LED lights: new contestants

 There they are

I have bought two new LED lights to complement the one I evaluated here.

One is also an MR16 (12V) socket light with 4x1W warm white LEDs. I bought three of them over eBay from a seller in Hong Kong for €4 each. The output is estimated between 320 and 360 Lumens. It has a rather crude heat sink made of aluminium with sharp edges on the side. I guess, at this price this has to be tolerated.

The other is an E27 socket light with a multi-chip (chip on board) LED and a nominal power consumption of 3.5 W for use with 230 Volts. It has a slightly colder light and I got it at a price of €6 for two at the local supermarket. I found the form and design tempting (E27 LEDs are still rare and expensive) and bought the pack although the luminous flux was given at a meagre 140lm.
A look inside showed a small transformer with additional electronics covered in white glue. The LED multi-chip module consists of four lengthy LED chips, which apparently consist of two LEDs each (full brightness at about 7.4V).

A short test

Firstly, I tested the E27 light next to a 40W incandescent light bulb (all following photos have been taken with camera in manual mode and set to: no flash, exposure time 1/100s, aperture 4.97, F/5.6):

The narrower beam angle and colder light colour (3800K) of the LED light is clearly visible. A comparison of the luminous flux is difficult. While the LED light is clearly darker than the incandescent light bulb, it seemed to be brighter than the estimated 16W "equivalent".

Now, I put all three lights next to each other and powered them up to compare the light output:

From left to right: the E27, the MR16 3.6W from the earlier post and the MR16 4x1W light

The E27 again falls back in light output, but not as far as the numbers (140lm to 320-360lm and 300lm). Maybe the colder white colour creates a more glaring impression. The new 4x1W MR16 light has a narrower beam angle than the older one which makes direct comparison of brightness difficult. It seems to be it brighter an also has a slightly less yellowish hue.


Finally, two shots from the front (naturally, the order of the lights is reversed):

 

So, whereas the new MR16 light is a really good buy at this price, the E27 - while maybe being a bit brighter than the estimate on the package - is a no-go because of its low efficiency (<50lm/W), which lies below that of a typical CFL. The low price does not make up for that.