Testing the Polaroid 10W LED Bulb – It's Not Just the Light That Matters

Finding really good bulbs is quite a difficult, I would say meditative process that requires quite a thorough analysis. The most important direction here is testing. Often it is not enough to simply study the light characteristics to draw a conclusion about the product. It is precisely about such a lamp that I want to tell you today.

Let's start with the power test: they promise 10 W. The voltage is 220 V and when I turn it on for the first time, my device shows 10.5 W. It's a good start, usually at this stage there is a discrepancy between the actual value and the declared value by 20-30%, but here the actual value is even higher than the declared value.

After 15 minutes of work with the power of the Polaroid lamp with the declared 10 W, everything is fine – 10.8 W.

Now let's test the light from this lamp.

Color temperature 2902 Kelvin, color rendering index – 81.9.

The light from this lamp can be considered white. The color temperature point is located between 3000 and 2700K.

Everything is fine with pulsations as well. Risk-free light is 1.1% at 100 Hz. Excellent result.

Now let's check the amount of light from this lamp.

In the 220 Volt network – 287 Lux,

250 Volts – 205 Lux, somehow surprisingly decreased,

170 Volts – 26 Lux, almost completely dark,

160 volts and complete darkness.

The lamp driver does not cope well with voltage changes in the household network. But for the stable voltage of the city, this is not such a big problem.

The lamp also works with a backlit switch.

The dimensions of the lamp exactly match what is indicated on the packaging, some manufacturers can!

And now we come to the most interesting part. So far this bulb is just super and I would definitely recommend buying it. But you can't limit yourself to just the light characteristics!

Let's measure the temperature.

The lamp has obvious problems with heating. The case temperature is over 100 degrees Celsius. No good. And the bulb is also hot. Over 62 degrees Celsius. Well, that's it. All the good characteristics of the lamp are crossed out. The lamp will not work for long at such a case temperature. We are talking about a few months at most.

As part of the Domorost project, we launched an assessment of lighting fixtures by several experts and, as you can see, my colleagues agree with meThe lamp, despite all its positive qualities, has a very low percentage of positive ratings.

The luminous flux that I calculated for this lamp is 1126 Lumens. And the manufacturer specifies 1000 Lumens. And this is also a great result. But the temperature test crossed everything out.

Under the diffuser I see a diode board. All the LEDs are connected in series, and in such a connection, as is known, as soon as one burns out, the entire lamp goes out.

Cooling is standard. The aluminum substrate of the diode board transfers excess heat from the diode light to the radiator, an aluminum radiator built into the plastic housing of the lamp. The heat is transferred quite effectively, the only problem is that the diode board itself heats up significantly above 100 degrees Celsius.

It's a shame about this lamp, but nothing can be done. Choose lamps consciously, take care of your eyes!