"NEW" Lights of America 120v LED fixtures at Walmart?

[mavycat]

Well, I was a bit disappointed to read a few posts here AFTER I bought close to $80 worth of these lights at Walmart. They seem to be brand new at the local Walmarts.

Long story short, I've already burned several of them out by hooking up to an older style X10 switch. I'm a bit confused on two things with these lights:

1) Is the quality really bad on all the lights? I bought two kinds so far. One seems worse than the other. The one is a track mount (two connector half twist) type fixture with the larger LED's). These are the ones that simply went dark within a few hours of being connected to a fixture with two other incandescent bulbs. This is puzzling as I've never had such problems with the LED christmas lights. They will "glow" if hooked to an X10 switch with no incandescent ... but nothing burns out. What's up with these?

2) Is there any way to use these lights effectively with an X10 or similar switch (appliance, etc.?) I'm concerned that I might have already "weakened" the other set I bought for the kitchen. These LOA's claim to be "45 watt" and actually do throw some decent light. They are neatly set inside a fixture that resembles a 45-65 watt recessed flood light. The led's appear to be a cluster of smaller LED's. These things are not cheap at $15/piece. The deal with them though ... they blew the other X10 switch almost immediately after I hooked them up. I heard the sickening "pop" and no more switch. The lights are still working "so far" as they were stuck on after the switch blew. I just disco'd the switch.

I'm prepared to just wire up a regular switch and replace the last incandescent with the LOA bulb if you guys think it might be worth it. However, I'm really wondering based on this experience and others if these lights are simply not worth it and should be taken back If they are gonna burn out shortly then they are probably not worth it as it's hard to take stuff back to Walmart after 30 days or so. Thanks for any advice and I'll try to post a picture of these lights if I can. I'm wondering if there is any significant different between the ones I got for the kitchen and the crummy "20 watt" ones I got for the office that just burned out.

 

[Light Sabre]

I had 23 of the $6 bulbs. 2 were dead right out of the package. 4 died later. 4 dropped to around 50% brightness. All of that happened in 5 months. I took them all back to Wally Mart. Talked to the store manager about what happened and recommended that she take them off the shelves. Got all my money back too. $132 plus tax. Never bought the more expensive ones, because I live in an apartment and don't have use for something that big. So no more Lights of America products for me. Went back to CFL's, but switched to 4100K instead of the 3500K that I was using before the LOA LED's.

 

[blasterman]

Is the quality really bad on all the lights? I bought two kinds so far.

I would expect a big difference in quality between a $60 triple cree head and the Walmart bulb. Just a fiscal reality.

This is puzzling as I've never had such problems with the LED christmas lights.

LED Christmas lights are usually daisy chained in lengthy parallel/series circuits which itself act as a crude power regulator. LEDs are tough to kill when wired in such a fashion, and can even be run with AC power this way with a bridge circuit. The fewer LEDs you have in series, the more they depend on a stable power supply.When you combine a cheap, poorly regulated power supply such as in Feit brand bulbs or the LEDs you have now with a wall dimmer you're asking for trouble.

I saw this comment about the X10 on another site

http://www.smarthomeusa.com/ShopByManufacturer/X-10-Pro/Item/PLW01-X/

"Lamps rated below 40W may flicker or operate erratically"

That...kind of sums it up.

I'll give you the same suggestion as I give everybody else, and that's to avoid dimmer circuits unless you have to, and then use then only with Halogen, which seems more tolerant than Incan and also has a better kelvin temp. Use 3500 or 4100k CFLs when you can because they match the color quality of 'white' LEDs the best. As for now, I won't use higher end LEDs on anything other than a dedicated 12volt power supply.

 

[ponygt65]

LED's are being pushed into the residential market WAY TOO early.


This 'green' aspect of the lighting industry is disgustingly annoying.

 

[blasterman]

It's more than 'annoying' - it's close to outright disinformation given how much residential lighting costs are exagerated. It pushes consumers to buy so called 'green' products that aren't very reliable and don't accomplish much. Given them credit for having their motivation in the right place though.

There's a big jump in lighting efficiency and quality going from Incan or Halogen to CFL, but the jump from CFL (or regular flourescent) to LED is almost controversial and often involves decimal points.... unless it's a very specific application.

Bi-pin CFL for instance is one the most under-rated technologies around, and yet is one of the most practical, durable, enrrgy efficient, cost efficient and aethestically versatile light source for residential/commercial there is. Yet when is the last time you've seen bi-pin CFLs in somebody's house?

 

[ledstein]

Actually you stumbled upon the biggest problem with the led market.
On paper leds are supreme, they last 100k hours and use little electricity and thus mean huge savings. In reality only a small part of the led products last over 10k hours and usually those are the expensive ones and use leds from lumileds,cree, osram and so on.

The market is flooded with cheap chinese products with 100k hour labels but that last even less then the incandescent they are meant to replace. And this problem hurts the trust in led technology as a hole.

As i know wallmart= the place for cheap stuff, cheap led stuff=sucks so you do the math :shakehead

 

[ddawg16]

There's a big jump in lighting efficiency and quality going from Incan or Halogen to CFL, but the jump from CFL (or regular flourescent) to LED is almost controversial and often involves decimal points.... unless it's a very specific application.

Quite correct. Based on my research so far, LED's have on 'average' maybe a 10% advantage over CFL's. When you roll in the cost....CFL's are cheaper.....right now that is. It could be a different story in 5 years.

So far I have concluded that LED's are primarily suited for low voltage applications like automotive or simple lights like night lights.

With that said.....I am still looking for a bulb that would work as a light in my fridge. Too cold for CFL's....and the incandescent puts out too much heat. We had a failure of a control board on our fridge a few months ago where it would not shut down the lights when you closed the door....started melting the butter in that part of the fridge.

 

[ledstein]

So far I have concluded that LED's are primarily suited for low voltage applications like automotive or simple lights like night lights.

There are actually 2 different parts.

First is the "wow" factor. Leds are for lighting what a gadget is for electronics. Even if the performance of a led fixture is not bigger then a cfl more and more people will use leds. "Leds are green" sounds familiar?:devil:

Then there is "size matters" aspect. Led products have small size and fit in many places.

Common uses where leds are actually better: indoor ambiental lighting and signage (those lit letters you see everywhere on the street).

 

[James S]

LOA lamps are garbage. I just posted to the other thread about them that they dropped to less than a 5th of their output in only 2 weeks of runtime. Dont bother with them.

There are a couple of ways to make them work better with X10 modules though. If you've got it plugged into a lamp or appliance module to you can perform the hack to remove local sense. This removes the ability to turn the lamp on locally but also removes the current sense voltage that is enough to make them come on. It's quite easy to do, on idobartana's site or elsewhere on the intertubes you can find the instructions for doing this, basically just clipping a diode on the module inside and putting it back together. I have done this for LED bulbs and also CFL's that want to bounce back on after turning off. Or you can just accept that the lamp will now have 2 levels, ON and night light and no off I'm actually using it for that in one application.

With a light switch it's more complicated since the light switch doesn't have access to the neutral it needs to run a tiny current through the load in order to power itself and watch for X10 commands. There is a mod you can do to add a neutral to the X10 switch. I've done this with some limited success. Then the current doesn't go through the lamp anymore. This may work but is more of a hack on the switch and requires really altering the thing. Again google the instructions but this may be more work than you're willing to do. The only other choice is to upgrade to a switch that has a neutral included like those from smarthome (but they are much more $$$) or change to a on/off switch from X10 which works great, but also requires a neutral be available in the box and make the loud thunk/thunk when turning on and off as they are really just an appliance module inside there.

 

[holiday light express]

Few things,
1. Wal mart doesn't sell nice things. They have a market that they cater to, and that market has price points, which are not very high.
2. LED bulbs are great, you just have to understand that GE and friends are not going to R&D a bulb that lasts a long time and can not be broken.
3. You also have to understand that we are going to have to choose our light bulbs based on application. Maybe an LED works great for one thing, but a CFL is better for another. (An LED is cheaper and greener than a CFL over time)

I have been using the nice higher end bulbs for a while now with ZERO issues.

 

[likeguymontag]

Few things,
1. Wal mart doesn't sell nice things. They have a market that they cater to, and that market has price points, which are not very high.
2. LED bulbs are great, you just have to understand that GE and friends are not going to R&D a bulb that lasts a long time and can not be broken.

Funny you should say this. In fact, WalMart sells a nice, well-engineered LED bulb made by GE. I discussed it in the other LOA thread. So it looks like WalMart sometimes sells nice things, and GE will sometimes do the research for a long-lasting product.

 

[holiday light express]

Its a 7 watt bulb, 20degree spread and 200 lumens. That's not a very nice bulb.
A 7 watt LED bulb should be pushing over 400 lumens and a beam angle under 45degrees is pretty much useless in most cases.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that places like walmart are starting to lean towards selling energy efficient products. I just think it's dissapointing that they can't do it right the first time and leave a sour taste in the mouths of customers who are trying to save energy.

 

[mavycat]

Wow, I forgot about posting this and had just checked back. Thanks for all the replies. I am "test driving" these bulbs now. Basically I ripped and replaced two of my X-10 light switches back to regular. I am using the "flood" type LOA LED's in the kitchen and they are working well so far. I got one of the other types for the dining room but didn't realize I actually needed the "small base" type for that. There are three, and I think walmart has the LOA lights for that.

I hear you guys on the reliability of these lights. However, I'm puzzled about the stuff you are saying about CFL. I was putting those in my house many years ago. I've even bought some of the new ones. Unless there is some new kind that I haven't seen yet - I don't care what anyone says the flourescent light sucks. It's just not as good as incan or LED. If there is some new one that is much better than all the rest then please tell more about it. I just bought a few small "instant on" i think 40 watt type CFLS a few months ago. I haven't tried them anywhere in the house yet. Maybe those are better. I don't know.

 

[superjoe83]

I hear you guys on the reliability of these lights. However, I'm puzzled about the stuff you are saying about CFL. I was putting those in my house many years ago. I've even bought some of the new ones. Unless there is some new kind that I haven't seen yet - I don't care what anyone says the flourescent light sucks. It's just not as good as incan or LED. If there is some new one that is much better than all the rest then please tell more about it. I just bought a few small "instant on" i think 40 watt type CFLS a few months ago. I haven't tried them anywhere in the house yet. Maybe those are better. I don't know.

the new ones are better, i put a 2700k 14w cfl right next to a 60w soft white incandescent and could hardly tell the difference, i am using 3500k and 4100k cfls around my house currently

 

[likeguymontag]

However, I'm puzzled about the stuff you are saying about CFL. I was putting those in my house many years ago. I've even bought some of the new ones. Unless there is some new kind that I haven't seen yet - I don't care what anyone says the flourescent light sucks. It's just not as good as incan or LED. If there is some new one that is much better than all the rest then please tell more about it. I just bought a few small "instant on" i think 40 watt type CFLS a few months ago. I haven't tried them anywhere in the house yet. Maybe those are better. I don't know.

What aspects of CFLs don't you like? Many aspects have been improved if you know which bulbs to look for. There are instant start ones as you said; I personally hate the "programmed rapid start" ones 'cause I don't want to wait 300 ms to get light after I flip the switch. They come in a range of color temperatures from an incan-emulating 2700K to 3000K, 3500K, and on upwards to supposedly daylight-emulating cool whites. I think I also prefer the 3500K-4100K range like the previous poster. Sure, the CRI will suck for CFLs, but the same is true for LEDs. The one big liability that CFLs have is warmup time to full output.

 

[jtr1962]

Sure, the CRI will suck for CFLs, but the same is true for LEDs.

Technically, the CRI might be a little less for typical LEDs than for CFLs (~75 versus ~82). That being said, for some reason LED seems better to me than its low CRI number would indicate. This may have to do with LED lacking the gaps in the spectrum which exist for all triphosphor CFLs. LED spectra have peaks and valleys, plus a red deficiency (actually that's the worst part), but no gaps. And if you add a small percentage of reds to the whites, I'm pretty sure that brings the CRI into the high 80s at least. Bottom line, CRI isn't really a very good metric for determining light quality. Some others, such as full-spectral index (FSI) or gamut area (GA) are better. I believe LED scores better on both these metrics than triphosphor CFLs. For example, with FSI a perfect source would score 0, and the higher the number the worse the source. A 2700K to 3000K CFL scores 11, a white LED scores 5.2. Interestingly, a 5000K triphosphor CFL does better at 5.9, and an incandescent is only 5.3 (marginally worse than an LED despite its CRI of 100).

Source

 

[likeguymontag]

Technically, the CRI might be a little less for typical LEDs than for CFLs (~75 versus ~82). That being said, for some reason LED seems better to me than its low CRI number would indicate. [...] A 2700K to 3000K CFL scores 11, a white LED scores 5.2. Interestingly, a 5000K triphosphor CFL does better at 5.9, and an incandescent is only 5.3 (marginally worse than an LED despite its CRI of 100).

Source

Thanks for contributing that. I was aware that people felt the CRI standard was flawed, but I knew little beyond that. It's fascinating to me that a source with a discontinuous spectrum (triphosphor) could have a similar rating to a black body radiator (incand).

 

[ponygt65]

It's more than 'annoying' - it's close to outright disinformation given how much residential lighting costs are exagerated. It pushes consumers to buy so called 'green' products that aren't very reliable and don't accomplish much. Given them credit for having their motivation in the right place though.

There's a big jump in lighting efficiency and quality going from Incan or Halogen to CFL, but the jump from CFL (or regular flourescent) to LED is almost controversial and often involves decimal points.... unless it's a very specific application.

Bi-pin CFL for instance is one the most under-rated technologies around, and yet is one of the most practical, durable, enrrgy efficient, cost efficient and aethestically versatile light source for residential/commercial there is. Yet when is the last time you've seen bi-pin CFLs in somebody's house?

I agree.....100% with everything except bi-pin CFLs. Bi-pin CFL's are on their way out for good reason. A) EOLP, B) magnetic ballast and/or preheat ballast, C) Slow start/flickering (unless you by the Flicker free, self starter ones). 4-pin electronic ballasted CFL's are loads better than 2-pin.

Its a 7 watt bulb, 20degree spread and 200 lumens. That's not a very nice bulb.
A 7 watt LED bulb should be pushing over 400 lumens and a beam angle under 45degrees is pretty much useless in most cases.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that places like walmart are starting to lean towards selling energy efficient products. I just think it's dissapointing that they can't do it right the first time and leave a sour taste in the mouths of customers who are trying to save energy.

There are no standardized testings on LED lamps currently. IE: any brand can claim any lumen or efficacy rating on LED lamps and no one would/could know if it is true or not. Even some Fluorescents are the same. ALot of off beat brands are not going through testing because ratings are so common now on linears that if the companies paperwork says it's true, then so be it.

Wow, I forgot about posting this and had just checked back. Thanks for all the replies. I am "test driving" these bulbs now. Basically I ripped and replaced two of my X-10 light switches back to regular. I am using the "flood" type LOA LED's in the kitchen and they are working well so far. I got one of the other types for the dining room but didn't realize I actually needed the "small base" type for that. There are three, and I think walmart has the LOA lights for that.

I hear you guys on the reliability of these lights. However, I'm puzzled about the stuff you are saying about CFL. I was putting those in my house many years ago. I've even bought some of the new ones. Unless there is some new kind that I haven't seen yet - I don't care what anyone says the flourescent light sucks. It's just not as good as incan or LED. If there is some new one that is much better than all the rest then please tell more about it. I just bought a few small "instant on" i think 40 watt type CFLS a few months ago. I haven't tried them anywhere in the house yet. Maybe those are better. I don't know.

If you say fluorescents daown right 'suck', then I would suspect either A) you are subject to older crappy technology (already mentioned), B) you are a victim of poor brand or design choice, or C) you simply prefer the incand. and are one for traditional lighting sources.

the new ones are better, i put a 2700k 14w cfl right next to a 60w soft white incandescent and could hardly tell the difference, i am using 3500k and 4100k cfls around my house currently

:thumbsup:

 

[holiday light express]

You can get UL rated LED lights now. But you are correct, most LED bulbs are not tested by anyone, and you can say what ever you want!

 

[lilmarvin4064]

Quite correct. Based on my research so far, LED's have on 'average' maybe a 10% advantage over CFL's. When you roll in the cost....CFL's are cheaper.....right now that is. It could be a different story in 5 years.

So far I have concluded that LED's are primarily suited for low voltage applications like automotive or simple lights like night lights.

In residential applications you are probably correct. However in large scale applications, there are other factors you need to consider.

- less maintenance (no bulbs to replace)
- less heat generated (lower Air Conditioning load)
- no Haz Mat fees (no mercury)
...among others

The Pentagon is installing Cree LEDs in one of their wings as an experiment. They did they math and found the saving would be 22%, and the cost of installation would pay for itself after 4 years. (on Cree's website)

I'm currently working on an LED system for my kitchen which is an ideal place for LEDs, and the output I'm looking for just cannot be replicated practically using fluorescents.

I'm in a new house and I bought some "40w" Globe CFLs for my bathroom on sale at Home Depot for $6 (2 pack). They take FOREVER to warm up. I'm really starting to hate them. I know they aren't all that bad, but I don't want to have to "order" the good ones.

Right now I believe for the DIYer, LEDs have a few BIG advantages over fluorescents. 1.) INSTANT ON, 2.) DIMMING CONTROL 3.) DIRECTED TO WHERE YOU WANT IT (no waste)