Cheap Malibu 8308-9903-10 Pro Light Set, 10-Piece

Customer Ratings:

I bought this light set to install at our new house and I am delighted. I agree with the previous review that the quality of these lights is well worth the extra money. I've had the plastic Malibu lights and the cheaper metal ones in the past. These blow them both away.

The 75 feet of cable really isn't enough to run all of these lights, so be prepared to buy more.

I've also been swapping out the halogen bulbs with LED bulbs which allows me to add quite a few more lights to this transformer. Just be sure to get the warm LED bulbs unless you're looking for that blue tint on your house.

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If you keep an eye out, Amazon will occasionally sell these for less than the big home improvement stores.

Pros:

Look great, very understated and upscale

Can't beat the price

Transformer weighs a ton and seems to be fairly sturdy, though I don't know it's up to the task of lights all the fixtures at once

Cons:

Ground stakes are plastic and fragile

75' of 16 AWG cable is a tease for 10 light fixtures

Silly spike connections are bad idea poorly executed (these and the stakes prevent a 5-star rating)

Transformer (while quite sturdy) only puts out 11.7-11.8V at the unit (as opposed to 12V or even a bit more)

I read a lot of helpful reviews on here and wanted to help contribute my experience:

Make sure you plan everything out and lay out your wiring before doing any burying.

Do not daisy chain the lights (lay out a length of cable and attach lights every so many feet along the length).

This is a 12V AC system. That's right, it's not DC, so no, your multimeter isn't broken, just switch it to AC.

Be careful with the ground spikes, I was super careful and fortunately didn't have any issues, but I could easily see how they can break.

I bought 50 feet of 12 AWG wire to carry the current to the lights. So, I ran the 12AWG to the middle of the 6 lights and then created a "T" with the 16 AWG wire running 3 lights on each branch. That helps prevent the lights from getting dimmer as they go further out on the line (that's why you don't want to daisy-chain them).

I ran a second 12 AWG feeder and another "T" with 16 AWG to power two spot lights. Yes, you can fit two lines into the transformer.

I cut off the stupid spike connectors and used wet location wire nuts (Dryconn: they're light blue in color and filled with silicon sealant, they're probably listed here on Amazon but I got them at the local hardware store) and wrapped the connections with electrical tape. This should prevent the connections from corroding for quite some time.

Lights look great. The 20W spotlights are extremely bright (and get extremely hot) to the point that I will be changing to duller bulbs so as not to overpower my trees.

The path lights aren't overly bright, and cast a nice light downward onto the path.

I've already begun switching the bulbs to LEDS:

You want G4 tower style bulbs. I used an 18 SMD (surface mount diode, which is a type of LED) 5050 (that's the size of the individual SMD/LED) tower bulb in one of my path lights. An 18 SMD bulb has three SMD's facing straight up, and 6 columns of 3 bulbs forming a hexagonal base. This setup BARELY clears the fixture (I had to trim some burrs off of the circuit board and clip the wire prongs to get the bulb to fit) I would think a 15SMD would offer slightly more clearance.

The 15-18 5050 SMD bulb is brighter than the 10W incandescents and looks fine, just make sure you order Warm white. Mine is probably close to 3500K and even that doesn't look very warm (it looks more like an HID commercial light). The spot lights use MR11 bulbs also with a G4 base. I'm going to try different LED bulbs in those, but I thinking about a 12SMD 5050 bulb for my small tree (it's a small Japanese split-leaf maple) and a 3W MR11 LED (3 x 1W LEDs) for my large Japanese Maple.

If you go the LED route, you probably don't have to go overkill on the wiring (12AWG) like I did, but I wanted the option to use incandescent if I didn't like the look of LED. Remember, this system is AC and NOT DC, so you'll want to make sure the LED bulbs will work. (I don't know enough about LED bulbs to know if they are truly interchangeable, but it seems that some are and some are not). I got my bulbs off an auction site because Amazon didn't seem to have the best selection for such specific needs.

Finally, I'm not so sure about running all the lights at once. 4 spots are a lot, and you could easily use these for architectural lighting as they are quite bright. That said, 4 x 20W spots and 6 X 10 W path lights is 140W on a 150W transformer. That seems to be pushing it. But, use a few LEDs, and 150W becomes plenty of power.

Remember a little investment in equipment and time will yield much better results with these lights.

Good luck on adding some nice curb appeal to your house!

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Installed these lights about 1 month ago. They are stylish, well made, and worth the extra cost over the cheaper plastic sets. Easy to install and the entrance to our house is now beautifully lit at night.

Honest reviews on Malibu 8308-9903-10 Pro Light Set, 10-Piece

I installed this set around the back of my house along the pool and I have to say the lighting is beautiful. The spot lights are used on my palm trees and cast a very nice light silhouette on them. Each tree is about 18ft tall. I can repeat the good that most other reviewers have pointed out. The light fixtures are far better than the plastic sets but I have several negatives as well.

As some have mentioned, the plastic spikes are cheap that go into the ground. Also be very careful screwing the plastic to the medal fixtures as you can easily strip it out. Very annoying.

Another annoyance is Malibu's constant use of the those cheap clip type connections to the main wire. These are terrible and will erode over time. My advise is to cut them all off and butt splice them to the main wire. This will be a much better splice and be environmentally sound.

My other negative is, the power supply is nearly to small for the set. It has a rating max of 150watts. With the included lights you are using 140watts! That is way to close to the max and will trip the circuit breaker on the unit. It also means you can not add any extra light or lights to the set. I plan to deal with it for now, but may end up buying a larger power supply.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Malibu 8308-9903-10 Pro Light Set, 10-Piece

Bought this set to replace our current Malibu light set and found this set to be much more superior in quality. My only issue is that the cord was only 75 ft and would have preferred if this came with at least 100 ft.