Best TORCHSTAR LED MR16 6000K Daylight Spotlight 12V 4W (330 Lumen - 50 Deals

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $19.89
Sale Price: $5.44
Today's Bonus: 73% Off

These are good lamps. I used these to replace twelve 50W halogens lamps, each in a "Paradise GL22720BK Cast-Aluminum" type fixture, and they have been tied to trees all summer in Virginia's humidity. They survived the June 29th Durachio even though five large trees and one SUV didn't. They survived a few 105'F nights without trouble. I haven't had them up over the winter yet, but based on the components inside, I expect they will survive without problems. If you are looking for 12V yard light lamps, I highly recommend these.

CONS:

1) Out of 24 that I purchased, two had bad pins. When I plugged them into a new socket, the pins pushed inside the base. On the upside, Jessica sent me a replacement right away when time I got a bad one. I took one bad lamp apart and found that the pins had what is called "cold solder joints" where they attach to the printed circuit board. Jessica told me she would talk to the factory and see if they could prevent this problem. I am just about to order another six, and hope they have fixed that issue since then. Be warned to be a little gentle with the pins. Halogens have the pins molded in glass and so are much stronger.

2) These are not as bright as the premium 50W halogens. In the yard, they seem to be comparable to about a 35W halogen. But, they use 1/12 of the power to make 2/3 as much light. I measured the light output with a borrowed meter, and in the fixture they measured 395 lumen over a 60 degree beam spread. I do not know how accurate the meter was, but I can tell you these were brighter than some supposedly 9W 550 lumen lamps. When tied to trees about 12' above the ground, 60 feet away they provide enough light to read a beer can's ingredients label. It takes six in a circle around the tree to cover a 120 foot circle of yard. I also like these "4W Cool-White" lamps much better than the "4W Warm-White" for the yard (and inside the house on a battery for a week after the storm).

3) These are not Amazon Prime. I wish they would offer a six pack. The per lamp shipping price gets big if you are replacing all your 50W halogens, or are making a 360 degree yard light.

PROS: Everything else.

Now I have a drawer full of 50W halogen MR16s, and a smaller electric bill. These are much safer because they are cool to touch. I was always worried that the halogens might start a fire when covered with leaves in the fall. And since they only use 1/12 the amps of the halogens, I can use much cheaper 16 gauge wire to hook them up to the transformer.

Using a digital infrared thermometer, the hottest spot I measured on the lamp was 122'F with 78'F ambient while inside a 50W MR16 lawn fixture. Nice. These should last a long time. Heat is an LED's worst enemy.

TECHNICAL INFO: (AND DIMMING)

After disassembling the one with bad pins, I was even more impressed. The reflector is a very nice piece of metal work as are the screw in bottom insulator and the molded plastic lens. There was also an appropriate layer of thermal glue between the LED module and the reflector/heat sink.

The circuit board contains a full bridge rectifier (The lamps will run on 12V AC or 12V DC) and a Texas Instruments MC33063 Boost/Buck Regulator with a good quality 25V capacitor.

The lamps can be dimmed. The boost-buck regulator does a good job of keeping the lamp bright down to about 8VDC. (this is important if you have long wires or even worse, small wires running to the lamps. Below that, the regulator starts to sag until it reaches 4V which is the lower limit on the regulator chip. Under that, the brightness falls off fast. Using an Amazon "LED Dimmer with Remote Control," the brightness difference was negligible between 100%, 75% and 50%. 25% was a nice step down from the 100%. Then the steps from 10% down to 0% were very appealing steps. This is the PERFECT scenario for yard lights; since they are low power and less sensitive to the I2R power wire voltage loss, you can use cheaper smaller gauge wire (i.e. use 16 gauge for 250 foot run to 12 lamps) without loosing any brightness, but an appropriate dimmer will still give you nice ambiance effects (or power saving when driven by a motion detectors.)

These are the voltage and current readings for a single lamp that I measured while using the dimmer:

0% 0.2V 0.01A 0.00W

1% 0.8V 0.06A 0.05W

2% 1.5V 0.11A 0.17W

3% 2.2V 0.14A 0.31W

4% 2.8V 0.17A 0.48W

5% 3.2V 0.19A 0.61W

6% 3.6V 0.21A 0.76W

7% 4.0V 0.23A 0.92W

8% 4.3V 0.24A 1.03W

9% 4.5V 0.25A 1.13W

10% 4.8V 0.26A 1.25W

25% 6.0V 0.33A 1.98W

50% 8.4V 0.37A 3.11W

75% 10.2V 0.32A 3.26W

100% 13.4V 0.29A 3.89W

BUG MULCHER:

The cool white lamps do not attract as many bugs as the halogens, but they still attract bugs. I made a tree hanging fixture with six of these lamps in a circle around a "Attwood Quiet Blower (White, 4-Inch)" with a net hanging on the blower's air out end. It works great! No more bugs on the house doors or windows. Better than a bug zapper.

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I bought 4 of these 4 watt bulbs, and frankly, didn't expect too much for $4.99..I was totally wrong. The bulbs are incredibly bright and robustly built. I also bought 2 of the "other brand" bulbs for $14.99 to compare the two bulbs and see if an additional $10 got you anything more. ...The bulbs are identical. Totally no discernable difference in brightness. FYI, the $4.99 bulbs draw about .45 amps.. The higher priced bulbs draw a little less current, about .38 amps.

Best Deals for TORCHSTAR LED MR16 6000K Daylight Spotlight 12V 4W (330 Lumen - 50

I bought these to replace existing 20W Halogen 12V lights. These are MUCH brighter and use less than 1/4 of the power of the equivalent halogen which means that I was able to use 4 times as many lights on the same transformer.

They run very cool and are not a potential fire hazard like halogen. I am using them in low voltage landscaping systems where the Bright White LED light makes for very spectacular lighting effects. At the $4.99 they are now inexpensive enough for me to replace all my halogens which i plan to do in the next few weeks.

Great Product.

Honest reviews on TORCHSTAR LED MR16 6000K Daylight Spotlight 12V 4W (330 Lumen - 50

I ordered two of these. The first one failed after a day, and the second one failed after a few months. For the price, and the difficult and expensive shipping options, for these, it is a really poor deal. I can't at all understand why there are so many good reviews, maybe this is one of the cases of a plethora of fake positive reviews. I would not buy these again, even as much as I like the idea of LED MR16 bulbs.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for TORCHSTAR LED MR16 6000K Daylight Spotlight 12V 4W (330 Lumen - 50

Second time I've ordered Torchstar LED lights. The first set of six lasted almost 5 weeks, before they all malfunctioned. This order lasted less than 24 hours. I ordered as set of the CREE LED lights at the same time, and not one single CREE build has malfunctioned.

Do not waste your time with Torchstar product, you will only get torched!.