the board by me
So after we finally diagnosed the issues I was sent the spare parts which arrived about a week later by DHL.
I then spent an entire morning (my guess is around 4- 5 hours) completely dismantling the two faulty lights, replacing the faulty PC board and the 3 faulty Leds, which included soldering.
The lights were working great again until last night one of my friends from one of the well known UK tank manufacturers and distributors stopped by my house to see the tank and he noticed that on one of the lights a circuit of Leds was not working again.
Problem 6:
So here we go again, having been through the process before, I knew that one of the Leds has failed again, which now requires me to open the light and fix it myself again.
Conclusion:
I emailed Orphek last night to express my disappointment of having spent a small fortune (they do not come cheap) on a product that keeps failing, and worst of all requires customer intervention to make the repairs. Ofir again came back immediately, this time asking me to send the lights to Tony here in the U.K. for repair. At which point I explained that I was fed up, and that it would cost me more money and time to send the light to Tony instead of repairing it myself.
I then dared to make the suggestion that a serious company, especially after my experience (and that of at least one other person I know here in the UK) would be to send a replacement unit, no questions asked and have me send back the faulty one so as not to have an interruption of light over a tank which now houses some very large and delicate sps colonies.
The response I received was that mine are Gen1 V4 units that are no longer in production. At this point I then made it clear that in this case the company should be replacing faulty products, or face the consequences of me telling my story. This to both one of the potential distributors I know well and who has been asking me for feedback on the lights and to whom just last night I was singing the praises of the lights if they can come up with a proper servicing solution, as well as others on this forum.
I was then sent a short email reply from Ofir closing off all communication and suggesting he would have his lawyers deal with me.
