20W G4 Halogen LED Replacements

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
When I was naive about LED's I ordered some TEN WATT LIGHTS. Dim. I checked them. 2.5 watts. So I went to a USA distributor "Oh ours are much brighter" Four watts. Absolutely stupid lumen output claims.

I decided to order GENUINE ten watt LED chips that mount on a heat sink. Ten watts. You know, when you apply 12 volts to them they consume min. 800 ma.

The difference between the smd pretenders and a real ten watt chip was like comparing a candle to a Coleman lantern. BTW the authentic 10 watt chip only has 400 candlepower.

Some of these vendors are in serious need of a double dose of Ex-Lax. Wanna shake them up? Ask for the AMPERAGE DRAW at 12 vdc and do your own math.

If the lighting suits you, fine. That's what you're after. But heed my advice about lumen and wattage claims. Purchase nothing until you receive an answer about AMPERAGE draw. A light that draws too much amperage for the light output ends up in flames. So a realistic amperage figure is pretty valid. It's the only verification tool that seems to work.

Mex.. I feel your pain (and disdain) with a lot of these outrageous Lumens/watt claims that the LED manufacturers or making :M

It is really hard to sift the real ones out from the massive grains of sand on a beach.

I have a few of those 10W chips and how that works is there is a matrix of nine discrete 1W LEDs on a single die. So you have three rows of three LEDs. Each LED in one row is in series and the three rows are paralleled together.

Each row will only draw up to 1W each but the lumens of each LED will add together.

In the case of the little LED I posted on this thread they are 1/2W LEDs and have a lumens rating of 55 to 60 EACH. There is two "pairs" of three LEDs with each pair only drawing about a 1/2W (think of the LEDs like resistors and each one is "sharing" the same amount of watts in series). The combination should only draw 1W but I suspect the regulator is "wasting" the .63W giving me a total of 1.63W draw.

The trick that many manufacturers are using when it comes to multiple LEDs is they add up the usage of EACH LED in their wattage figure..

So in my example with the six 1/2W LEDs they are stating it is a 3W LED. The good news in my example is the actual wattage draw is LESS than they state but yet when side by side compared the LEDs in my case ARE a good match as a replacement.

That is due to a very high lumens per half watt chip!

These chips are the best I have seen if you think about is at 55-60 lumens per 1/2W chip. For 1W that would be equivalent to 110 to 120 lumens which IS better than the benchmark of 100 lumens per watt that some fluorescent bulbs can reach!

I can not say that for OTHER LEDS I have bought which clearly did not even come close to the equivalent incadescent bulb that the manufacturer stated.