List Price: $49.99
Sale Price: $25.00
Today's Bonus: 50% Off
Overall, these are a very good product, and at this price a great value. I replaced T5 fluorescent lights both above and below cabinets in my home office, using these LED's and driver/transformers from Eversale.
Some things to note:
* While they don't produce as many lumens per foot as the fluorescents, they are effectively at least as bright. Since fluorescent tubes radiate 360 degrees, much of their light is wasted shining on the fixture. LED's radiate in an arc of about 120 degrees perfect for washing a wall or desktop with light.
* The very yellow color in some of the pictures of an illuminated roll is actually due to the caramel color of the tape itself. The light is much whiter when it's unrolled and not shining through the tape. A nice warm, but not overly yellow or green color.
* These are "double density" twice as many LED's per foot as the more usual 300 LED strips. Gives you more light, but the downside is the connectors made for such strips don't work, since the LED's are spaced too closely together. So if you must go around a corner etc., you're stuck with soldering wires to connect the pieces a task that requires skill and a steady hand. If you don't need as much light, might be a good tradeoff to buy the 300 LED's per 5 meters version, which has enough space to accept jumpers with pre-installed connectors. Haven't tried these; they get mixed reviews.
* Re soldering: The solder pads are covered with a protective material that must be scraped off before they will "wet".
* Re polarity: There are lots of negative reviews for LED strip connectors (again, these don't work on this product as discussed above,) complaining about the fact that sometimes the positive/negative polarity is "wrong". Think about it: If when standing beside the strip, positive is away from you and negative is nearer you, then the left end of the strip will have positive on the left, and the right end will have positive on the right. Not the connector's fault, just simple geometry. Same applies of course if you solder wires rather than use a connector.
* If you do need to create a jumper to connect two pieces, turn a corner, etc. 20 gauge stranded wire (Radio Shack) is about the biggest you can actually solder to the tiny little pads. I've computed the voltage drop for this wire, and it's a few tens of millivolts for a several-foot run, so no worse than the tape itself.
* There are many Chinese companies that make combination aluminum track and polycarbonate covers for LED strip lights. I thought these would be expensive, and looked hard for an all-plastic solution. When I actually priced them though, the aluminum track was cheaper per foot than the plastic cover! Haven't pulled the trigger on this yet my lights are affixed with masking tape so far. Please comment on this if you've used any of the mounting systems.
Hope this is helpful!
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I have wanted to do an under cabinet lighting system in my kitchen for years, but the cost of buying so many puck lights or light bars always killed the idea. After seeing these I was hopeful it would be a quick fix to get what my wife has been bugging me for.The install took less than a half an hour and my wife absolutely loves them. I am looking at every lighting project differently now because this option is so simple and highly cost effective.
Major Kudos to the manufacturer and retailer.
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