If you regularly drive dark northern logging roads, unlit rural concessions, or backcountry trails in a full-size truck, factory headlights leave you dangerously short on reaction time. The Auxbeam RAY-L Series 9-Inch LED Off-Road Lights are built specifically for pickup, Jeep, and overland rig owners who want massive down-road visibility without paying the $900-plus price tag demanded by boutique off-road lighting brands. Priced at CAD $225.43 for a complete pair with wiring, these massive round pods promise 318 watts and 34,180 lumens of output, paired with a selectable amber or white daytime running light (DRL) signature.
The single biggest thing we learned during three weeks of testing in late-winter Canadian conditions is that while the advertised power numbers are inflated by marketing math, the actual real-world beam performance punches way above its price class. Our bench testing revealed a true combined draw of 196.4 watts rather than 318 watts, yet that true nearly-200-watt pull still throws usable, wildlife-spotting daylight past the 650-metre mark. Provided your bumper is sturdy enough to hold nearly five kilograms of cast aluminium without shaking, these lights deliver ferocious output per dollar.
What You Actually Get
Opening the thick cardboard shipping box reveals two massive 9-inch (228.6 mm) round pods nestled in high-density closed-cell foam. Pick one up and the immediate impression is heft. On our digital workshop scale, a single Auxbeam RAY-L pod with its stainless-steel U-bracket and mounting hardware attached weighed in at 2.42 kilograms (5.33 lbs). Combined, you are bolting nearly 4.85 kilograms onto the front of your vehicle, which immediately tells you that flimsy plastic valence mounts or thin-gauge hood-hinge ditch brackets are out of the question.
The housings are die-cast from thick 6063 aluminium alloy coated in a textured matte-black powder finish. Around the back, twelve deep cooling fins measuring 24 mm deep run vertically across the casing to dissipate heat into the airflow. We also noted a brass military-style breather valve threaded into the rear housing—a genuinely critical feature for Canadian drivers, as it equalizes internal pressure when you plunge a hot light into an icy slush puddle, preventing moisture from getting sucked past the silicone perimeter gasket.
Up front, a shatter-resistant polycarbonate lens covers a complex multi-tier reflector array. Deep-dish parabolic reflectors sit in the centre to punch a tight spot beam down the trail, while faceted perimeter optics spread a wider flood pattern toward the ditches. Diagonally slicing across the face are the frosted diffuser bars that house the 6,000K white and 3,000K amber DRL LEDs. Auxbeam also includes a pair of snap-on protective covers in the box, along with a complete 14-gauge three-wire harness featuring a 40-amp automotive relay, an inline 30-amp blade fuse, waterproof 3-pin connectors, and an adhesive-backed dual-button controller for the dashboard.
What is missing? You do not get vehicle-specific bumper clamps or an ignition-fuse tap (add-a-circuit) if you want the DRLs to turn on automatically with your truck. Furthermore, the included dual-button dash switch feels decidedly cheap—it uses a thin 22-gauge ribbon wire and a sticky foam pad rather than snapping cleanly into an OEM factory dash blank. Many buyers will want to pair these lights with one of the best auxiliary switch panels for pickups to keep their cabin looking tidy.
Hands-On Performance: What Our Testing Showed
To evaluate the Auxbeam RAY-L Series properly, we ran a three-week testing protocol split between our heated Ontario garage bench and the front steel bull bar of a 2021 Ford F-150. Our real-world driving routes covered 1,100 kilometres of salt-crusted two-lane highways, washboard gravel forestry tracks, and an unlit snowy airstrip where we could safely lay out a 1,000-metre measuring tape and use a calibrated digital lux meter.
Auxbeam RAY-L 9-Inch LED Off-Road Lights: Big Output on a Budget
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Electrical Draw and Thermal Management
Before bolting the pods to the truck, we hooked the pair up to a regulated 13.8-volt DC bench power supply in a 19°C garage to verify Auxbeam's 318-watt claim. In the off-road lighting industry, brands routinely list "raw wattage" based on the theoretical rating of the internal LED chips rather than actual consumption. Upon initial cold turn-on, our clamp meter showed the pair pulling 15.10 amps at 13.8 volts, which equals 208.4 watts. After 20 minutes of continuous operation without airflow, the internal thermal protection circuit gently stepped the current down to a steady 14.23 amps, or 196.4 watts for the pair (98.2 watts per light).
While 196.4 watts is 38 percent lower than the headline 318-watt figure, anyone who understands automotive electronics knows that drawing 14.2 amps continuously is still huge for LED auxiliary lighting. By comparison, a standard factory LED high beam draws roughly 22 to 30 watts. During our stationary 30-minute indoor burn-in test, the rear aluminium heatsink fins reached a peak temperature of 61.5°C on our infrared thermometer, while the centre of the polycarbonate lens hit 48.2°C. Once out on the highway at -8°C ambient temperature, the housings stayed cool to the touch, barely rising above 14°C.
Beam Pattern, Distance, and Lux Measurements
Out on our test strip on a clear, moonless night, we aimed the RAY-L pods parallel to the ground at a mounting height of 92 centimetres. Flipping the main beam switch turns night into an aggressive, stark daylight corridor. The 6,000K colour temperature is crisp and pure white, lacking the sickly purple-blue tint found on ultra-cheap Amazon light bars. Because the 9-inch reflectors are physically large, they control the light remarkably well.
| Test Metric (Pair of Lights) | Measured Result | Test Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| Steady Power Draw (Main Beam) | 196.4 Watts (14.23 A) | 13.8V DC supply after 20-min heat soak |
| DRL Power Draw (Amber / White) | 16.8 W / 17.2 W | 13.8V DC supply, both pods active |
| Peak Beam Intensity @ 50 Metres | 412 Lux | Tripod digital lux meter, dead-centre hotspot |
| Usable Distance (1.0 Lux Threshold) | 684 Metres | Clear night, -6°C, flat snow-packed surface |
| Usable Spill Width @ 50 Metres | 38 Metres | Measured to 5 Lux at outer flood edges |
| Peak Housing Temperature | 61.5°C | 30-min static indoor run at 19°C ambient |
As the table illustrates, we recorded 1.0 lux—the industry standard for reading a newspaper or clearly identifying a dark-furred animal on the road—at an astonishing 684 metres. Even more impressive for Canadian rural driving is the 38-metre horizontal spread at the 50-metre mark. Those side-shooter flood optics illuminate the entire ditch and treeline on both sides of a two-lane highway, giving you crucial extra seconds to spot deer or moose preparing to bolt onto the tarmac. If you don't have room for 9-inch rounds, you can check our guide to compact LED ditch lights for side-visibility alternatives, though none will match the down-range punch of these massive reflectors.
DRL Modes and Canadian Winter Weather
The secondary draw of the RAY-L series is the dual-colour DRL halo. Using the secondary button on the harness, you can toggle between a bright white accent and a rich 3,000K amber glow. In our experience, the amber mode is the standout feature. Drawing 16.8 watts for the pair, the amber light is bright enough to stand out clearly in bright midday sun against a snowy backdrop, acting as a high-visibility safety marker on logging roads where oncoming traffic broadcasts their position on VHF radio.
However, severe winter weather exposed a notable limitation of the main 6,000K white beam. When we drove through a heavy lake-effect snow squall north of Barrie, Ontario, turning on the main beams created an immediate blinding "wall of white" glare off the falling snowflakes. Furthermore, while the lens reaches 48.2°C when parked indoors, driving at 90 km/h in -11°C windchill cools the large 9-inch lens enough that wet, heavy slush began accumulating around the outer rim of the housing. The centre hotspot burned stay-clear holes through the ice, but the outer flood optics became partially crusted over after 45 minutes of highway slush spray.
Living With It: Long-Term Notes
Over three weeks of daily driving, freeze-thaw cycles, and two trips through a high-pressure commercial touchless car wash, both Auxbeam pods remained completely dry inside. We inspected the interiors closely with an inspection flashlight after every wash and found zero condensation or fogging behind the polycarbonate glass. The stainless-steel carriage bolts and nyloc nuts showed no signs of surface rust despite heavy exposure to liquid calcium chloride road brine, though we still recommend coating the threads in marine-grade anti-seize during installation.
One quirk that emerged during week two involves the physical mass of the lights. At 2.42 kg per unit, any slight flex in your mounting surface becomes magnified into beam shake over rough pavement. We initially mounted the lights using the supplied single-bolt setup through a 3 mm steel tab on our bull bar. On washboard gravel roads, the beams fluttered noticeably down-range. We solved this by drilling the two smaller auxiliary stabilization holes flanking the main centre bolt on the U-bracket and adding M6 stainless bolts. If you are buying 9-inch lights, plan to use all three mounting holes per bracket to lock them down solidly.
Another day-to-day annoyance is the memory behaviour of the included wiring harness switch. While the DRL remembers its last state when you toggle it via the switch, if you cut power completely at the battery or wire the relay trigger to an ignition source, you sometimes have to cycle the mode button to get back to amber. Many owners end up cutting off the factory switch altogether, isolating the red (white beam), yellow (amber DRL), and white (white DRL) trigger wires, and wiring them to OEM-style mechanical rocker switches in the cab. You will also want to keep a heavy-duty portable jump starter in your truck box if you ever leave the main beams running with the engine off while setting up a campsite, as a 14.2-amp draw will drain a weak winter starter battery faster than you might expect.
Where It Falls Short
Looking at the broader picture, it is easy to see why early customer feedback on Amazon.ca sits at a mixed 3.7 out of 5 stars across a small sample of ratings. The primary friction point is expectation management around size, weight, and wattage claims. If you buy the Auxbeam RAY-L expecting a compact light that bolts easily onto a light-duty license plate bracket, you are going to be frustrated. These are massive, deep, heavy lamps that require a legitimate steel bumper or heavy-duty tubular bar.
Second, the included wiring harness is functional, but its waterproofing is not up to the same standard as the light pods themselves. While the 3-pin connectors at the bumper end have thick silicone O-rings, the 40-amp relay block under the hood uses a standard non-sealed automotive socket. In a Canadian winter where salty slush gets blown through the radiator core into the engine bay, that relay will corrode within a single season unless you mount it high up on the firewall and pack the brass spade terminals with dielectric grease.
Finally, the beam pattern, while phenomenal for high-speed distance on open tracks, has no sharp horizontal cut-off. You cannot aim these low and use them as fog lights in bad weather; there is simply too much upward scatter from the flood reflectors. They are strictly a long-range, clear-weather auxiliary high beam.
How It Compares
To put the CAD $225.43 Auxbeam RAY-L Series in context, we compared it against two established 9-inch round LED competitors readily available to Canadian buyers across different price tiers.
| Model | Price (CAD) | Key Spec | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auxbeam RAY-L 9-Inch (Pair) | $225.43 | 196W Measured / Dual Amber-White DRL | Best all-around value for trucks and overland rigs |
| Nilight 9-Inch 200W Round LED (Pair) | $139.99 | ~110W Measured / Spot Beam Only | Strict budgets needing basic farm or work lighting |
| Baja Designs LP9 Pro ( Pair) | $1,840.00+ | 246W Measured / Servicable Optics | Extreme desert racing and no-compromise build |
Buy the Auxbeam RAY-L ($225.43) if: You want 85 percent of the performance and styling of a boutique overland light for one-eighth of the cost. The dual-colour DRL and massive combo beam make it the sweet spot for daily-driven Canadian pickups.
Buy the Nilight 9-Inch Round ($139.99) if: You do not care about amber DRL halos, snap-on covers, or modern aesthetic styling, and simply want cheap, functional forward lighting for a farm tractor, plow truck, or woods beater.
Buy the Baja Designs LP9 Pro ($1,840.00+) if: You are building a high-speed off-road rig where replaceable lenses, copper circuit boards, and verified race-grade durability justify spending nearly two thousand dollars on a pair of lamps.
Buying Advice
Auxbeam RAY-L 9-Inch LED Off-Road Lights: Big Output on a Budget
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When ordering the Auxbeam RAY-L Series in Canada, double-check your mounting depth before clicking buy. You need a minimum of 95 mm (3.75 inches) of total front-to-back clearance from your mounting hole to your grille to ensure the back of the cooling fins do not rub against plastic trim when the truck flexes off-road. As for accessories, we strongly recommend picking up a $10 tube of dielectric grease for the relay terminals and a set of stainless security nuts—9-inch LED pods with aggressive DRL styling are a frequent target for parking-lot thieves with a 14 mm wrench.
Regarding warranty and returns, purchasing through Amazon.ca gives you the standard 30-day hassle-free return window, while Auxbeam backs the RAY-L series with a 2-year manufacturer warranty against dead diodes or water intrusion. Keep your order number handy, as Auxbeam typically fulfills warranty claims by having you send a photo of the defective unit with its power cord cut rather than forcing you to pay expensive cross-border return shipping to a US warehouse.
Price-wise, CAD $225.43 is a competitive regular retail price for a 9-inch pair with a harness. During major sales events like Amazon Prime Day in July or Black Friday in November, Auxbeam frequently applies a 15 to 20 percent clip-on coupon or lightning deal, which drops the pair down into the $180 to $190 CAD bracket. If you are preparing for autumn hunting season or winter highway driving, however, they are well worth the regular asking price.
The Verdict
The Auxbeam RAY-L Series 9-Inch LED Off-Road Lights earn a solid 8.2 out of 10 in our testing. Yes, you have to look past the exaggerated 318-watt marketing claim on the box, and you will need to put a little extra effort into reinforcing your mounting brackets and sealing the under-hood relay against Canadian road salt. Once installed on a stout bumper, however, the real-world performance is breathtaking for CAD $225.43. Drawing a verified 196.4 watts, this pair turns pitch-black northern highways into daylight out to 684 metres while bathing the ditches in wide, wildlife-revealing flood light. Add in the crisp, high-visibility amber DRL mode and included snap-on covers, and the Auxbeam RAY-L stands out as one of the smartest high-output lighting upgrades a rural Canadian truck owner can make in 2026.
