LED Strip Light

I caught a sale at the "blue" DIY store today on a Utilitech LED strip light that mimics a single tube 48" fluorescent fixture. It's rated at 1800 lumens and 4000k color temperature, a nice cheerful bright white. The price was marked down $4 from $39.98 to $35.98. The display unit looked good so I snagged one of them.

However when I got to the register the lamp rang up at the original non-sale price. I had to wait for another store employee to go back to the lighting aisle with me and get a picture of the sale sign before they would ring it up at the correct price. At best this is carelessness and at worst it's illegal. I plan to write to them about this.
:shakehead

Anyway back to the lamp - I haven't wired it up yet but I plan to do so in the next day or two. I'm also hoping to get a peek at the LED assembly, driver and heatsinking. None of this is visible from the outside.

I know exactly which one you are talking about and have been thinking of picking up the 'dual' version (not sold at all stores).

Let us know what you think....I've been going back and forth on whether to try it out. I'll wait to see if you recommend it.

I just wired it up and powered it up. My initial impressions:

Electronic ballast

ballast

PROs -
Fixture snaps apart for wiring - no screwdriver needed.
Comes with wire nuts and a "mouse ears" connector for ganging them together.
Nice, evenly distributed 4000k white light.
No spottiness in the light distribution.
No noticeable flicker or strobing.

CONs -
Not quite as bright as it seemed to be in the store.

Based on the relative brightness, this might find a good use above the washer and dryer in place of the screw-in CFL that's there now. It's not quite bright enough for me for a workbench area.

PhotonWrangler said:

The price was marked down $4.00 from the original price of around $40.

Click to expand...

WOW!!!

I can't find an LED strip light discounted to $4 on Lowes's website. Is it only in your store?
Can you link to the page? I want to see what it looks like.

It was discounted BY $4.00 from $39.98 to $35.98. I've edited my original post to clarify the pricing. Here is a link to it.

PhotonWrangler said:

It was discounted BY $4.00 from $39.98 to $35.98. I've edited my original post to clarify the pricing. Here is a link to it.

Click to expand...

oh. :sigh:

I'm always disappointed by how expensive these new "purpose-built" residential LED fixtures are since they're just LED strips wired up to a cheap AC constant-current source. I don't have confidence in their longevity, although perhaps this just due to my feelings on strip LED's as being inherently cheap and unreliable.