Customer Reviews

Dimmable Par20 5 Watt LED Spot Light Bulb Replacement for Incandescent Halogen Track Lighting, Recess Light, E26 Standard Screw Base, Bright White, 1321wh

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The light output from this bulb is astonishing given its wattage. But, the light is VERY directional and VERY blue in color. I tried this as a downlight on a chandelier and was disappointed. It brightly illuminated a very small circle in the center of our table with a light color that was clearly different than the incandescent lighting in the rest of the fixture. Surprisingly, the bulb really does dim smoothly. It's an expensive bulb and really didn't work well in my application. If the issues with focus and color were resolved, though, I'd recommend in a minute.

Excellent light output. I use three of these units overhead in my bedroom. They are powerful enough to provide excellent and direct light for reading, yet they don't wash the entire room. Exactly what I expected. I'm using them on an electronic dimmer, and it's a bit quirky. They seem to work much better on non-solid state dimmers.

The product unfortunately was not bright enough for what we wanted. Please understand that we are not complaining. It appeared to be very well designed and made.

What we were looking for was a replacement for our Philips Director 40W bulbs we use that are mounted under our Hunter ceiling fans. They had to be dimmable and close to the same size (Diameter 2.375 in & Length 4.125 in).

These bulbs were the right size, just not bright enough. Just guessing, but a PAR30 might be what we need. We need something that has at least 500 Lumens.

We spoke to the company and unfortunately no one currently manufactures what we are looking for.

We will keep looking. Hopefully the same company will have them because they were GREAT to deal with.

This bulb is OK, but not bright enough for a room by itself. I prefer indirect low lighting and this barely does the job. I have a 200 lumen flashlight, that I can point at the ceiling, and actually light up the room a little better than this bulb. I don't know how it is classified as a 450 lumen bulb when my 200 lumen flashlight is slightly brighter. It would be perfect and plenty bright enough for a desk lamp or walk in closet.

I bough some of these bulbs for a recess lighty, work great and are very bright! Great quality!

The delivery of this light bulb (PAR 20 for use in our kitchen's track lights) was very quick. That was the most positive part of this experience. The design of the bulb is interesting, to say the least. It is composed of many sharp metal slats that look something out of a sci-fi movie. The light from the bulb is a very blue (cool) hue, much too noticeable for ambient lightning. The blueness of the light from this bulb is so harsh that it is reminiscent of bug lamps, or stage lightning with light-blue gels. I do not recommend this light bulb for everyday use in the home.

These are a great replacement for halogen spot lamps in track lighting. I replaced almost 400 watts of halogen lamps with less than 50 watts total LED lamps and the lighting is brighter. (Two of the LED lamps were initially shipped incorectly and they flashed on and off and were not useable. When I looked closely these two were labelled "AC 240-v". Amazon quickly took care of the problem, credited the cost of the original lamps and reordered the proper lamps.)
PLEASE NOTE: These lamps are bright white, almost blue-white. They are NOT warm white and some people may not care for them. Also they are spot lamps lighting an area of about 5 feet in diameter at roughly 10 feet away.
I am using them to light a picture wall and are exactly what I wanted.

THE SKINNY:

Doesn't live up to specs. Annoying flicker. Color much more purplish than claimed 5500K color temp. Light output about half that claimed. Spend $10-15 more for a better LED bulb, or $10 less for a compact fluorescent.

DISCUSSION:

On unboxing the first impression this bulb gives is of build quality. The heat sink is very impressive. But a look at the business end tells a different story.

This bulb appears to use cheap general purpose LEDs like you'd buy at Radio Shack where the LED is molded into a clear plastic package that also serves as a lens. This makes me wonder whether the heat sink on this light bulb is largely for show, since there's no effective way to transfer heat from that kind of package to the heat sink. And it turns out that the heat sink doesn't even get warm in operation. A simple flat plate of glass is glued (sloppily, in fact) on top of the LEDs themselves; no lens or diffuser is provided. Consequently the beam is quite narrow, perhaps 20 degrees or so, and even within that the brightness drops off rapidly from the center, and the color changes too.

In a side-by-side comparison with other LED bulbs whose specifications I know (360 lumens, 5000k color temperature, 40 degree viewing angle, and a similar bulb rated at 6000k color temperature), this light throws a spot that's maybe 1/2 the angle at best, and appears extremely violet in comparison. I'd estimate the color temperature to be well over the claimed 6500K, as opposed to the 5500k rating given here. This device is rated at 450 lumens, but viewed head on from about 10' away it was noticeably less bright than the quality 360 lumen bulb, even though that bulb throws a much broader beam.

I have to conclude that the specifications on this bulb are wildly optimistic. I'd estimate the color temperature to be at least 1000K higher than claimed, and the luminosity at least a hundred lumens dimmer, if not two hundred. According to its specs this bulb should be the equivalent of a 40w incandescent, but it's more like 25w. That probably shouldn't be surprising. 450 lumens at 5w works out to 90 lumens/watt; these days some commercially available LEDs are over 200 lumens/watt, but none packaged like the ones in this bulb. The type of LEDs this device uses run from 30 - 50 lumens/watt at best. I don't have test gear, but 250 lumens seems quite plausible for this device from my comparisons to other bulbs.

The final issue with this bulb is flicker. Even in a non-dimming circuit, this thing flickers objectionably. I know from experience with computer monitors that some people perceive this kind of thing and others don't. Be aware that even if you don't see the flicker, others might find it annoying.

It's curious that this thing has one of the most beautiful heat sinks I've ever seen, but the LEDs, optics and circuitry are so shoddy. I've seen this sort of thing happen with manufacturers that supply parts for high quality products. Sometimes they use their expertise in one area to dash off good-looking but cheap knockoffs.

CONCLUSIONS:

Modern LED lightbulbs aren't quite up to replacing fluorescent at pumping out lots of light in all directions yet. But in PAR floodlights in the 300-500 lumen range, LEDs are have a slight edge over compact fluorescents in efficiency. But not this one.

Spend $10-$20 on a high quality unit with a name brand LED (Cree, Nichia, Lumiled, etc.). Or spend $10 less on a compact fluorescent that's comparably or more energy efficient. Some of the better CFLs have lifespans of about half the 20,000 hours claimed for this device, cost half as much per bulb, and are (by my estimate) 10-20% more energy efficient.

Lights produce enough light, and work ok on the dimmer.

Unfortunately, if I use only these bulbs on a circuit, they tend to flicker at certain dimmer settings. I found that this problem goes away when I put a high quality Philips dimmable LED bulb somewhere in the circuit, then this behavior goes away, so I'm going to put one of those in each room.

I'm happy with the price and now that I have found a way to get acceptable performance out of the bulbs.

My order came with 2 different designs, one said it way 6 watts, the other 5, both with the same part number.

Bought two. One failed after about 60 hours. Other is still ok. No warranty or return option on the website. I like my Sylvania par 20 floods much better. Better light, brighter and warranted.