24 pcs Halogen JC Type Light Bulb G4 Base 12V 20W Watt Review

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List Price: $23.92
Sale Price: $9.50
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I thought this price was too good to be true and so far it looks like they were too cheap. Bulbs are lasting a couple of weeks and blow.

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I purchased 24 of these in March 2011. In my personal experience, I now expect no more than 735 hours of usage per bulb.

Here are the details used to make that bulb life estimate: I have used them exclusively in a range hood with four light sockets and of the 24 originally purchased, I have eight unused bulbs left. These are the correct bulb type for the fixture as specified in the manual. The bulbs are protected behind glass. Since these are halogen bulbs, I have always used fresh, plastic, food handling gloves to handle them, and these gloves have no powder or residues to contaminate the bulbs. All bulbs have gone directly from package, to glove, to fixture.

Since I've used 16 bulbs in four fixtures in 14 months, that means I've used four bulbs per fixture in 14 months. This works out to a single lasts 3.5 months, on average, or 105 days. The bulbs are used daily, about eight hours per day, 2 hours in the morning (breakfast prep) and maybe 5 hours in the evening (dinner prep & clean up). These hourly estimates tend to be higher than what I know is typical (1.5 + 3 hours), so I am being very generous on this estimate. Also, I have not changed burned out bulbs immediately, as they burn out often and replacing them is a bit of a pain. Thus, I am counting hours of burn in sockets where the bulbs were burned out. I typically have let two bulbs burn out before changing them and once, even let all four go out before changing. Once, I let all four bulbs go out before changing and putting in four new fresh bulbs at once made them all "in sync". Consequently, once the first one goes out, a second follows within a week or less.

I did have at least one bulb burn out in less than two weeks, but the rest seem to have about the same lifetime. (e.g., no single fixture is being serviced more or less than the other three).

For comparison, the range hood's original bulbs lasted from 18-26 months as the hood was new in January '09 and the last bulb burning out sometime soon after March '11. Color temperature of these cheap bulbs is what I expected from halogen. Brightness may have been just a tad dimmer than the original bulbs, but not so much as to have me regret the choosing the cheap alternative.

As for value, including shipping, I paid about $0.54/bulb. It costs me about $0.66 to run a bulb 735 hours. Hard to argue that isn't some money saved compared to $6/bulb alternatives, but convenience-wise, these bulbs, in combination with the range hood fixtures, are a pain to deal with. If the bulbs had not eventually been "synced up" and changed all at once, I'd be changing a single bulb about every 26 days. Since it seems a bulb will die within a week of another bulb, I now wait for two to die, then change them, expecting to do the other two soon after that. This has become annoying enough for me to decide to document my experience in this review and has prompted me to look into an LED solution, mainly to avoid having to replace the bulbs so often, and to reduce the head-level heat generated by the halogens.

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Cheap and short life as all these rubbish lamps from China!

Get a 3.5W G4 LED 12V light instead 18 SMD (18 Surface-Mount-Diodes) at 3.5W are equivalent to a 20W JC halogen I found

I know these are cheap and the LEDs far more pricey, but eventually I am fed up spending time replacing them so frequently... So I'll have one less cup of Starbucks this week!

Honest reviews on 24 pcs Halogen JC Type Light Bulb G4 Base 12V 20W Watt

I have several rental properties with low voltage spot lights that use this bulb so I've gone through plenty of these bulbs. I can say that more than half of these don't last the prescribed duration. Many burn out within a week or so. Weird how some last and some don't...

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I heard a lot of bad reviews about this type of bulb, but it was easy to change (I used rubber gloves as I am aware that you should not touch halogen lamps with any part of your skin) and the first one I replaced has worked. It's only been in a few weeks, so I'll have to wait to determine how long they last. I'm happy so far.