Greg recently approached me and asked if I want to “test and review a super secret new product”. Who says no to that! This is what came soon after and we’ve been enjoying it ever since. The Scangrip Multimatch Light..
This is one of those products that just “feels” good. Even the look of the box and the charger simply screams quality.
Overall the light just looks very well made and put together, which made it hard to be unbiased when testing it out. The front is a plate that contains the light and a replaceable glass assembly. The curved shape ensures the lens doesn’t get scratched or broken during use or when dropped. The color combo is very nice as well…
On the rear you see the large, easy to use power button, which has 2 modes. One is 600 lumens and 2nd is 2000. This makes it a great light for both lighting up an area as well as using it as a spotlight, but we’ll get to that later.
There is a very nice screw cap for the charging port. This goes along with the entire unit being water resistant and dust proof.
The cap unscrews to reveal the charging port, which has 2 small holes and a little notch on top for the cord to fit. The male end on the charger is made with the same material and simply screws on…
Here I took a couple of photos to show how much the Colour Match actually lights up the area. Kept the camera on the same (somewhat dark) setting and the Corvette was fairly dark…
On the first setting at 600 lumens it was already an environment in which you can do some work, but still a bit dark on some places overall…
The 2000 lumen setting really made things nice and bright.
It’s hard to tell in the photo, but you can actually see swirl marks and defects in the paint from quite a distance. This makes it not only easy to work on the side of the car and see stuff like polish residue easily, but at the same time you can check for defects as you’re polishing without moving or being near the light. Simply positioning it the right way will allow for both. In this photo, the light is sitting by the rear wheel, about 4 feet away and slightly angled towards the front. The beam I measured is roughly 9 feet in diameter when it’s placed 4 feet away from the wall. Place it away a bit further and the beam grows.
A few more photos showing the power of the light…
600 lumens…
2000 lumens…
Now a couple random photos because I simply couldn’t stop playing around with it :)…
Onto some serious stuff again. The Multimatch is extremely versatile in that it can be run all day plugged in, but also become a portable work light that you can position anywhere. To fully charge it takes around 3 hours and it has a run time of 1.5 hours on the 2000 lumen setting and 6 hours on the 600 lumen setting, which is pretty good on one charge. As shown a bit in the Corvette photos above, this portability and high power allows it too show defects from quite a distance.
Here I wanted to show roughly what kind of defects can be seen when placing the light a certain distance from the car. In this photo, the light is about 15 feet away and on the stronger setting. It clearly shows swirl marks even at that distance, while illuminating the entire side of the car…
Here it’s roughly 8 feet from the car and already you can see how much stronger it is the closer it gets…
Finally, roughly 2-3 feet from the car the light simply washes out defects in the photo…
In person our eyes can adjust to the light close up, but it’s really blinding and I wouldn’t be using it any closer than 4-5 feet. On the higher setting that is. Lower setting is fine closer up and works very well. The below photo was adjusted for the brightness and shows things a bit darker than what our eyes would see…
As you can see, one can easily spot any defects in the paint and again, you can do this along the whole side of the car without moving the light. You may have to adjust the angle of it once or twice depending on the size of the car, but it should be fine even in just one position. Here’s just a closeup of some very hard to see defects…
And finally a couple of mandatory half/half photos…
In addition to the great light it provides, the Multimatch has a stand that allows it to almost fully rotate 180 degrees, which means you can use it at multiple angles and place it in many different places in the work area…
At the end of the day, I believe it’s a great light for the money. I’ve only had it for a few weeks now so can’t speak for it’s durability, but based on the look and feel of it I can see this lasting quite a long time. The price may be on the higher side for enthusiasts, but I believe it’s on par with anything of really great quality and can see it easily being well worth the money over time. You can also save a bit of cash with the Scangrip Colourmatch Kit, which contains the Multimatch, Sunmatch and Matchpen all in a custom made, shock resistant case. The neutral color is another great feature of the light. We’re used to the cooler LEDs in the Brinkmann, which show defects extremely well, but seeing both the defects as well as the actual color of what the paint should look like seems easier on the eyes. We’ll be ordering a few of the smaller Sunmatch lights asap to either replace or be used in tandem with the older Brinkmann LED lights we have. Here’s my review of the Sunmatch light which we also recently had a chance to put to good use. I can keep going with examples of how the light can be used and how well it works with each of those uses, but I really don’t think I can say enough about it. It’s just one of those tools that comes by every now and then and blows everything else away. We’ll be investing in 2-3 of these lights to use both on the job and around the shop. As always, thanks for reading!
