LED "shop" light fixtures

[hubops]

Just a rant ... < a long one - sorry folks >

but wondering if anyone else has any bad <or good >

experience with this type of lighting ? And - buyer beware if you're outfitting your whole shop !

Less than a year ago, I installed a 4 ft. LED self-contained <plug-in> light fixture in my back-basement storage room. It was a very very decent looking item from Lee Valley made by Armacost and more than double-the-cost of the common cheapo units. It failed last weekend ... after ~ 5 hours of ON time ! if that. ... so much for the 10's-of-thousands-of-hours of LED bulb life !

I looked-it-over closely - checked the 120 volt cord & connectors - everything was A-OK ; I pulled off the end-caps to check internal wiring connectors A-OK ; pulled the ON-OFF switch ; - everything was A-OK.

Guess what ? - Lee Valley doesn't carry them any more ; Armacost says that it's discontinued and that it was probably an internal power supply failure ... gee thanks !

The polite refund from Lee Valley meant that I was not out-of-pocket - but it was little consolation - now I need to go shopping for another fixture... again looking at the cheapo's that I avoided !

Plus - I'm hoping that the replacement fixture can be matched to the custom-made little 45 degree corner-mounting-blocks that I made for the original fixtures ...

Geeeze ! < thanks for listening :-) >

John T.

[Vic Smith]

I put 6 Barrina lights up in my basement and have 8 more I'll put in my garage soon. They're cheapo, similar to the one in your link, except I paid 45 bucks for the 8-pack. Amazon. Working fine.

[gfretwell]

I have been swapping out the old T12F40s for the direct wire LED lamps (jumper out the ballast). So far so good and Amazon has a pretty good color selection if "Berlin Wall" white is not your favorite.

[TimR]

I have 3 of the cheapy HF or Walmart 4 foot shop lights, coming up on two years with no issues.

I have a couple of the T12 replacement tubes, direct wired (threw the ballast away) and they've been running even longer with no problems. Eventually I'll probably convert all my T12s to LED as they age.

[Snag]

After I had a power surge out in the shop that blew out all my 4 foot fluorescents I bought a box of the direct wire LEDS online for pretty cheap . I recommend the frosted tubes , the clear ones can be a bit much sometimes .