@Euniceandrich Specs in the AMZ listing say indoor. These look identical to some I picked up from Ollie’s. Those are definitely not waterproof or weatherproof.
@Fzero 6K lumens at Ollie’s for $17 when I was last there. Harbor Freight has a version that they rate at 8K lumens for $28. This is a better deal than either of those.
Pro tip: keep LED lights a fair bit away from garage door openers. They interfere with their radio reception. My sister learned this the hard way after she installed LED bulbs directly in the garage door opener. This one might be fine in a fixture that’s separate from the opener though.
@bugger@GLaDOS whether or not a particular light interferes with RF depends on the type and quality of the current limiting electronics, if any.
Low quality ones that limit the current using only a resistor put out no RF, but the have an annoying flicker. A light built this way will only operate at a single voltage.
High quality ones that use a well designed electronic current limit circuit will produce an insignificant amount of RF assuming the circuit is built as designed with long life parts. These are often rated to operate between 100 and 240 volts.
Low quality ones that use a cost reduced design or parts that don’t meet specifications are the ones that produce excessive RF. The factory can save money by using substandard parts in the RF suppression circuit, or omitting them entirely. The marketing specifications are often just a fantasy.
Note that the same was true of compact fluorescent bulbs.
I’ve seen these in 8000 and 10000 lumens so 5500 seems a little wimpy. On the other hand Costco is selling the 8000 lumen ones for nearly twice as much so these aren’t necessarily at bad value.
@MarkML Same here. And their website has the claim that they’ve been around for 110 years. Utter, complete, unadulterated, freshly excreted feedlot BS.
@detailer@werehatrack Right you are. B&H went belly up decades ago. B+H is (supposedly paying someone for the privilege of) slapping their good name on cheap communist Chinese crap.
@detailer Bell & Howell as a corporate entity technically never went entirely out of existence; the assets (such as they were) including the name were sold off as part of the bankruptcy process, and the buyer has maintained the name for production of industrial-quality goods, they just aren’t related to the original product lines. But the licensees have zero of the engineering integrity of the current or former companies. It’s very similar to how Kawasaki (in the US) let their name be licensed for a line of crappy tools and car radios (among other things) back in the '90s. In this case, the current B&H does not seem to feel that their industrial brand is threatened by having a very similar name applied to consumer-retail products that bring the name no credit at all.
@detailer@werehatrack I personally feel the soiled brand equity is the issue at stake. Companies bought up the trademark just to slap it onto whatever product they could in hopes to catch an older buyer that remembers the name.
I’ll still remember Bell + Howell for cameras and projectors decades ago, not for its ASOTV-grade products of the last decade.
@werehatrack
Smith & Wesson started doing similar name licensing on low-quality goods beginning back around the late 90s. It used to be a name you could trust to be solid, but now if it isn’t their handcuffs or pistols, it’s probably cut-rate Chinese imports of very dubious quality. And even a few of their handgun models have been lousy in the past 25 years. Supposedly they’ve tightened up the quality control on firearms recently, but I guess time will tell. But I’d never buy a “S&W” knife.
…unless you like 5000K+ lighting, but I’ll admit that even for those of us who prefer that color temp, these are lacking in diffusers, and are therefore painful to have in your field of view.
A high CRI by itself does not imply a good rendition of color, because the reference itself may have an imbalanced SPD if it has an extreme color temperature.
2700K, the typical incandescent temp (often simulated by “warm white” LEDs), may have a CRI greater than 90, but anyone who had to deal with lighting temp back in film days will tell you that it was abysmal at faithfully rendering colors in fact. That’s why early flash units employed burning magnesium or aluminum (with a good oxidizer) to provide illumination rather than electric lighting of any kind. Technicolor, Kodak and others all supplies “tungsten balanced” film to the motion picture industry for use on indoor sets. Color-correcting it was still a pain in the neck.
Outside the US, a different metric is used, with good reason.
Both systems agree that low-pressure sodium lighting is worthless for color rendition. But a high-CRI LED will typically have a color temp very close to 5000K. (Some 6000K-6500K LED units cut back too much on their red and/or green component with the result that their color curve is all over the map.)
I bought several of these units a while back. I installed three of them in recessed lights in the covered porch ceiling. I had to buy “socket extenders,” to bring them to the level of the porch ceiling. They work great. The porch is many, many times brighter now.
I still have a couple to install in the garage or maybe in part of the basement. All in all, this is a good price.
@Jackinga They look like they would attract quite a few bugs, though…? I love the indoor/outdoor floodlight-style smart bulbs they had awhile back, which i put under the covered walkway & at the front door in a (mostly) enclosed porch. I can set the color temp., so i can come & go without fighting my way through a cloud of winged beasts!
@ircon96@Jackinga Palmetto bugs seem to not care about the light’s color. It varies. I know that we used to see huge swarms of flying bugs in front of the mercury-vapor floodlights in parking lots and such down in Miami, but they were too high up in the air to identify what kind of bugs were attracted. UV definitely attracts more of the bugs that you do not want to zap.
@brainmist@ircon96@Jackinga I bought a pair from a home-improvement store for our garage a couple years ago and they do a great job of lighting up a couple previously shadowy “corners” in there. Harsh light, to be sure, but I’m okay with that out there; wouldn’t want that inside the house. I also put some in the attic and have found them to be helpful up there, too. Haven’t had to replace any of them yet and the garage ones have probably been up for 5+ years.
Can one get replacement bulbs for these? I find that the LED bulbs I’ve bought thus far don’t have anything like the claimed super longevity. Mine don’t last any longer than incandescent.
@sfwineguy No user-serviceable parts support from B+H. The LED panels might be possible to source from China, but the leads on the ones I’ve seen are soldered in place on the power supply board inside the hub. At this price, it’s considered a throwaway unit when it fails.
@sfwineguy@unksol Many LEDs have crap QC, and loads of them ship with power control circuitry that fails long before the LEDs give up. I’ve had both long-lasting and early-fail results with them. YMMV. In general, though, the more that you can give them good ventilation, the longer they last.
@sfwineguy@unksol these will over heat and break on you, you should buy 3 packs so you make sure you got some good batches in the bad patches, assuming there are any good patches in mehs lot. I have the Costco versions and they get very hot, which is very bad for led, and a couple have died and others yet live on.
@sfwineguy@unksol I never got more than 750 hours from any incandescent bulbs. Most CFLs would go 1100-1500 for me. LEDs have been a crapshoot; the QC is all over the place. I have a couple that are still going strong with more than 4000 hours of runtime, but others from the same box failed long ago. OTOH, I also buy the second-cheapest I can find, on the theory that the ultra-cheap would sell for more if they were any good, but the most expensive is probably not worth what they want, for Reasons. Would I buy these? Eh, maybe. But I don’t need this type right now.
In I have a mix of Walmart/home Depot/GE/generic for actual bulbs. I think 2 of the Walmart and one of the GE went out… they are all warrantied, I bet yours are too. Just didn’t bother.
The can lights are all some… Slickdeals Philips and none of them have failed but they are barely on.
This style is more common to fail cause of the way led matrix is set up and insufficient cooling. Looks well vented but also looks plastic. Not 100% sure. Metal would be better for a heatsink.
And also if you get these off Amazon… who knows. I did see one of this style at Menards the other day. So they are working their way in. Didn’t stop to read the warranty/if return to store was an option
@sfwineguy@unksol@werehatrack For regular base bulbs, the longest lasting CFLs I’ve had was purchased from Ikea in the 90s; they we’re all still working when they were retired for LEDs about a decade ago. IIRC, they were made in Hungary.
In the past decade, multiple no-name brand LEDs have failed – most likely by their basic driver circuitry made comprised with the lowest spec (aka substandard) components. They were sub-$1 for a reason.
Of all the LEDs that I spent between $1-$5 on, only one GE has failed. Zero failures with the Phillips or Ikea bulbs.
I do have a couple of the multi-panel LEDs in use, albeit they’re the lower powered flower-petal type.
I bought a couple similar ones off the old site a few years back. They’re a great way to add a lot more light to a place you only have a single socket and aren’t that choosy about color temperature
2 Pack LED Garage Lights, 120W 12000LM 6500K Deformable Ceiling Light with 6+1 Multi-Position Panels, Shop Light for Garage,Basement, High Bay Light Support E26/E27 Socket(Black, Type A) https://a.co/d/93rLsbF
I bought mine a little over a year ago when they were on sale at Costco for a pair at $15. Got two pairs. They are well worth it. Now it’s regular price at Costco.
@bobogobo I question that mostly because Costco rarely carries any lighting product for more than a few months, and $15 especially if $15.00 means it was store manager clearance of leftover stock.
I bought a Costco pair last year and I think it was $39.99-$10 limited promo, so basically $30 for 2. Not quite identical to these but very similar with 3 adjustable light heads.
Seems hard to believe these are just always ‘regular price’ at $15 for 2 especially with most home utility stuff being cleared-out for Halloween and Holiday stuff.
It’s lucky for you if you found more and could used them for $7.50 each ($15 pair) but I’m sure it’s not regular price for the rest of us. (btw in the holiday theme, let’s not forget Festivus… for the rest of us)
@pmarin nope they weren’t managers special. They were listed at Costco using instacart promotion using all offers. So I had them delivered two pack with free delivery. When I went instore a week later they were same price. That was a great deal. I just used one pack in garage attic & one in main attic. They are super bright and get very hot too easily.
@blah1234 The first one of the pair I got at Ollie’s is still going strong almost a year in. The second is still in the box. A friend who put them in sockets that require a 16’ ladder to reach has not had any casualties so far. That’s in no-AC buildings in Texas. Like everything else coming out of China, a little of it is really good, and if you get lucky, it can be an amazing bargain.
@blah1234@werehatrack is it an open rafter garage? I suspect this style would do better there than right up against drywall. Normall led bulbs are fine in a drywalled/closed in garage
Mine just arrived today & I “installed” them in my basement. Holy sweet baby Jesus these things are BRIGHT! Please be careful of where the lamps are positioned when you flip the switch/pull the cord to turn them on. If more go on sale I will definitely buy them for the garage.
Specs
Product: 2-Pack: Bell + Howell TriBurst Pro Triple-Panel LED Light
Model: 700102000000
Condition: New
What’s Included?
Price Comparison
$59.90 for 2 at Amazon
Warranty
90 days
Estimated Delivery
Monday, Sep 25 - Tuesday, Sep 26
Good old Hell & Bowel.
Indoor only?
@Euniceandrich If it’s under a roof, it’s not really “outdoor”.
@Euniceandrich Specs in the AMZ listing say indoor. These look identical to some I picked up from Ollie’s. Those are definitely not waterproof or weatherproof.
@Euniceandrich @werehatrack These types of bulbs are all over all the discount stores, I am pretty sure for cheaper too. Just a heads up.
@Fzero 6K lumens at Ollie’s for $17 when I was last there. Harbor Freight has a version that they rate at 8K lumens for $28. This is a better deal than either of those.
@Euniceandrich @Fzero @werehatrack Just don’t use any gasoline to drive all over town looking for them. That’ll dilute the “pretty sure” savings.
Do not hide your light under the bushes.
@hchavers Bushel.
@brainmist @hchavers Bushes.
@hchavers @ircon96 Well, especially now.
Pro tip: keep LED lights a fair bit away from garage door openers. They interfere with their radio reception. My sister learned this the hard way after she installed LED bulbs directly in the garage door opener. This one might be fine in a fixture that’s separate from the opener though.
@GLaDOS I’ve heard they can blow your fingers right off. Nice tip!
@bugger @GLaDOS whether or not a particular light interferes with RF depends on the type and quality of the current limiting electronics, if any.
Low quality ones that limit the current using only a resistor put out no RF, but the have an annoying flicker. A light built this way will only operate at a single voltage.
High quality ones that use a well designed electronic current limit circuit will produce an insignificant amount of RF assuming the circuit is built as designed with long life parts. These are often rated to operate between 100 and 240 volts.
Low quality ones that use a cost reduced design or parts that don’t meet specifications are the ones that produce excessive RF. The factory can save money by using substandard parts in the RF suppression circuit, or omitting them entirely. The marketing specifications are often just a fantasy.
Note that the same was true of compact fluorescent bulbs.
I already have 3 similar ones I don’t need but these are great. If you need one… or two
I’ve seen these in 8000 and 10000 lumens so 5500 seems a little wimpy. On the other hand Costco is selling the 8000 lumen ones for nearly twice as much so these aren’t necessarily at bad value.
@bigmeh Watch for Costco sale. I refuse to buy anything B&H. Their ads just piss me off.
@MarkML Same here. And their website has the claim that they’ve been around for 110 years. Utter, complete, unadulterated, freshly excreted feedlot BS.
@MarkML @werehatrack Aww…why not tell us how you really feel?
@gertiestn People get annoyed when I do that.
@werehatrack Not at all. Founded 02/17/1907 in Wheeling IL.
@detailer That’s when Bell&Howell was founded. These people are not them. Bell + Howell is a licensee, not a real part of B&H.
@detailer @werehatrack Right you are. B&H went belly up decades ago. B+H is (supposedly paying someone for the privilege of) slapping their good name on cheap communist Chinese crap.
@werehatrack So “these people” are not B&H, but the original company did survive for 94 years before being sold, so that was a bit harsh.
@detailer Bell & Howell as a corporate entity technically never went entirely out of existence; the assets (such as they were) including the name were sold off as part of the bankruptcy process, and the buyer has maintained the name for production of industrial-quality goods, they just aren’t related to the original product lines. But the licensees have zero of the engineering integrity of the current or former companies. It’s very similar to how Kawasaki (in the US) let their name be licensed for a line of crappy tools and car radios (among other things) back in the '90s. In this case, the current B&H does not seem to feel that their industrial brand is threatened by having a very similar name applied to consumer-retail products that bring the name no credit at all.
@detailer @werehatrack I personally feel the soiled brand equity is the issue at stake. Companies bought up the trademark just to slap it onto whatever product they could in hopes to catch an older buyer that remembers the name.
I’ll still remember Bell + Howell for cameras and projectors decades ago, not for its ASOTV-grade products of the last decade.
(Also Polaroid.)
@werehatrack
Smith & Wesson started doing similar name licensing on low-quality goods beginning back around the late 90s. It used to be a name you could trust to be solid, but now if it isn’t their handcuffs or pistols, it’s probably cut-rate Chinese imports of very dubious quality. And even a few of their handgun models have been lousy in the past 25 years. Supposedly they’ve tightened up the quality control on firearms recently, but I guess time will tell. But I’d never buy a “S&W” knife.
Get these and soon you’ll be singing:
@IndifferentDude What a square! The cool cats are singing this:
@ircon96 It’s pretty peppy but confusing; who wants to be “wrapped up like a douche” and have yet “another boner in the night”??
@IndifferentDude as a kid who grew up on bluegrass music, I love this.
And even though I know the actual lyrics to Blinded By the Light, I will never not hear “wrapped up like a douche”
@IndifferentDude @k4evryng
@IndifferentDude @k4evryng @llangley also, a 32 Ford was known as a “deuce coupe” (hence the Beach Boys song)
@llangley Yeah I know, but it still sounds like “douche.”
I don’t see the color temperature listed anywhere.
@WaltC if they’re like the ones I’ve got, it’s “harsh”. They’re fine in the garage, but not good for inside.
@fuzzmanmatt
…unless you like 5000K+ lighting, but I’ll admit that even for those of us who prefer that color temp, these are lacking in diffusers, and are therefore painful to have in your field of view.
@fuzzmanmatt @werehatrack It’s not just the color temperature but also CRI – and that’s where the harshness can come into place.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
@fuzzmanmatt @narfcake From that article:
2700K, the typical incandescent temp (often simulated by “warm white” LEDs), may have a CRI greater than 90, but anyone who had to deal with lighting temp back in film days will tell you that it was abysmal at faithfully rendering colors in fact. That’s why early flash units employed burning magnesium or aluminum (with a good oxidizer) to provide illumination rather than electric lighting of any kind. Technicolor, Kodak and others all supplies “tungsten balanced” film to the motion picture industry for use on indoor sets. Color-correcting it was still a pain in the neck.
Outside the US, a different metric is used, with good reason.
Both systems agree that low-pressure sodium lighting is worthless for color rendition. But a high-CRI LED will typically have a color temp very close to 5000K. (Some 6000K-6500K LED units cut back too much on their red and/or green component with the result that their color curve is all over the map.)
I bought several of these units a while back. I installed three of them in recessed lights in the covered porch ceiling. I had to buy “socket extenders,” to bring them to the level of the porch ceiling. They work great. The porch is many, many times brighter now.
I still have a couple to install in the garage or maybe in part of the basement. All in all, this is a good price.
Let there be light!
@Jackinga They look like they would attract quite a few bugs, though…? I love the indoor/outdoor floodlight-style smart bulbs they had awhile back, which i put under the covered walkway & at the front door in a (mostly) enclosed porch. I can set the color temp., so i can come & go without fighting my way through a cloud of winged beasts!
@ircon96 @Jackinga Palmetto bugs seem to not care about the light’s color. It varies. I know that we used to see huge swarms of flying bugs in front of the mercury-vapor floodlights in parking lots and such down in Miami, but they were too high up in the air to identify what kind of bugs were attracted. UV definitely attracts more of the bugs that you do not want to zap.
@ircon96 @Jackinga I’m tempted by these for my basement. No bugs, lots of dark corners.
@brainmist @ircon96 @Jackinga If the corners are dark, are you really sure there aren’t bugs?
@brainmist @ircon96 @Jackinga I bought a pair from a home-improvement store for our garage a couple years ago and they do a great job of lighting up a couple previously shadowy “corners” in there. Harsh light, to be sure, but I’m okay with that out there; wouldn’t want that inside the house. I also put some in the attic and have found them to be helpful up there, too. Haven’t had to replace any of them yet and the garage ones have probably been up for 5+ years.
Can one get replacement bulbs for these? I find that the LED bulbs I’ve bought thus far don’t have anything like the claimed super longevity. Mine don’t last any longer than incandescent.
@sfwineguy No user-serviceable parts support from B+H. The LED panels might be possible to source from China, but the leads on the ones I’ve seen are soldered in place on the power supply board inside the hub. At this price, it’s considered a throwaway unit when it fails.
@sfwineguy I mean… they are the “bulb” so sure. You can replace the whole thing just like any other “bulb”
You can’t replace the led panels obviously.
If your LEDs only last 1000-2000 hours you have some other problem going on
@sfwineguy @unksol Many LEDs have crap QC, and loads of them ship with power control circuitry that fails long before the LEDs give up. I’ve had both long-lasting and early-fail results with them. YMMV. In general, though, the more that you can give them good ventilation, the longer they last.
@sfwineguy @unksol these will over heat and break on you, you should buy 3 packs so you make sure you got some good batches in the bad patches, assuming there are any good patches in mehs lot. I have the Costco versions and they get very hot, which is very bad for led, and a couple have died and others yet live on.
@sfwineguy @werehatrack in guess I read it as all LEDs you have used. Normal bulbs should not be dying anywhere near that fast. Even Walmart ones.
This style with the LED on a chip if you go cheap is a little more common.
@sfwineguy @unksol I never got more than 750 hours from any incandescent bulbs. Most CFLs would go 1100-1500 for me. LEDs have been a crapshoot; the QC is all over the place. I have a couple that are still going strong with more than 4000 hours of runtime, but others from the same box failed long ago. OTOH, I also buy the second-cheapest I can find, on the theory that the ultra-cheap would sell for more if they were any good, but the most expensive is probably not worth what they want, for Reasons. Would I buy these? Eh, maybe. But I don’t need this type right now.
@sfwineguy @werehatrack the more expensive tend to rely on the CRI.
In I have a mix of Walmart/home Depot/GE/generic for actual bulbs. I think 2 of the Walmart and one of the GE went out… they are all warrantied, I bet yours are too. Just didn’t bother.
The can lights are all some… Slickdeals Philips and none of them have failed but they are barely on.
This style is more common to fail cause of the way led matrix is set up and insufficient cooling. Looks well vented but also looks plastic. Not 100% sure. Metal would be better for a heatsink.
And also if you get these off Amazon… who knows. I did see one of this style at Menards the other day. So they are working their way in. Didn’t stop to read the warranty/if return to store was an option
@sfwineguy @unksol @werehatrack For regular base bulbs, the longest lasting CFLs I’ve had was purchased from Ikea in the 90s; they we’re all still working when they were retired for LEDs about a decade ago. IIRC, they were made in Hungary.
In the past decade, multiple no-name brand LEDs have failed – most likely by their basic driver circuitry made comprised with the lowest spec (aka substandard) components. They were sub-$1 for a reason.
Of all the LEDs that I spent between $1-$5 on, only one GE has failed. Zero failures with the Phillips or Ikea bulbs.
I do have a couple of the multi-panel LEDs in use, albeit they’re the lower powered flower-petal type.
I bought a couple similar ones off the old site a few years back. They’re a great way to add a lot more light to a place you only have a single socket and aren’t that choosy about color temperature
Concerning the writeup’s question, the object appears to be a type of furnace blower motor.
https://www.amazon.com/Aoretic-Deformable-Basement-Ceiling-Warehouse/dp/B0C6XHPC21 $17.99 for two. Meh’s pricing is underwhelming unless it’s two 2-packs.
@caffeineguy not bad for 80 watts when Meh’s are 60. The only real question is the quality and LED life of those versus a known Bell + Howell brand.
@caffeineguy @Larry1977 Bell + Howell is just a licensee using the name. Just as generic as Yindoo or any of the other alphabet soup brands.
@Larry1977 @werehatrack Yeah, they all have the same certifcations/permits/ITL/UL numbers on them (half of them are just copied anyway, but still)
The last picture in the write up is a motor for a HVAC system, probably Carrier.
Listed as 12000 lumens at 2 for $20
2 Pack LED Garage Lights, 120W 12000LM 6500K Deformable Ceiling Light with 6+1 Multi-Position Panels, Shop Light for Garage,Basement, High Bay Light Support E26/E27 Socket(Black, Type A) https://a.co/d/93rLsbF
I bought mine a little over a year ago when they were on sale at Costco for a pair at $15. Got two pairs. They are well worth it. Now it’s regular price at Costco.
@bobogobo I question that mostly because Costco rarely carries any lighting product for more than a few months, and $15 especially if $15.00 means it was store manager clearance of leftover stock.
I bought a Costco pair last year and I think it was $39.99-$10 limited promo, so basically $30 for 2. Not quite identical to these but very similar with 3 adjustable light heads.
Seems hard to believe these are just always ‘regular price’ at $15 for 2 especially with most home utility stuff being cleared-out for Halloween and Holiday stuff.
It’s lucky for you if you found more and could used them for $7.50 each ($15 pair) but I’m sure it’s not regular price for the rest of us. (btw in the holiday theme, let’s not forget Festivus… for the rest of us)
@pmarin nope they weren’t managers special. They were listed at Costco using instacart promotion using all offers. So I had them delivered two pack with free delivery. When I went instore a week later they were same price. That was a great deal. I just used one pack in garage attic & one in main attic. They are super bright and get very hot too easily.
/buy -q 2
@davidearle We’re sold out except for a small amount we set aside for existing members to be released at 4pm ET.
I don’t have one. If I did it would probably store my stuff.
@rybud17 Garage?
@rybud17 @werehatrack in the bulb
I’ve had a couple different brands of similarly designed lights and they’ve aggressively burned themselves out in a short service life in my garage.
@blah1234 The first one of the pair I got at Ollie’s is still going strong almost a year in. The second is still in the box. A friend who put them in sockets that require a 16’ ladder to reach has not had any casualties so far. That’s in no-AC buildings in Texas. Like everything else coming out of China, a little of it is really good, and if you get lucky, it can be an amazing bargain.
Don’t bet on that being the case, though.
@blah1234 @werehatrack is it an open rafter garage? I suspect this style would do better there than right up against drywall. Normall led bulbs are fine in a drywalled/closed in garage
@blah1234 @unksol Yes, open rafters
I don’t think I actually expected this one to sell out. Compliments to the I’ve who set the reserve for members at a reasonable level.
Mine just arrived today & I “installed” them in my basement. Holy sweet baby Jesus these things are BRIGHT! Please be careful of where the lamps are positioned when you flip the switch/pull the cord to turn them on. If more go on sale I will definitely buy them for the garage.