Hardkorr 6 Bar LED Camp Light Kit

"3 colour" version: Warm white it aint – These lights seem to get great reviews, but I am very unimpressed with my 6 bar kit. I will use, by way of comparison, a 5m LED WARM white strip light (IP67 rated) from Aldi for $40. Point 1 - Brightness All 6 bars give approx. 3000 lm on cool white setting and approximately 2.5m of total ‘bar’ length (much further with cables in between the lights). I have no lumen rating for the 5m strip light, but in a visual comparison, it is clearly brighter than the hard korr lights.

Point 2 – colour temperature. The name sort of gives it away. “Hard Korr” doesn’t sound like “nice” light… And it isn’t. The cool white setting is simply horrible… Far too harsh. Makes everything ugly. That’s OK… I would expect that. But the real disappointment is the “Warm white” setting. Even with the colour temp “warmed” to maximum, the light is not really warm at all. It could be described as a ‘cool neutral’ at best. Probably around 4000K colour temperature if I was to guess by eye. The Aldi strip light gives a really nice, ~2700K. Very pleasing, and with no lack of brightness. The orange setting on the HK lights is nice… But you are sacrificing a lot of illumination when you’re using this setting (lumen output seems to be just over half what the harsh white setting gives).

Point 3 – adaptability (Vs complexity) This is what Hard korr lights are famous for in their reviews, but any kind of expansive setup covering a larger campsite is going to see you running a lot of cables and probably doing up a lot of cable ties. A simple, 5m strip can be used in a number of ways too, with a lot less fuss. Sure, I have only one power source powering only one strip rather than heaps of switching options… But let’s face it – we’re CAMPING people… Isn’t it supposed to be about ‘keeping it simple’?

Sadly, this $200+ set of lights loses out in every way to a $40 competitor. I regret my purchase of the HK lights. (And I regret not buying several of the Aldi strips when they were available!)

Great product, NO after sales service – We are novice caravaners. We love the hardcore battery and battery box. However, we attempted to make contact with Hardkorr to get their technical advice on two matters. We could find no contact phone number and twice we have submitted a message to them with NO REPLY. So, if you think you may need any support or assistance after buying a Hardkorr product, then look elsewhere. I have found Aussie Batteries superb in their communication and advice.

Easy to set up and well built – I waited until I had done a few trips before I left this review so I could give the best feedback I could. These are excellent lights and the Orange lighting keeps the bugs away every time I have used them. I did leave the white lights on one night out of curiosity and low and behold we have the bugs swarming in no time. I use these in conjunction with the Hard Korr battery box and I like the simple plug and play method behind it all. Super easy to set up, I went and bought the Velcro tape and cut strips off to hold the lights to my gazebo structure. With plenty of cabling to boot it's easy to make a large setup also. I have also had them set up in some rather heavy rainfall and had no issues with water damage. We also came back one day to find the Gazebo slightly collapsed from water pooling and the Y-Junction piece was under quite a strain from the collapse but it doesn't seem to have broken the piece so the construction of the pieces seems to be quite solid.