Mini Review Harbor Freight $20 LED shop light

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MRDucks2

MRDucks2

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Bristow, IN
After spending $90 at Lowe's for a 2'x4' LED 5000 lumen light to replace the one the mice chewed up in my shop, I was a bit disappoint s in the overall value. But it did make light.

With a Harbor Freight Coupon their 4' LED 5000 lumen light was only $20 so bought the visit limit of 3 (wife needs more light,too) to see what they were like.

Saw at the store the box was less than 3"x3", and the length was listed as 46-3/8" with no color indication. A bit of a concern but it was only $20.

Hung one up replacing the old T-12 that originally lost a bulb and was quite pleased. I think the value is there if they meet your needs.
View attachment 221555
The light
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Hung
View attachment 221557
Vs one of the old T-12 to the right and some T-8 a little further to the right.


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I needed light in a small storage building at the farm and a 4' LED from Lowe's was $14.79

The best deal on quality LEDs I've found are from GreenLightdepot.com
 
Our Lowe's has a mediocre selection of anything, at best. No 4' shop lights under $40.

My various Lowe's in Houston were great. I expect Menards to have something, too, but wasn't headed that direction.

I have also found that Rural King regular prices are about the same or better than HF sale prices. But, again, the local Rural King can't keep up on stock for a lot of stuff.


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Thanks for the FYI Mike. I just picked up a few and will play in the shop tonight and be able to see stuff better. They honored one coupon for 6 lights. No reason not to do an upgrade.
 
I have two of them and am well pleased with them. I am very persnickety about lights and color, but I was pleasantly surprised about the HF LEDs on sale back around New Years for $19.95 each.
 
I installed two of these in my shop last month and have been really pleased with the quantity and quality of the light. I'm tempted to get some more for the garage.
 
Got mine from Costco. I bought 5 when they went on sale for $19.95. Haven't seen that sale happen again. I also use swing arm lights on each bench by the vise or turning area on my lathes. All are LED so I have plenty of light.
 
I bought a couple of Rockler version a couple of years ago, they were really pricey. I do really like them though. I was wondering about these when I noticed them a few months ago...did you ever figure out what the Kelvin temp is?
I read somewhere that a 60 year old man needs twice a much light to see inside than a 30 year old man....not sure if it's true.
I have 8 of those led 4750 lumen screw in bulbs and two of those 4' led....you almost need sunglasses in my shop....
 
moke said:
I bought a couple of Rockler version a couple of years ago, they were really pricey. I do really like them though. I was wondering about these when I noticed them a few months ago...did you ever figure out what the Kelvin temp is?
I read somewhere that a 60 year old man needs twice a much light to see inside than a 30 year old man....not sure if it's true.
I have 8 of those led 4750 lumen screw in bulbs and two of those 4' led....you almost need sunglasses in my shop....
Click to expand...
As to the color temperature - the web page says
221605


I have two in my shop along with some 'daylight' and 'warm white' CFLs - the HF LEDs appear to my eye to be about the same color as the daylight CFLs.

As to the amount of light one needs - I'm 73 and one eye doesn't work so well. I'm also a photographer who used to be pretty active in the darkroom, but when I lost vision in one eye, I had to give up darkroom work because I had no depth perception in subdued lighting. I took up woodturning after I developed my vision problem, and find that having lots of light creates strong shadows that substitute reasonably well for depth perception.

I was just at Harbor Freight about an hour ago - the problem is that a store only gets so much stock at a time, and when they are gone, they are gone until they restock. Fortunately, the HF store is reasonably close, so its not a big deal to go back in a few days.
 
I have 6 of them in my garage. I got 3 initially and then the other 3 during another sale. It seems they are 20$ nearly once a month, so don't pay full price for them.

My garage has 10 foot ceilings so I hung them from the ceiling with some chain I got at homedepot. The chain that comes with them is only about a foot long, so I just used it as the loop to connect the other chain to. I also purchased a 50 ft extension cord and some of the replacement cord ends and made "custom length extensions" for the lights. The cord that comes with them is 4 ft long and most of the lights need to go to an outlet or surge protector on the floor.

all in all, I probably have about 150$ total invested for 6 lights, all the connections at the ceiling, the chain and the custom length extensions. I'll eventually add another 6 most likely and will eventually run dedicated outlets to each, but that will be later down the road.
 
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