Great lights!
I bought a 4 pack of these lights a little over a year ago, and in the last 3 months have purchased many more. I got the 4000K cool white, frosted lens. Bottom line – they’re great! Very bright, turn on quickly, nice light-color match to my old cool white fluorescents as well as my old, cool white habituated eyeballs. Backstory and usage: I have a 1200 sq ft garage I built 18 years ago, and at the time outfitted it with a plethora of cheap 4’ shop light fixtures. The fixtures were around $10, bulbs 2 bucks each, so $14 per fixture. But over time I’ve found the cheap fixtures came with cheap ballasts (go figure) that have been very hard on bulbs, requiring too-frequent changes. I can’t really say how often as I haven’t kept track. But I’m a weekend warrior, not a professional, so usage is part time, and it seems like I would go through and refresh some flickering bulbs, only to have more flickering a couple weeks later. Frustrating. Now, most of those fixtures were functional in some conditions, but flickered with heat and humidity, which I read is normal for failing ballasts. In contrast, I have a couple ooooold commercial fixtures I got from somewhere, with 4 tubes each. Who knows how old these ballasts are, but I don’t think I’ve replaced a single tube in those fixtures in 18 years! No wonder a quality ballast cost $25, while a whole cheap fixture cost $10. These LEDs have now replaced all my old fixtures except those good oooooold ones. Choices, choices! 3 color choices, and clear or frosted lenses, this is one reason I chose Sunco. I first ordered 5000K daylight because most people love them, and I got clear because they had more lumen output. Mistake on both counts. The clear lens allowed the individual LEDs to make their mark on the light pattern, casting weird lines everywhere; I don’t recommend the clear to anybody. And the color was so…blue. I returned them, got the frosted cool white 4000K instead and it fixed both those things, and is still brighter than the fluorescents ever were! I really like the cool white color, that’s just me. Reflector: Another reason I chose Sunco was that they have a full sheet metal reflector piece. Many of the cheaper ones don’t, they just have two LED tubes connecting the ends. Two things here. One, light comes out of the tube 360 degrees around, and I am not mounting them against a white ceiling, so I wanted the “top half” of the light to be reflected downward. Two, the sheet metal reflector gives mounting flexibility; I simply drilled two holes in the metal at the spacing I needed for any given location and screwed them to the rafters with drywall screws and fender washers. Works great. But there was a change in the reflector design part way through the ones I bought. I see that they have updated the pictures to reflect the change, so that’s good, but I didn’t notice until I pulled my last batch out of the boxes. They used to have a wider, more full reflector that angles down around the tubes. Now it’s cut narrower without the skirts, and lets a lot of light shine upward at an angle past them, wasted. I attached pics of this. They still mount up fine and that appears to be the only change, so be it. I actually used the reflectors from my old shop light fixtures and sandwiched them between the new lights and the rafters, which widens them out some. Still not as good as the OG Sunco ones, but they are OK. Don’t really know how big of a deal this is, but I did not like the change. Longevity – hard to say now. LEDs are supposed to last forever, I certainly hope they fare better than my old fixtures with less trouble! The other part of why I chose the Sunco lights was the excellent reviews, they are working for people so far. Depending on the purchase point I paid on average maybe 40% more per fixture than I did 18 years ago for the fluorescents plus bulbs. Overall – very pleased with the switch to Sunco shop lights. 5 stars from me! Read more
