I have always had a not very good opinion about budget lamps from Aliexpress, but after I ran into several trash copies in ordinary London retail in the winter, I thought about giving Ali a second chance? In addition, many branded options have appeared there – what if one of them cares about their image and does not let frank trash go on sale?
What did you buy
Of all the variety, I decided to order medium-power options for 9 W with a color temperature in the region of 3000 K and a minimum price. I tried to choose branded copies with the maximum number of orders, well, or those that most often flashed in the search results on the site. As a result, I ended up with lamps of the following brands: Karwen, ZHMZH, YNL, FOXGBF, MING & BEN, LAN MU and Led King. The latter is with an infrared motion sensor, which I took out of curiosity.
All lamps except FOXGBF and Led King have the same body. The brand is only on the MING&BEN lamp. The rest have the same marking, which is why I had to immediately sign them with a marker upon receipt. Only FOXGBF (colorful) and MING & BEN (white hardboard) had boxes.
And here is how their descriptions looked on the store pages:
What did you check
Insmentally, I could check only three parameters: power consumption, the presence of pulsation and luminous flux (more precisely, illumination). And there are a couple of caveats here. The pulsation test consisted of a simple smartphone test – whether fat black barsn across the smartphone camera screen or not. SNiP 23-05-95 allows indoor ripple of 10-20%, which means attenuation of the light source by 10-20% of the maximum. Such differences will not be particularly noticeable during a smartphone test, but the black bars will definitely indicate that the lamp goes out completely.
The luminous flux was checked using the light sensor of the Honor 20S smartphone and the Light Meter application. I have been using a similar bundle for relative measurements for a decade. If someone is worried that the level of error will go off scale, I recommend taking a look at this test. Yes, some smartphones give a high error, but with others, fairly accurate measurements are obtained. In any case, I will use all these measurements only to compare the lamps with each other as part of this test. No more.
Power tests
I recorded the values a minute after the lamps were turned on. But if you watch the lamps for a few more minutes, you will notice that the energy consumption indicators for some periodically walked. Sometimes within a whole watt. Why is a good question. I don’t have an answer yet, but there are speculations.
The first fail is the Led King lamp. Apparently, instead of a 9-watt one, they sent me a 4-watt one, which was also in their assortment. Since there is no marking on the lamp, it was possible to determine this only with the help of a wattmeter.
The second point is that the reduced power consumption of the LAN MU is a little embarrassing. Maybe she’s kind of special and cool (sarcasm). Therefore, I propose to look at the illumination tests.
Light Tests
For this test, I fixed a table lamp over a smartphone at a height of 50 cm, then recorded the Light Meter readings a minute after turning on the next lamp. Of course, the tests were carried out in a dark room.
Based on the appearance and the previous test, I draw a preliminary conclusion that Karwen, ZHMZH and YNL, apparently, are made in the same factory. But we will clarify this a little later. But what is more important is the failure of LAN MU. It shines almost twice as weakly as the others. In addition, it also hums.
Ripple Tests
A smartphone test showed that five out of seven lamps flickered so that a palisade of completely black stripes crawled across the screen. I did not notice any difference in the “palisades” of these lamps. All are equally bad.
What is inside
These are Karwen, ZHMZH and YNL lamps:
There is no doubt that they came off the same assembly line of some Chinese factory. Two white wires go straight from the lamp base. No smoothing capacitors.
And this is the LAN MU lamp:
Everything is similar to the previous ones, only instead of the Techcode TD1895 chip, the MLS3535B is installed. There are no smoothing capacitors. It is she who buzzes and heats up.
Now it’s Ming&Ben’s turn:
Again, everything is similar to the previous lamps, only the line driver chip is now JZ1008AEG.
And here is FoxGBF:
A pulse driver with a choke and a smoothing capacitor is installed here. Accordingly, no pulsation of the lamp is observed.
Finally – a Led King lamp with an infrared motion sensor:
There is a pulse driver, and on top of the board with LEDs there is a board serving the sensor. The sensor itself is covered with a cap with honeycomb deflectors, which help to create periodic background fluctuations if an object emitting in the infrared range moves in the visibility zone. The lamp body has many ventilation holes. Most likely they are needed for cooling and correct operation of the IR circuit.
Store reaction
The fact is that all lamps in the description do not have a word about pulsation, so there is no point in making claims for it. But with King Led and LAN MU lamps, the situation is different. For the first one, the difference between the 4 and 9 watt models was returned to me. On the second, I indicated that it was buzzing and getting very hot, requesting a refund of 2/3 of the amount paid. The seller did not respond to the dispute in any way, and AliExpress arbitration, which then joined, quickly resolved it in my favor.
Results
In fact, the cheapest lamps on Aliexpress turned out to be all with 100% ripple. And all of them do not even have a place for smoothing capacitors. You can buy them only for rooms where a person stays for a short time.
The only exception was the FoxGBF lamp. You can take it. When I ordered these lamps in Feary, it was the most expensive (130 *** against about 100 for the rest). But because of the permanent games with discounts, its price is now equal to the rest.
Led King lamps with a motion sensor also turned out to be of high quality, but I was alerted that instead of the ordered 9-watt one, they sent me a 4-watt one, which was also in their assortment. At the same time, there is no marking on the lamp, and an allegedly random error may turn out to be a system one.
By the way, in this video I have a comparison of these seven lamps with three branded lamps bought in London and a couple of lamps from AliExpress with an E14 and G4 cartridge. With the latter, the sellers, among other things, deceived about the declared capacity by about 4 and 9 times.
In fact, I bought all sorts of Chinese junk for several more amazing series similar to this one. If you are interested, then subscribe – the links are below in the author’s block.
PS Havingmmaged after this test on AliExpress, I noticed that some manufacturers in certain lines of lamps in the title specifically mention the absence of pulsation. All the lamps I bought were without such mentions. It is possible that everything is in order with them, but this is not certain.
