Lights of America LED Shop Lights

[Michael Stein]

Saw these while "school supply" shopping with the family yesterday at Walmart. Anyone have any info on them, or have used them? Not quite as cheap as the Costco ones, but being I am not a member, nor do I have one local, these would actually be cheaper for me. Specs on them seem slightly better than the Costco ones. I think am going to purchase one to try out, but wanted to see what the consensus here was first. Cannot find a link to them on the website, but I took a picture.

Specs say (and I am not a lighting expert by any means):

40watts
4500 lumens
240 5000k LED's
50,000 hr life (sure this is worth about a grain of salt)

As of now I have almost no lighting in my garage shop... Which leads me to my next question. I work with the garage door open, mostly. Whats the best way to light the area underneath? During the day, this is a non-issue, but when the sun goes down it is. I was thinking about using a spot light or two (the portable kind on stands), but i am not sure. What do you guys with garage shops do?

[Rollie Meyers]

LOA, Lights of America, & Feit Electric, are both sellers of cheap quality products, that you get less then you pay for, better quality LED fixtures cost some serious money at this time. Feit is the manufacturer or distributer of the LED fixtures sold at Costco.

[Wade Lippman]

Couldn't find it on line at Walmart.
I had a friend pick me up 5 at Costco. Great lights.

[Mark Blatter]

Which leads me to my next question. I work with the garage door open, mostly. Whats the best way to light the area underneath? During the day, this is a non-issue, but when the sun goes down it is. I was thinking about using a spot light or two (the portable kind on stands), but i am not sure. What do you guys with garage shops do?

I have the same issue. I have some T8 fixtures up that provide lots of light with the door down, but when it is up, much of the light is blocked. For now I work with the door open during the day and when it gets dark, I close the door so I get more light on my work and to keep the little blood suckers out of the garage. I keep thinking I should close the door more often, but I like the open feeling.

I have bought quite a few Feit lights at Costco for my work, and have not been impressed with them. My experience is that a high number of them fail early.

[cody michael]

there is a website www.banggood.com that has a decent amount of cheap leds lights, it is striaght from china, but has free shipping, I bought some rolls of led tape light for my low ceiling basement, worked great.

[David C. Roseman]

LOA, Lights of America, & Feit Electric, are both sellers of cheap quality products, that you get less then you pay for, better quality LED fixtures cost some serious money at this time. Feit is the manufacturer or distributer of the LED fixtures sold at Costco.

I don't think I got less than I paid for with the Feit LED shop lights from Costco. But, then, that's based on actual personal experience.

[Jack Jackson]

Several people on here will be quick to tell you that these lights are horrible and aren't worth the cost of the box they come in.... but I'm pretty sure most of them don't have any personal experience with these lights in particular. I have one in my garage and it's awesome. Especially since if you buy them at some place like Walmart that has a liberal return policy you're really not risking much. 3-4 of these would be enough to light up a standard 2 car garage pretty well... especially if you're coming from almost no light at all. I personally like the color of light and they're pretty bright and easy to hang/install. You probably won't find a better LED shop light for less than double that price. You won't be sorry you got one if you decide to try them out.... I bet you even go back for a few more.

[ryan paulsen]

If these are the same lights available fro Sam's (assuming they are), then they are a great light for the price. I have 4 of them in my garage, and they are bright white light. I like that they are plug-and play as opposed to hard-wired, and hang from chains instead of flush-mount. Makes mounting/replacing/moving a breeze.

[gordy haycock]

I put up 8 of the Costco LED lights in my stand-alone garage/workshop and they work great. I also open the overhead door quite often, but when it is closed, the Costco lights do the job. They might be cheap, but they are also inexpensive.

[Erik Loza]

I don't think I got less than I paid for with the Feit LED shop lights from Costco. But, then, that's based on actual personal experience.

+1. I replaced pretty much every PAR bulb in all our can lights throughout the house with those Costco LED's and have not had a failure yet. Personally, I have a hard time justifying "expensive" LEDs. They're all made in China. It's not like there's a "Festool" of LED's. Actually, there is. I paid close to $50 for an edison based LED from a compant called "SWITCH", only for the reason that their bulbs gave an effect in a particular fixture that I couldn't get with regular LEDs. They were touted and as the best, designed in USA, blah, blah, blah, Still made in China. I read that the company went bankrupt last year in part, because they priced themselves out of their market. Feit seems to be still strong as ever.

Erik

[Anthony Whitesell]

I cannot speak to the Lights Of America LED lights, but I can vouch for the Lights of America T8 fixtures. They may be cheap but they aren't as cheap as the cheap ones from Lowe's and Home Depot. I had a basement with a mix of 16 lights from the three sources. The Lights of America have outlasted the Home Depot/Lowe's fixtures by at least 3x and still going. I hate to admit this, but I'm replacing the newly dead Home Depot/Lowe's fixtures with one's from Wal-mart.

[Michael Stein]

Well, I decided to pick up one of these fixtures as a test. Keep in mind, prior to this, my lighting situation was awful. I had one old household fixture that I moved from spot-to-spot to light my work area, then I also used the garage door opener light. I installed this LED fixture the other day, plugged it into a switched out, and I am AMAZED at how much light it puts out for the cost. I will be picking at least one more up, possibly two.

I took two pictures to show the difference. In the first photo, there are no lights on. Second I have the LED fixture, as well as the household fixture that I used to use (though I am not going to throw it away, or put it in the justin-case).

Dark.jpg
Light.jpg

*edit - Please don't mind the mess, in the process of rearranging and creating some new storage areas/systems. Also, I took the photos with iPhone panorama, so they sort of came out strange, not sure why my bench looks bent?

[Ben Rivel]

there is a website www.banggood.com that has a decent amount of cheap leds lights, it is striaght from china, but has free shipping, I bought some rolls of led tape light for my low ceiling basement, worked great.

Thank you for that! That looks like a great site! Gonna try a small order first and make sure those LED strips are the same ones everyone else is selling for a lot more and then if they work good Ill pick up a bunch more for all over the house!

[Jim Dwight]

Our eyes function well in a huge range of illumination levels but our ability to see fine details goes down without a large amount of light. That ability also decreases with age - so us more mature types need more light than our kids. For reference, fully Daylight is around 10,750Lux, an overcast day is about 1,075 Lux, and a very dark day is about 100 Lux. I found a recommended lighting level chart that said offices need 100-250 LUX and mechanical workshops should have around 1000 Lux.

1 Lux is 1 lumen per square meter. So if you put a 4500lumen fixture in a 20x20 garage, you'd be at about 120 lux. That is a lot more than nothing but probably not enough for a shop with me in it. I have a little over 200 lux in my shop right now and have noticed that while it is OK for most things, it isn't enough when I am finishing or doing other things were I need to see more details. I'm using 8 CFLs in 4 two light fixtures and will probably upgrade them to 23W from their current 13W. That will put me a little over 400 LUX or about double where I am now. That is still less than half what is recommended for a "mechanical workshop" (whatever that is) but I think I will be OK. Worse than more overall light I need a raking low angle light when I am finishing to show me the wet edge. I have all my lights in roughly the middle half of the shop with the area under the garage door not directly lit. So I have higher light levels in the center and less at the ends. That isn't ideal either but isn't working badly for me.

I will upgrade to LEDs when the bulbs come down some. CFLs are a lot more cost effective right now and work fine.

[Alan Bienlein]

I just recently replaced the four 8' t12 HO fluorescent light fixtures in my 24 x 24 shop with 10 of the Lights of America 4' led shop lights. What a night and day difference almost literally. I actually enjoy being out in the shop again.