The definitive low-energy GU10 lighting thread

[cervezaman]

It's also worth pointing out that not all 50w halogens are equal. Some poor quality ones that we had tested by our testing lab struggled to produce 350 lumens. So, for some people, swapping to a 400 lumen LED GU10 may actually produce more light.

[RammyMP]

NormalWisdom said:

E36GUY said:

Grumpy old git said:

I have the same lights and I have to say I agree they seem brighter than the previous 50w halogens I had, maybe it's because it's a whiter light than the halogens.

I've no doubt that technically you may well be correct, but they certainly seem a lot brighter to my eyes so I can understand where monthefish is coming from.

This is my point exactly Grumpy. LED is a far more intense light source so looks brighter on appearences but if you stick a LUX meter 1500mm below you will see the difference. It's the same way that cool white looks brighter than warm white. There may only be 20 lumens difference but that isn't enough for the human eye to detect thus its simply an optical illusion

I too have just bought these GU10s from Screwfix - Had a 6-bulb affair in the kitchen which was costing dearly. On first look the LEDs certainly 'appear' brighter from inside the kitchen (though it is marginal). When I look at the kitchen lighting from outside however it is noticably dimmer so I would suggest Physics wins the day.

I bought some this morning for the outside lights. I'm waiting for it to go dark to try them!

[stuart313]

I don't think LED lights have the same throw or travel of light. You could buy a cheap torch with a krypton? bulb in and it would light up the clouds, yet an LED torch that looked super bright when using it for close up stuff would not even light up the far gable wall in a loft.

[RammyMP]

RammyMP said:

NormalWisdom said:

E36GUY said:

Grumpy old git said:

I have the same lights and I have to say I agree they seem brighter than the previous 50w halogens I had, maybe it's because it's a whiter light than the halogens.

I've no doubt that technically you may well be correct, but they certainly seem a lot brighter to my eyes so I can understand where monthefish is coming from.

This is my point exactly Grumpy. LED is a far more intense light source so looks brighter on appearences but if you stick a LUX meter 1500mm below you will see the difference. It's the same way that cool white looks brighter than warm white. There may only be 20 lumens difference but that isn't enough for the human eye to detect thus its simply an optical illusion

I too have just bought these GU10s from Screwfix - Had a 6-bulb affair in the kitchen which was costing dearly. On first look the LEDs certainly 'appear' brighter from inside the kitchen (though it is marginal). When I look at the kitchen lighting from outside however it is noticably dimmer so I would suggest Physics wins the day.

I bought some this morning for the outside lights. I'm waiting for it to go dark to try them!

Yup, pleased with them. Seem to give off similar light to the old 50w bulbs.

[asimpleusername]

E36GUY said:

As I said, a high CRI just comes from a red base LED and is usually more expensive. In itself, it's not an indicator of quality. As the specialists they claim to be they should know 345lumen is not a 50W replacement so really, the product isn't anything special.

I would also note that that website you link is a trading name of another limited company which has a current net worth of -£22000 and a quick search of the Patent office shows they hold no patent on the tech they use. It may well be patented but not by them! They have no current stock and last accounts show creditors due within one year as only £7000. So, they are either cash rich and pay for everything up front (unlikely) or they are not a manufacturer at all. You should see the amount we spend on manufacturing and we're still a small outfit relative to the industry.

I am the founder of the company E36GUY is 'discussing' in the post above. A customer of mine brought my attention to these comments and i have registered as i would like a right of reply. Firstly i find these comments to be completely unprofessional and disingenuous. What you are trying to do is persuade people to not buy a something from a particular company because of your interpretation of some limited financial information you have found and instead trying to divert people to your own company. Unethical in the extreme. I've worked in the LED Lighting industry for over a decade and i've never seen such unprofessional and disrespectful behaviour like this before.

We do not have any patents on any products, but as a company we are heavily involved in the development of products with our manufacturing partners. If the company you a buying a product from does not hold the patent to that product and didn't fully develop the product themselves does that mean that product can't be a high quality product? Of course it doesn't, so why are suggesting it is?

There are currently two LED Spotlight on the market that do genuinely replace a 50w halogen. One is the product already mentioned in this thread and the other is a product by a company called Soraa (who's owner, Shuji Nakamaura, won the noble peace prize for physics for his work on LED lighting). Both products have identical lumens of 345, identical CRI values of 95 and identical colour temperatures of 2700k. Yet here you are claiming 345 lumens is not enough to replace a 50w halogen? With the correct combination of colour temperature and CRI of 95+, 345 lumens is optimum for replacing a 50w halogen. So yes, i think the products is quite special and i think your comments are it's lumen output and ability to replace a 50w halogen are highly inaccurate.

We offer customers complete peace of mind over any purchase with a 365 day returns policy on all orders (we are the only LED Lighting company in the world to offer a 1 years returns policy), so that if we make any claims about our products that are not true customers can get their money back up to a year from purchase. It also gives customers an opportunity to 'live' with the products in their homes for a period of time to see if they are right for them. Everyones eyes see light differently and lighting is such a personal thing that i think it's essential customers can 'try before committing to buy' and have the option to try different colour temperatures. Customers also get the opportunity to compare our products with all competitor products. Again, something i think that is vital when you are saying your product is high quality.

We are also a partner of Premium Light, an initiative led in the UK by the Energy Saving Trust and made up of 12 European organisations all with expertise in energy efficiency. To be a partner of Premium light you must volunteer your products for independent testing at the University of Toulouse so that they can independently test products for manufacturer claims and quality. My company has had our products featured in the national press and I will also be appearing in the Energy Saving Trusts end of year report, soon to be published. Our products have been fully tested by companies such as Rako - our 7w LED Spot is the most compatible product they have ever tested for use with their high tech home automation systems.

My company is currently listed No.2 out of 97 companies listed on the independent review site Truspilot, in the lighting section, with 99% of reviews being 5 out of 5, and one at 4 out of 5.

When consumers have been using halogen and incandescent lamps that have a CRI of 100 out of 100, why is it suddenly acceptable to reduce the quality of light by 20% to 80? Of course lighting is subjective but quality of light and the ability for that light to render colour properly is vital to lighting. Sure LED's offer energy savings and longevity but why settle for a regressions in terms of quality of light? You don't need to, you just need to buy LED products that have a minimum CRI of 95 - which as i said, two companies are producing high quality products that cannot be told apart from the halogens and incandescents they are replacing. This is how LED Lighting should be.

Some people do not need or want elaborate lighting systems in their home, some people just want to take a 50w halogen out, put an LED in and for it to work in the same exact way with the same quality of light yet benefit from energy savings and longevity.

I don't know if i have broken any rules by posting this, but it is purely a response to some unfair derogatory and inaccurate comments about my company and products that i found insulting by a person who's motivation is clearly to just promote himself and his products on this forum.

I hope next time you will think twice before posting such comments and concentrate on your own business.

Regards
Chris

PS - I'd be more than happy to offer a free trial to a few forum members to highlight the quality of the products and to prove the derogatory comments are indeed false. If this breaks forum rules please feel free to remove this offer.

Edited by asimpleusername on Tuesday 17th March 11:24

Edited by asimpleusername on Tuesday 17th March 11:25

Edited by asimpleusername on Tuesday 17th March 11:29

Edited by asimpleusername on Tuesday 17th March 11:29

[C0ffin D0dger]

^^^ Seems reasonable to me.

Must say I don't know much about E36Guy but he is quick to put down other products in favour of these ZEP-1 fittings. I'm sure they're good but this thread is about a GU10 replacement not the whole fitting. I have around 40 GU10s at various locations around my house, currently all halogen, certainly not going to be replacing that lot with new fittings any time soon but if I can source a cost effective LED replacement that provides a decent quality light then I'm all ears. At the moment £10-15 per bulb becomes cost prohibitive but I suspect that exactly as happened with CFLs the price will come down year on year.

[asimpleusername]

This image shows the effect the drop in CRI from high 90's to around 80 has on the objects the lamp illuminates.



post images

[monthefish]

E36GUY said:

monthefish said:

I appreciate that you are the (self-styled?) PH expert on lighting, but you are wrong in this instance.
They are brighter. You can come to my house and see for yourself if you like.

I'm not. It's simple physics Mon.

The equivalent of what you are saying is that [after car B has just won the race]
"Car B can't have just won the race, as it has less torque/power, and more weight than car A".


I'm not commenting on the brightness (apparent or otherwise) of the bulb (as they are in IP rated fittings are are recessed, and so you don't really see the bulbs themselves). The room itself is definitely brighter/lighter.

If you read the other reviews of these bulbs - all entirely independent of me/this thread - they've reached the same conclusion, even if your physics suggests otherwise.

p.s. I've just bought more of these bulbs.

[asimpleusername]

If anyone is looking for an LED downlight that comes with a 7 year warranty and 80 CRI is acceptable, then i highly recommend this product - http://www.collingwoodlighting.com/en/products/dow...
You can see on the right hand side the projects where the products have been used and it's a super product. As is the Halers H2 Pro

I don't sell either of these products but we have used them on projects in the past where downlights have been specified and yet to have a single with issue with either product.

[garycat]

C0ffin D0dger said:

^^^ Seems reasonable to me.

Must say I don't know much about E36Guy but he is quick to put down other products in favour of these ZEP-1 fittings. I'm sure they're good but this thread is about a GU10 replacement not the whole fitting. I have around 40 GU10s at various locations around my house, currently all halogen, certainly not going to be replacing that lot with new fittings any time soon but if I can source a cost effective LED replacement that provides a decent quality light then I'm all ears. At the moment £10-15 per bulb becomes cost prohibitive but I suspect that exactly as happened with CFLs the price will come down year on year.

Where do you buy at £10-£15 per bulb? Screwfix ones like these work out at £3.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-gu10-led-lamp-250lm-...

[asimpleusername]

garycat said:

Where do you buy at £10-£15 per bulb? Screwfix ones like these work out at £3.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-gu10-led-lamp-250lm-...

High CRI LED Lighting costs a considerable amount more. Lighting is personal and subjective, what works for one person doesn't work for another. But if you compare the stats of the screwfix lamp you have linked to to a 50w halogen, the screwfix lamp has the wrong colour temp, the wrong lumens, doesn't even state a CRI figure (which is likely to be around 80) and as far as i can tell it's not dimmable. But if the products works for you then who cares?

A genuine 50w replacement LED spot is dimmable, has Colour temp of 2700k, at least 95 CRI and about 350 lumens.

[E36GUY]

C0ffin D0dger said:

^^^ Seems reasonable to me.

Must say I don't know much about E36Guy but he is quick to put down other products in favour of these ZEP-1 fittings. I'm sure they're good but this thread is about a GU10 replacement not the whole fitting. I have around 40 GU10s at various locations around my house, currently all halogen, certainly not going to be replacing that lot with new fittings any time soon but if I can source a cost effective LED replacement that provides a decent quality light then I'm all ears. At the moment £10-15 per bulb becomes cost prohibitive but I suspect that exactly as happened with CFLs the price will come down year on year.

Not quite. Other very good down lights and LED products are most certainly available. I've actually not once pushed our product forward as that would be breaking PH rules. I only began involvement here as a Pher in the industry with knowledge to share and to point out the shortfalls in the cheaper end of themarket who make bold claims about performance that are simply not true or possible and, to share information on what to look out for and how the tech works. For the time being, proper fittings are better than retrofits end of story but I have no doubt the latter will catch up in due course of time.

[E36GUY]

To asimpleusername.

Your right to reply is absolutely valid. I only posted information that was freely available on the web following a search. If it's inaccurate then you have my apologies however I must point out that in your own words,

asimpleusername said:

We do not have any patents on any products.

But your website does say....

"Our Advanced Patented Technology delivers market-leading Colour Rendering Index around 95 (CRI)"

So if you don't hold any patents as your website would make one believe, whose LED are you using or have you genuinely invented something new as per the claims in the Daily Mail article below?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-279...

I'd like to call custard on this.

Furthermore:

asimpleusername said:

With the correct combination of colour temperature and CRI of 95+, 345 lumens is optimum for replacing a 50w halogen. So yes, i think the products is quite special and i think your comments are it's lumen output and ability to replace a 50w halogen are highly inaccurate.

How so exactly? To replace a 50W GU10 halogen which depending on the lamp quality will be 450-600 lumens (6-700 for a 50W LV MR16 version). Quite clearly, 345 lumens is nowhere near and the lux level at given distance will be markedly lower. I concede that a CRI of 95 is indeed outstanding however, a higher CRI has a detrimental affect on lumen output thus Lux levels. If we were to take two equal specification lamps - one of 80 and one of 95, we would find that the 95 CRI model will have a lower lumen level than the 80. To truly reaplce a 50W we'd be looking for a high CRI AND equivalent lumen count, not one or the other.

To measure the CRI, are you measuring up to R8 or R15?

Edited by E36GUY on Thursday 19th March 16:33

[jonmac73]

garycat said:

C0ffin D0dger said:

^^^ Seems reasonable to me.

Must say I don't know much about E36Guy but he is quick to put down other products in favour of these ZEP-1 fittings. I'm sure they're good but this thread is about a GU10 replacement not the whole fitting. I have around 40 GU10s at various locations around my house, currently all halogen, certainly not going to be replacing that lot with new fittings any time soon but if I can source a cost effective LED replacement that provides a decent quality light then I'm all ears. At the moment £10-15 per bulb becomes cost prohibitive but I suspect that exactly as happened with CFLs the price will come down year on year.

Where do you buy at £10-£15 per bulb? Screwfix ones like these work out at £3.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-gu10-led-lamp-250lm-...

I'm not about to query any of the specs being quoted in this thread.
But I have tried these Screwfix LAP bulbs (albeit the dimmable version) when there was a free coupon, so effectively the same price as I was going to pay for 5x Halogens.
Have to say am very impressed. Light appeared brighter IRL, very quick to warm up to full brightness. Admittedly this is in a small kitchen with 4 x spotlight bar, but easily the same if not better brightness than halogen.
I'm in same boat as above, need approx. 20 to replace rest of ceiling lights (that aren't on all time in Summer) so will look out for similar deals and stock up gradually.
Plus I still have 4 spare Halogens ..... LOL

[Gazzab]

I have bought a few lights (maybe 40 or 50) from ecoled and am really pleased with them. Important to spend time working out exact ceiling positions and not let the electrician decide for you. I did buy some LR16 bulbs from led hut but they burnt out and were put in the bin within a week. The light quality wasn't great. I can't really explain why but the room felt a little blurred with the 'cheap' led's and was much better with halogens back in the fittings.
I'd always buy an led unit and not just bulbs based on my experiences.
I know a lot of people who have just changed the bulbs in their houses, primarily driven by electricity savings. I've yet to see one that I'd be happy with. The light quality is just a bit strange.

[garycat]

asimpleusername said:

garycat said:

Where do you buy at £10-£15 per bulb? Screwfix ones like these work out at £3.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-gu10-led-lamp-250lm-...

High CRI LED Lighting costs a considerable amount more. Lighting is personal and subjective, what works for one person doesn't work for another. But if you compare the stats of the screwfix lamp you have linked to to a 50w halogen, the screwfix lamp has the wrong colour temp, the wrong lumens, doesn't even state a CRI figure (which is likely to be around 80) and as far as i can tell it's not dimmable. But if the products works for you then who cares?

A genuine 50w replacement LED spot is dimmable, has Colour temp of 2700k, at least 95 CRI and about 350 lumens.

Exactly - who cares indeed. 90% of consumers don't care about CRIs equivalent lumens, colour temps etc. They just want good value products that will save on their leccy bill. The screwfix bulb has 113 5-star ratings and thats good enough for most buyers.

[RossP]

Really happy with my screw fix LEDs! Can't get to grips with all the jargon spouted on this thread!

[Murph7355]

garycat said:

Exactly - who cares indeed. 90% of consumers don't care about CRIs equivalent lumens, colour temps etc. They just want good value products that will save on their leccy bill. The screwfix bulb has 113 5-star ratings and thats good enough for most buyers.

It depends where you're using them, but most people will care about these things without even knowing about it IMO.

You do get used to higher colour temps but in things like bedrooms and living rooms they really make a house feel "warm" rather than like an office/waiting room. And that's important to most people I suspect.

In bathrooms, kitchens and passage ways it's less of a problem I suspect.

[rich83]

Just picked up a batch of ECOLED zep1s.... I think they are actually a bit too bright.. its thats possible!! Good job they are on dimmers.

[asimpleusername]

E36GUY said:

How so exactly? To replace a 50W GU10 halogen which depending on the lamp quality will be 450-600 lumens (6-700 for a 50W LV MR16 version). Quite clearly, 345 lumens is nowhere near and the lux level at given distance will be markedly lower. I concede that a CRI of 95 is indeed outstanding however, a higher CRI has a detrimental affect on lumen output thus Lux levels. If we were to take two equal specification lamps - one of 80 and one of 95, we would find that the 95 CRI model will have a lower lumen level than the 80. To truly reaplce a 50W we'd be looking for a high CRI AND equivalent lumen count, not one or the other.

To measure the CRI, are you measuring up to R8 or R15?

Edited by E36GUY on Thursday 19th March 16:33

Yes, you used financial information about my company you found by 'googling' to try and discourage people from buying anything from my company. That's how low you stooped and I will not allow myself to get involved with this level of immature nonsense from a person who spends, as others have pointed out, a lot of their time slagging off competitors and their products than simply concentrating on your own products. Please note I have not and will not comment on your qualifications, the company you work for or the products you sell.

You are indeed right, the word 'our' is incorrect and should be removed, we do not hold the patent but tats not to say we were not involved in the development of the technology that has been patented.

My decades worth of research into what is needed for an LED spot to genuinely replace a 50w halogen are completely in line with a Nobel peace prize winner who's research is infinitely more thorough and credible than mine. I suggest you read his many papers on the subject - I think you could learn a lot, I certainly did.

You also clearly have no understanding of how the media works. There are plenty of inaccurate quotes and information in that article that did not come from me or my company. The piece in the Telegraph was much more accurate.

In terms of CRI, we measure up to R15 but I'm afraid I have no interest in getting into a discussion with you, I simply don't have the inclination. I will state though that our products will soon be tested and rated on the CQS too, which when published will give you all the information you apparently require. As previously stated we have all our products independently tested for quality and claims and we hope soon to start having our products LIA and Energy Saving Trust verified.

I now reserve the right to not engage with you any further and if you continue to make offensive and false comments about me or my company then I will take the necessary action, but I genuinely hope this nonsense ends right now.

Chris Stimson

Edited by asimpleusername on Wednesday 25th March 11:03

Edited by asimpleusername on Wednesday 25th March 11:04