energysavingled.com sent me this 7W GU10 LED spotlight for review. I was interested primarily in the safety aspects of this product.
By Julian
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
Good morning all…
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
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These are only devices that should be obtained from reputable stores, sometimes it is better to pay more to get something that will not kill you.
I hope you had a good New Years..! 🙂 I have had a bit ov trouble lately with LED lamps. Got some 12w candle style ones from E-Bay for our lounge light (one ov those old 3-way ones). Bought 4 and so far have gone through 3! Just one remains up there along with now 2 CFL candle replacements! I initially thought it was the power supplies, which are switchmode, that were failing, but actually it turned out to be at least one LED in each bulb. Not overly happy about this, but they weren't very expensive. Worse was the one in our kitchen. I run a 12volt background/emergency lighting circuit in there. This bulb was a genuine Ecolume (5w, E14, ball shaped) bought for $29.95NZD from Jaycar. So I thought I was buying quality. After a couple ov months or so, it started flickering – well pretty much flashing really – and again it proved to be one ov the LED elements rather than the PSU. So not impressed, a waste ov nearly 30 bucks! However I have managed to build my own power supply circuit that runs it on a lower current, which avoids the flickering, but now it's not a suitable brightness for the kitchen. One thing I wanted to say about the capacitor fed LED you had. It is extremely bad to run these on modified square inverters. Due to the harmonics in the power these kind ov simple supplies will pull A LOT more current than if they are connected to a pure sine wave source. This means the MS inverter is running quite inefficiently in powering that light, but much worse the ripple current will overheat the dropper cap and eventually it will destroy itself. Possibly causing a fire.
I hate potted bulbs 🙁 I am using a load of 3w MR16s that I control via pwm connected to the adj pin on the driver IC but recently the same bulbs have been turning up potted 🙁
If the internals get warm enough perhaps the "Hot Melt" glue will flow towards the heat sink. Much the same as pitch flows.
A bit strange that the pictures on the website shows the LED's in another arrangement – maybe they moved them further apart because the needed another lens-design?
The warranties often have conditions regarding the number of hours per year the lamp can be running for and type of enclosure etc. Aside from that, it does seem fairly good with the large heatsink. I can;t imagine the heatsink gets much warmer than 50-60C if used vertical base up in a 20C room, in which case the capacitor should run for quoted hours without any issues
nice review
Another good review Julian. Certain makes of LED lamp (like the one tested here) are getting to be pretty well made these days. I guess it's just development over previous designs.
I've recently been testing Some GU10 LED's too.. Not on YT. After using some the Ebay cheapies I just got fed-up knowing that some of these things had live front panels 😮
I've found that I'm liking the new Kosnic series of lights for my small work area, I'm currently using a couple of warm white 6W (equiv 50W) Kosnic Halo LED's rated at 400Lm. These are well made also and the light from them seems to be a good representation of the warm white colour associated with incandescent lights.
isn't that capacitor a solid capacitor ?
Nice to see a safe lamp. I had some lamps from them (local company to me) last year. These look to have improved too.