LED replacement for a halogen GU10, at last!
Right, first of all I need to point out that most lighting professionals refer to bulbs as "Lamps" but for the rest of this article we'll refer to them as bulbs as that's what they're commonly known as.
I've tried and tested a lot of LED GU10 (and GU5.3) spot light bulbs over the past few years and quite frankly most were rubbish and didn't even reach half of the quoted performance levels. Some quoted specs were somewhat over ambitious and some were down right lies.
I wish I could have been paid £1.00 for every time I've read "Direct replacement for Halogen GU10" and "Same light output as a 50w Halogen GU10". Generally I found that most were nothing like the specifications quoted on the side of the box and that I'd just wasted 10 minutes of my life testing them, 10 minutes that I was never going to get back.
I've lost count of how many GU10 LED bulbs I've tested over the past few years but I think it would be fair to say that as much as 90% of them were simply not good enough and when you start to factor in the ability to control the light level with a dimmer switch then the odds are shortened even further.
Up until recently all I'd seen in terms of a GU10 LED replacement for the Halogen version was either not bright enough, you couldn't dim them or they were priced unrealistically high giving a very long pay back period.
Ok, so I've been pretty negative about GU10 LEDs so far but all is not lost. Just when I was starting to feel we were years away from finding a decent solution a colleague of mine showed me a 5w LED GU10 bulb manufactured by British Electric Lamp Ltd (BELL). This bulb was dimmable and claimed a good light output and beam width.
The BELL 5w LED GU10 bulb ticks all the boxes for me, it really is a suitable replacement for the 50w halogen GU10 bulb. It can be controlled very well via a standard dimmer switch, has a good light output, is well made and has been priced at a sensible level. I'm not expecting to find anything this good at this price (Less than £25.00) for quite some time.
The Lighting Superstore stock a large range of retrofit LED bulbs including the new 05136 Bell 5w GU10 Mini dimmable LED bulb.