Outdoor 5W LED Spots

[RichieNorthcott]

Just sharing a slight rant here at manufacturers. I have many 5W LED spots in my garden/christmas display, which are widely available on AliExpress etc. I'm not going to share a link as I don't want to single out particular sellers.

Recently they generally seem to have changed the body from aluminium to ABS which in my opinion is not a good thing, since naturally the ABS bodies don't do anything to cool the LED - in fact quite the opposite. The LEDs themselves are the round COB type and are adhered to a metal disc with some heat transfer compound. Like most things I'm sure this is about cost saving.

7W and upwards still have aluminium bodies- but I'm trying to source a like for like.

Although they are available in mains and 12V versions, these lamps run at about 16V internally, and need a constant current driver so some alternative electronics added if using as a dimmable device.

 

[1pet2_9]

Thanks, that is good to know. Any lights poor at heat sinks I like to identify as Christmas-only lights. It would also be nice if there was one place where we could read assessments of lights' "gamma curves", taking into account not just the human eye aspects of it, but also the electrical characteristics. Although in my case I'm more in the market at the moment for 100w moving heads, and not 5w spots. My current incan spots, they project heat. I think you could wirelessly charge a Samsung cell phone with it.

 

[RichieNorthcott]

I got one of these https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002697929776.html, which is more or less the same as what I have in my garden. They have changed the design of the front slightly so it has a 'hood' on one side. Other than that they seem good. The construction is indeed 100% aluminium.

Construction seems improved actually since the V1 I have, I like the way the LED is now screwed to the aluminium plate, which in turn dissipates heath through the body. They used to be held in place with thermal paste only - and could move over time. Good purchase!



Re gamma curves i don't know what the official spec is, but in Vixen my dimming curve for these uses the suggested value of 2.2, so the function is Pow(x/100, 2.2) * 100
For the Christmas pixels I run these at 40% intensity so in this case the function is Pow(x/100, 2.2) * 40