Cheap halogen lamps

[Andy Burns]

If anyone still has any reason for halogen lamps, Homebase are dumping them cheap (e.g. 6x 50W MR16s for £1) presumably in advance of the September phase-out ...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

[Brian Gaff]

I never had any luck when using Halogen. the life of them always seemed to short to me. Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

As I implied, shed ones. Or rather those from B&Q. Bought fittings with lamps from B%Q. Fittings are nice enough, but all the original bulbs failed within weeks. Replaced with ones from TLC which are still fine many years later.

I still far prefer the light quality from halogen.

[Andy Burns]

I bought one of those IKEA ceiling bars with multiple GU10s that can be angled where required, it came with Osram lamps and I never had to replace a single lamp in more than a decade. Maybe significant that it was fitted upstairs, as I gather foot traffic from the floor above causes significant "wobble" of warm filaments?

They have now all been replaced by LED GU10s anyway.

[Johnny B Good]

That link was no good on its own. I had to insert "50W MR16" in the search box before finding a pack of 6 for £1.00.

The technical info and description were no help in establishing their vital statistics (no voltage rating mentioned and the wrong wattage -

40W). However, if the picture is anything to go by (there's nothing else), then they might come in handy as a pack of spares sometime during the first decade or so that you might blow a 12v MR16 in your transformer (50Hz or electronic) powered down-lighting setup. :-)

For just a quid, they're worth a punt, especially if they're actually

12v rather than the horribly fragile 240v lamps (mind you, even a box of six 240v MR16s are worth splashing out a quid on, assuming you're cursed by such 240v fittings that is!).

[Andy Burns]

Assuming you didn't let it wrap where it shouldn't, it tested that it worked before I sent it (in FF and IE) and it still works now in FF, first item in second row.

The title says 50W (the product details does contradict that at 40W) but the photo shows 12V 50W.

[Johnny B Good]

I guess you meant "Assuming your *newsreader* didn't wrap it where it shouldn't,". :-)

The answer was that, in this case, it hadn't and when I right clicked on it I selected 'copy url' and pasted this:

into Opera which took me to the top of the expected web page. After scrolling down beyond the one quid assortment without spotting the 6 lamp pack, I realised I'd best make use of the search box at the top of the page using the obvious phrase which took me what I'd failed to spot in my initial scans of the one quid selection section.

The Product Description and Details are both inaccurate. The description is inaccurate to claim "Instant Light" for a 50W 12v halogen fed off an electronic 60W 12v 'transformer' (300 to 450ms is more like it - about as quick as a T12 tube in a Quickstart ballasted fitting) and their claims for versatility in 'any room' and 'any situation' are far from the truth unless we assume they had a particular 'idiot' customer in mind when they wrote that "copy".

As for the Product Details, well we've already covered the "40W" discrepancy which leaves the rather low 2000 hours rating for a 12v lamp (the typically rather overly optimistic rating for a 240v lamp though), which one might expect to be more like 4000 hours (a standard figure for a 12v Halogen lamp). Neglecting to mention the voltage rating is a rather startling omission all else considered.

All the other details bar one, seem to be accurate. The dimmability claim rather depends on whether it's a 240v lamp (which, from the picture, it isn't) or a 12v lamp driven by either a 50Hz mains transformer or a 12v 60W smpsu, the last of which might prove problematical with a phase angle controlled triac based dimmer.

[Andy Burns]

Your missus must love going shopping with you ...

[Huge]

He's a troll. He's likely a spotty teenage boy who lives in his parent's spare bedroom (if he were American, he would be in their basement). He's a virgin, much less married. And all he wants is attention, any attention, from someone, anyone, on the Internet.

[tabbypurr]

they always do. Sales material writers are also routinely clueless themselves.

[Johnny B Good]

It's funny you should say that... :-)