High Power 20W Polaroid Lamp Test and Review

Good afternoon, my dear readers! Today I want to share with you the test results of the Polaroid LED light bulb. I have long been fond of testing LED lamps on my own initiative and do this independently of manufacturers. I always try to be as objective as possible and share only reliable information, but I’m still human and would be happy to hear about the details that I missed.

Let’s start by looking at power. The manufacturer of the Polaroid bulb claims that its power is 20 watts. However, when I connected it to a power source that puts out 220 volts, the device showed only 15 watts. To check if some kind of error had occurred, I tried connecting the light bulb to a 230 volt source. Despite this, the power increased to only 16 watts. But I was expecting to get the full declared power from Polaroid … Perhaps it is worth paying attention to this issue and investigating the possible reasons for such a decrease in power. But I do not rule out that just the packaging is deceiving us.

Fifteen minutes of warm-up passed, and the power was still at 16 watts. Alas, I could not find the power declared on the package anyway, the manufacturer nevertheless gave somewhat overestimated parameters.

Now let’s measure the quality of the light. According to the measurement result: the color temperature is 3879K, and the color rendering index is 81 Ra. The manufacturer claimed that the color temperature is exactly 4,000K, but did not mention the color rendering index. If you want to read about how I got the long-awaited device – please refer to the link.

The instrument I use to test the quality of lamps not only measures the color temperature of the light, but also displays a color space chart. The dot on this diagram corresponds to the light color of the lamp I am testing. Usually this point is located near the arc that displays the radiation curve of a black body. If the point strongly deviates from the arc, it can be unpleasant for our eyes.

When using a Palaroid lamp, I found that the dot deviation was only 0.0029. This small value does not have a significant effect on human vision, so the Palaroid lamp can be considered of high quality in terms of color temperature.

The device also offers its own scale for measuring pulsations. Several areas are identified on the diagram: red – high risk to the eyes from pulsations, yellow – low risk, green – no risk. For a Palaroid bulb, the ripple is 0.7% and falls into the green zone.

The next step was to measure the illumination from the lamp. The lamp was placed a meter above the light meter, the external illumination was turned off. At 220 volts at the input, the device showed that the illumination is 496 Lux. When the voltage is increased to 250 Volts, nothing has changed, and when the voltage drops to 170 Volts, the lamp goes out. Thus, it can be seen that the lamp driver is not particularly resistant to mains voltage.

The work with the backlit switch turned out to be stable, no problems were found with the light bulb in this test.

The dimensions of the lamp correspond exactly to those indicated on the packaging.

To check the heating of the lamp, I use two different instruments: a thermal imager and a pyrometer. The data I received is the same and I observe that the temperature of the bulb is 40 degrees and the case is 65 degrees.

Next, I take a diagram of the illumination of the lamp, which the manufacturer claimed at 1800 Lumens, but I was only able to measure 1690 Lumens. Unfortunately, it’s inconsistent.

After that, I began to gradually dismantle the filling of the lamp located in the housing. It took a lot of effort, as it was firmly glued. But, in the end, I was able to separate it from the case. There were thirty-two packages on the board with LED chips, each of which contained two LED crystals. All of them are located under a layer of phosphor, thus ensuring the correct glow of the lamp. The LED switching circuit was series-parallel, that is, the cases are divided into two parallel groups, each of which contains 16 cases. Each group is in turn connected in series.

I measure the temperature of the diode board. To determine the hottest point of the LED board, I use a thermal imager and attach a thermocouple there.

After half an hour of operation, the temperature of the LED board is 81 degrees Celsius.

Inside each LED housing, I noticed earlier two bright spots of LED crystals. The forward voltage drop across a single LED body is 16.9 volts, which makes it possible to determine that there are as many as six crystals in it, and not a pair!

The driver output current is 51.8 mA.

On the reverse side of the LED board is a 15 microfarad electrolyte. The heat transfer from the LED board is carried out through the contact of its thin edge and the aluminum heatsink.

I wouldn’t recommend buying this lamp. Yes, the lighting characteristics are not the worst, but the lamp efficiency leaves much to be desired. It would be very interesting to hear your conclusions about her.

That’s all, thank you for your attention and see you soon! was with you Domorost!

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