any recomendations for LED's to replace MR16?

coolmanstan · #1 03-16-2005, 03:34 PM

I'm looking to replace a bunch of MR16 Halogens with LED versions for ladscape type lighting. It seems like I'm getting about a year out of a typical halogen, some last longer and some last less. Unfortunately, some of the lights are used as downlighting at the peaks of my house, about 35 feet high, and I don't like the idea of having to climb that high everytime I get an outage. Not only that, due to the number of lights that I'm running, I would see a huge cost savings in running something with much less wattage, especially if the LED's would last as long as the retailers claim. This is a typical 12 volt ac system and I know that most LED's run best off DC and it seems that most require a more percise voltage. I've tried a sample of an 18 led direct replacement off Ebay and I would compare it to a 10 watt hallogen. I'm looking for something closer to a 20 Watt. My concern is that I don't want to keep buying samples just to find out that becuase I'm running them on AC vs, DC, they're going to fail after a short period of time. And they're fairly expensive, so I don't want to invest a great deal of money in something that I'm not so sure about. Just looking to see if anyone has any recommendations or advice. Maybe these LED replacements aren't quite there yet to be direct replacements for the MR16.

Zelandeth · #2 03-16-2005, 04:01 PM

I can't remember which type off hand, but I'm sure that Craig reviewed at least one MR16 retrofit at the LED Museum a while back.

The LED Museum

Banshee · #3 03-23-2005, 11:47 AM

I think a company called Wavicle is one of our sponsors and they carry MR16 LED's. IIRC there may have even been a GP on them.

A quick google search verified that Wavicle does do LED replacements for a number of bulb bases

The_LED_Museum · #4 03-23-2005, 01:30 PM

EnerLEDs has a 12 volts AC or DC MR-16 retrofit bulb that uses a 1.2 watt Luxeon Star. It might be worth looking into.
My evaluation of it is right here if you're interested.

HarryN · #5 03-24-2005, 04:07 PM

Your challenge is actually a little larger than just replacing the MR16 with an LED drop in, IMHO. If you have 20 watts of incan now, to be happy, you probably will need nominally 20 watts of LED lighting power as well - or at least close.

The MR 16 package is designed for heat dissipation to be primarily lost by IR along with the visible light in the beam, with some lost by conduction, etc.

LEDs have essentially no IR in the beam, so essentially all of the heat must be removed by conduction / convection. This would be ok, except the MR 16 package is designed to withstand high temperature, not remove heat to the socket.

I suspect that you will not be happy until you replace the fixture itself with one designed for LEDs.

enLIGHTenment · #6 03-27-2005, 02:09 PM

If you want the same brightness as a 20 Watt halogen, then match by lumens rather than wattage. 20 Watt MR16s put out around 225 lumens; to match this, you'd need an LED fixture equipped with three Luxeon IIIs running at close to full power. I'm not aware of anything like this on the market right now. Indeed, if an MR16 replacement like that did exist, it'd very likely be in extremely wide use already.

hotbeam · #7 04-06-2005, 01:48 AM

What colour lights are you looking at Coolmanstan?

Ken_McE · #8 04-11-2005, 06:45 PM

I found that it's not as simple as just taking out the old incan. bulb and popping in a new LED replacement.

If how your house looks when it is lit up is important to you, you may want to try a few samples before you buy a case of replacement bulbs.

The first led bulb I got for the garden was white and meant for automotive use. On paper it sounded fine. After I got it going I found that the old lights, which I had always thought of as "just being white" were completely different than the new one. The LED has what I can only describe as a "cold" color, kind of like I was a piece of meat standing in the bottom of a big freezer.

The old incan. bulbs seen side by side now look yellowish-brown, but are much more pleasant and comfortable to be around. I decided not to put in any more cool whites in the garden no matter how effecient or long lasting they may be. I wrote back to the manf. and ordered what was described as an amber led, thought it might look friendlier. The so called "amber" is painfully dim, the sickly color of a parking garage sodium light. I think even the ^%$!! slugs that come out at night to eat my plants will get sick and puke if they come too close to it. For now I am sticking with incans in this area.

If I get impatient waiting for the market to come out with LED garden lights I might try taking a one watt warm white and rigging up a bulb myself.

Natist · #9 04-15-2005, 04:47 PM

Actually there is a new 3X1 luxeon MR16 out on the market. This MR16 has 3, one watt luxeon emmitters and has just passed its last stage of testing. Coolmanstan this product is perfect for you, but is somewhat expensive. You can look at this product at: http://www.solutionslighting.com/content/view/18/42/
All specs are listed on this page so check it out.

This bulb is compared to about a 27 watt incand. bulb.

Ken_McE · #10 04-23-2005, 09:10 AM

>Actually there is a new 3X1 luxeon MR16 out on the market.
>This MR16 has 3, one watt luxeon emmitters and has just
>passed its last stage of testing.

I don't understand how they cool the leds when the total package is only the size and shape of an MR 16 bulb. The proper heatsinks for three one watt leds should be bigger, no??

HarryN · #11 04-23-2005, 03:14 PM

The original poster is looking for a replacement for a 20 watt MR16, a fairly powerful bulb. Regardless of who makes it, at this stage of the technology, you are going to need at least 10 watts of LED power, if not more, to match it.

There is no simple way to remove 10 watts of heat by conduction from a standard MR16 socket. The light needs to be designed correctly from the ground up

brickbat · #12 04-25-2005, 07:33 PM

[ QUOTE ]
HarryN said:
you are going to need at least 10 watts of LED power, if not more, to match it.

[/ QUOTE ]

..all true, UNLESS he's looking for something other than 'white' light, in which case LEDs can have substantially higher efficacy than incandescent.

Chiliad · #13 04-27-2005, 04:07 PM

Anything here you can use?
http://www.led.hightechlighting.com/index.php/cPath/158

lightnix · #14 05-26-2005, 10:07 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Banshee said:
I think a company called Wavicle is one of our sponsors and they carry MR16 LED's. IIRC there may have even been a GP on them.

A quick google search verified that Wavicle does do LED replacements for a number of bulb bases

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi there,

sorry for the late entry to this discussion. Yes, we do an MR16 replacement with 21 LEDs in 12 and 24V AC/DC flavours. We also have the OptiLED Designer lamp which is brighter and runs on anything between 6 and 24V AC/DC although there is no warm white at present and you may well be able to source it at a better price locally. We'll be adding a new range soon, which will feature some 3x 1W units.

I expect to be doing some work on the webstore within the next month or so, to open it up to some non-European countries including the USA. I'll post in the dealer section when it's ready. The only possible bugbear I see may be high delivery charges, but there will be a standard Airmail option.

PS - what's a GP? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif[/img]