My dad would like to place a few lights outside where there is no AC power. He mentioned solar lights, but my experience with them have not been very good. I know they have limited power, but the led’s are always blue and the output horrible.
He was going to order some he saw on tv, but I told him to hold off while I did some research. I see a lot for sale on fasttech and banggood, but I’m not willing to shell out $30 to $40 only to find out they are the same quality as the solar lights at Harbor Freight.
So, if anyone has any good recommendations, please let me know. Thanks.
Wellp, unless/until they make more efficient solar cells, there’s a limit as to how much energy they can collect during the day. Sunny vs cloudy, winter vs summer, etc., all determine the best-case collection, which can be decent or pretty sucky.
So you’re limited to a cheap Angry Blue™ 5mm “white” LED to light the way… for a while.
You’d need an actual solar panel, not just the dinky disc that’s stuck on top of the light, to get more light and/or better runtime.
I have half a dozen of the Arilux solar outdoor lights from Banggood.
The eight LED ones are more than enough light for my usage around a pool.
They also have a motion sensor.
Quite happy with them in general.
They run off 1 x 18650 which can be removed.
Lightbringer, yeah, you might be right, and we may end up just running some AC lines in the end. Some of these solar lights have an external panel, so I was thinking of giving that a try.
rexdog, how is the tint? Is it a horrible blue? The description doesn’t give the color temp.
The tint is OK. It’s a cool white, but in no way “Bluish”.
A neutral white option would be nice, but I’m happy enough.
The thing I do like is that you can set the switch so they come on automatically at dusk at low, then go to high when the sensor detects motion.
After about 15 seconds, they return to low.