American Lighting 043X-3-WH Hard-Wired Xenon 60-Watt Under-Cabinet Reviews

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These lights look great, they are nice and bright and you can't beat the price. The color temperature is just right, warm but not too yellow. They do get moderately hot, but so do all xenon and halogen fixtures. Installation instructions were definitely written for professionals in other words you're pretty much on your own due to lack of information, so here are some tips based on my installation...

Those hard to knock out knock-outs: The hole covers are held on by four little nubs which are supposed to break off when you try to punch them out, but (of course) they don't. If you have a dremel, fit it with a metal burnishing bit or a tiny grinding stone and carefully grind down two adjacent nubs. You now should be able to punch the hole partly out enough so you can work it back and forth until it comes off. As an alternative, get the linking cable, plug one end into the fixture, and cut the connector off the other end so the wires can be spliced onto a plug or into an electrical box. That way you don't have to bother with the knock-outs at all.

The clearance is too narrow for the clamp connector nut to spin? Okay, do it backwards. With your finger(s), hold the nut over the hole on the inside of the fixture. Next put the threaded end of clamp connector through the hole, into the nut, and turn the connector instead of trying to turn the nut. When tight, the two screw heads on the clamp should be facing up so that the fixture will mount against a flat surface. If the screw heads don't face up, unscrew the clamp, take out the nut and turn it 1/6th of a turn and try again until the screw heads are almost facing up when hand tight. You might have to do this a few times till you find the right spot. Once you do, finish tightening by inserting a screw driver, hole punch, or some sort of metal rod into the hole on the bottom of the clamp connector and twist the connector home.

Easy? No. But it fixes the problems. Hope you found this useful!

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The pros:

*The xenon light is a very natural, bright light. I like the way it illuminates our counter

*These lights are very thin (much thinner than the fluorescents that we replaced) and don't really show at all underneath the cabinets

*The price

The cons:

*These lights are manufactured such that if you use the knock outs to connect the electrical wiring through the back of the fixture (rather than the top), the gasket that holds the wires in the fixture won't work there isn't enough space inside the fixture to be able to spin the lock nut. As a result, the wires go into the fixture but are not firmly connected. If you do a good job of tacking them to the bottom of the cabinet, this isn't too much of a problem.

*The lights get quite hot if they are left on for an extended period. Our dishes wind up warm in the cabinet above. Again, not a problem so long as you don't keep chocolate or wax in your cabinets.

*There isn't a ton of space inside the fixture (due to the slim design). As a result, there isn't a lot of wiggle room to tuck any additional wiring into the fixture (in the event that you need to add pigtails to make the connections long enough).

At the end of the day, the lights look pretty good and work well. I'm satisfied with them, but am bothered that I paid good money for fixtures that have a clear design flaw.

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Ordered four of these for my kitchen. Three arrived with cracks in the plastic end cap(s) because of poor packing by Amazon. Replacements arrived within 10 days. Installation was a breeze. Slim dimensions so they don't stick out from under the cabinet. When illuminated the fixture gets very warm, so you would not want to put this where you may touch it. Very quiet (no fluorescent ballast humming). Lighting is very even. Regardless of whether you purchase this, you probably want a fixture with a high (work) and low (dim) setting like this one has. Used the American Lighting Linking Cable to connect three of the four lights -worked perfect!

Honest reviews on American Lighting 043X-3-WH Hard-Wired Xenon 60-Watt Under-Cabinet

As a contractor, I have installed these lights in 6 different kitchens and have always been pleased with them. They're thin enough that they always disappear under the cabinets. I usually run wiring as needed to each cabinet, then connect them all to one dimmer switch. Even though each light has it's own high/lo switch, my customers have always liked the idea to be able to control them all on one dimmer. The different sizes they come in work with any cabinet layout. The only complaint I have are the knock-out plugs(round discs that have to be removed to run wiring to each light) on them are not really"knock outs". Its a real pain in the *** to get the knockouts out. After installing my first few(and destroying one) I learned the only way to get them out involves drilling small holes around each knock-out(while being very careful not to drill into any wiring components), then using pliers to try to pry them out. I really wish they could punch out the metal at the factory properly, so that it wouldn't take ten minutes to remove something that should take 5 seconds.

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We installed these xenon lights in our kitchen rehab six months ago. Despite claims that the bulbs would last 80,000 hours, they are already burning out-after only about 1,000 hours of use. With replacement bulbs costing $3 apiece, these lights are proving far more expensive to operate than we hoped. The company that manufactured the undercabinet lights refused to replace these overrated bulbs.