Customer Reviews

18" Blacklight

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

If you want to purchase a blacklight, this is your simplest solution. I bought two of these and they are light enough to mount onto a wall with a lot of easily-removable two sided foam mounting tape. This is especially useful for college dorms where you can't exactly pound nails in the wall to mount your lighting and decoration.

The cords are shorter than you'd think, not too much so, but you'll have to mount these on the wall pretty much directly above an electrical outlet. If you're ceiling isn't too high, you shouldn't have a problem though.

They're very powerful blacklights, which is why I recommend them. With just one on at nighttime, every single speck of white glows with that fluorescence that tells you it's the real thing. Especially good if you have a Lava Lamp and some good posters, making them essential for any decor (especially if you're going for that retro, relaxed look).

I recieved this yesterday and have already used it.
The fedex guy didn't even ring my doorbell so I just happened to find it at my door.....
The inner box that holds the actual fixture and bulb was open for some reason, which is one of the reasons I took off one star.
You also have to put the bulb in yourself,which I didn't see instructions for....so this is how you do it
Put the bulb in through the slots in the fixture, then rotate the bulb gently until you hear it click so it won't fall out.
When you turn it on it flickers for a while, which isn't an extremely big deal.
This blacklight is really bright, it made my towel glow from like 20 feet away.
I used this to do blacklight makeup on my youtube channel: [...]
It was really fun and easy to do. I'm not mounting it on the wall but it's pretty darn light so I can see how easy that would be. The cord is the perfect size for what I'm using it for.

Well, I bought this for several reasons (one being I have this super expensive robot model that has parts that glow under blacklight). Anyways, the package was solid on the outside. When I opened it, the box seemed solid too. The only support was paper, one sheet of brown paper to be precise. I opened up the box itself for the lamp and out comes the metal cap for one end of the bulb. The green moldy looking thing that was supposed to hold it on to the bulb was cracked into pieces. There is no instruction besides setting up your bulb so it attaches to a wall, but other than that, the bulb does not come attached to the main unit. Instead, you have to figure out a way to put it in, which I have to admit took me a while to figure out. In any case, it had no instructions so it wasn't my fault. In the end, the light worked out fine, just wish it came in good condition were I wouldn't have to worry about installing the bulb itself or having the bulb explode on me because of a broken part.

Last Halloween, I used a bunch of incandescent "black" lights to try and get that glow effect for trick-or-treaters. Don't use them, they don't work. They produce a ton of heat, but not much UV light. I suspect they're someone's idea of a practical joke- "Hey, this light's burnt out, I better change it... Ouch, my fingers are burnt off, can you get the Neosporin?"

This light, on the other hand, works awesomely well. It will illuminate a whole room (or garage), and will light up day-glo items (or fabrics washed in powdered detergent) even with regular lights on. Expect 5-10 seconds of warm up time and flickering when you turn it on, and steady light after that.

Two pieces of advice-
First, don't look directly at this light when it's turned on. Your eyes will start hurting after a while- UV light doesn't trigger the normal iris response to bright light.
Second, those CSI shows are accurate; do not test this light out in your bathroom, unless you really want to see how poorly you've cleaned your toilet bowl.

This item was so cheaply made, it did not even work when I got it. It's made in China. This was not worth the time or money I wasted. Now, I probably won't be able to get a blacklight in time for Halloween celebrations. Order from a different brand if you can. So buyer beware.

I ordered two of these lights just to add some interesting aspects to a small space for a party. The one positive note is that they arrived on time. On the negative side however:
- Lights were poorely packaged, one arrived with the bulb shattered.
- Light that worked was weak and did not carry far in a small room.
- Company is difficult to work with...it has been three weeks and I still have not heard back from them about them about my complaint about the broken light.

I would recommend looking at different lights and a different company for your black light needs.

This black light just wasn't strong enough for my living room. I still use it but along with a 48in black light i got for 30 bucks. If you buy this make sure its for a small space. Its just no good for a larger room. Other then that its not that bad seems to be durable and made sturdy but don't expect to make your entire room glow.

I bought this light to put behind a display of nice bottles filled with highlighter mixture so they glow in my dorm room. The black light is itself, and you can fit 4 good sized bottles in front of it nicely. I also had a black light poster right above it and it looked good.
However, its size is not what you would be using to light up for a black light party, unless you had more of them spread all over.
If you do stand near it without the bottles in front of it, it does as good a job as other black lights, white teeth and designs on shirts glow nicely.

We bought one of these at my employer for purposes of validating security markings and detecting residual images in the phosphor of CRTs ("burn in"). It worked fine for that. It also causes some white paper, clothing, paint, etc., to fluoresce. (I also tried it in a bathroom. Ewww.) It's not really suited for rough handling or portability, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than the lights that are. Works for us; we don't need it much.

The description for this item is pretty generic, so I suspect different sellers may ship completely different products. We bought ours from "Penny Lane Gifts". The box it came in has a "Wonder Lites" brand/logo on it, and small print "Glow Industries, Inc. Perrysburg, OH". No model number, UPC, or anything like that on the box. The fixture label includes a prominent "5005", which appears to be the model number. The label also reveals the original manufacturer: "Ningbo Sunbe Electric Industries Co., Ltd."

The entire fixture is 18 inches long, 4 inches high, and 1.5 inches deep. The lamp (bulb/tube) is 15 watt, type F15T8, and measures roughly 17.25 inches long including caps; the exposed glass part is 16 inches long. Requires 120 volt AC power (standard US household power). Plug is two-prong polarized. Cord is 4.5 feet long and permanently attached.

It's an old-school florescent, so it can a few seconds to start, and then a few more to warm up to full illumination.

Do note that the lamp is not very bright to the naked eye. Most of the energy is emitted in the ultraviolet, which humans cannot see. That does not mean the lamp isn't working, it means it's not wasting energy on non-UV light. Indeed, if I look directly at the lamp for too long, my eyeballs start to itch, so I suspect it's emitting a significant amount of non-visible and potentially hazardous UV energy. Use with caution.

This isn't a bad blacklight but I'm sure there's better on the market for a higher price. It's not exceptionally strong. Printed right on the bulb, it says it's a 15w light. At the time that I bought it, that information wasn't listed anywhere on the product page. I admit that I was disappointed when I saw how weak it was when I lit it in the roughly 10'x12' room that it was intended for.

If you want to light up a big room or really want that dazzling, vibrant glow blacklights give, you'll want to get something stronger or a couple of these. The bulb itself seems to be of decent quality. There was something rattling around in either the bulb or the base when I got it, I was afraid that it might have been broken but it wasn't. The base itself is made of some cheap plastic but it doesn't feel like it would break with typical use.

Getting right to the point, would I buy it again with what I know now? Probably not.