[TJSlayer]

As others have already said dimming is more about the ability to control color and output intensity.

Other wise the only way to contol intensity is to raise or lower the lights from the surface of the tank, and if your ok with that than it may not be a deal breaker for you.

But with all the other choices in lighting if your nt happy with the color you simply change the bulb, not quite that easy with LED, and at least with the dimming aspect you can increase or decrease the basic color spectrums.
more/Less Blue vs more/less white.

As far as the sunrise, moon phase settings, storms, clouds, etc; and having dozens of different light intensities throughout the day those are what I call fluff features. None are really "needed" but some are pretty cool.

But when it comes down to it the way I made my decision is to look at what my budget was, and I purchased the light with the most features, and wattage I could get for the money.

Ultimately it's your cash so get what is important to you, but I think the dimming option is a must unless you can change individual LED's easily otherwise you may get it and decide you hate the color etc.

That said there are many users of the orphek lights that are quite happy, and I believe they will customize it to a certain extent for you as well, but once it's done, I'm not sure how easily you could change things around if your not happy.

The AI option has everything so I would go that way over the Orphek, but then again for the same cash you could go with the prometheus by reeftech as well which is even better when I was digging into the specs and such.

Many choices out there just depends on your budget and needs...

TJ