Aurora 6W GU10 Ultra Bright LED Light Bulbs Warm White 3000k 50W Equivalent (Higher Quality than other 6W LED GU10 Energy Saving Lamps)

I've got GU10 lamps all over the house. Loads of the things. And I've been sick and tired of having another bulb blow every week. Thankfully, things are changing...

Here's some simple maths for you. 1500 hours may sound like a reasonable lifespan for a GU10 halogen bulb. That's the average lifespan of a single bulb. The trouble is, if you have 10 of them, that actually means that one is going to fail every 150 hours. Got 100 of them? That's a failure every 15 hours. OK, I've not got 100 of them, but did I mention I'd got loads? The point is that GU10 halogen bulbs are a nightmare. They fail with monotonous regularity and more often than not, they trip out the breaker for the lighting circuit when they do.

If you want GU10 fittings but without the continuous bulb replacement process, you need to look at low energy alternatives. There are plenty of GU10 Compact Flourescent lamps. But I hate them. They're (still) slow to reach full brightness, have a rather sickening colour spectrum and are generally rather large for the fittings. The other alternative is LED. LED lamps have really come on leaps-and-bounds in recent years. It doesn't seem that long ago that LED's were all about minimal power consumption; in the region of 1/100th of a Watt, sufficient to act as an indicator on your hi-fi, but useless as a means of general illumination. The babies that I'm reviewing here are up to 2 Watts per individual LED (the fitting has three of them). A few years ago, that really didn't seem feasible and when you understand how LED's work, it's a minor miracle that they do! LED bulbs provide full power from the instant they're turned on (actually, there's a fraction of a second's pause after switch on before they light up, which I presume is down to the electronics, but they're all there in the blink of an eye). The colour temperature of these Warm White bulbs is really very close to Halogen and while I've not tested it with a light meter, the brightness seems almost identical to a 50W Halogen.

I used four on these in our conservatory where they run alongside four 50W halogens. I really can't tell them apart and I'll be replacing the halogens soon, too (they're bound to fail soon enough if I don't).

It's worth mentioning why quality is important in LED bulbs and also why it affects the size. In the good old days of LED's consuming 1/100th of a Watt, you could stick them anywhere. With such a miniscule amount of power flowing through them, they were consistently cool. As the power of LED's has increased, the effect of all that extra power has been increased temperature in an around the electronics contained within. To ensure the reliability of the LED's, it's important to ensure that they're kept relatively cool. You see those big silver fins in the picture of the Aurora bulbs? They're not for show; they're part of a sizable heatsink that is responsible for dissipating the excess heat, minimising the impact on the LED's. Every high power LED bulb needs one, and it needs to be a good one. The need for the heatsink has an impact on the overall size of the bulb and that could be important for compatibility with your light fittings. The higher the power of the bulb, the bigger the heatsink, and thus the overall size of the bulb, needs to be. The diameter of the bulb is constrained to approximately 50mm. Any bigger and it wouldn't fit in the light fittings at all. So the bulbs have to be increased in length, instead. How that works with your fittings, if it works at all, is going to vary on a case-by-case basis. My conservatory lights are surface-mounted and a standard GU10 halogen bulb fits flush with the front of the housing. These Aurora 6 Watt bulbs are longer and stick out the front of the lamp housings by about 2cm. They still look OK and the shiny heatsink becomes a visible feature, rather than being hidden away. If the housings are positioned horizontally, there's a tendency for their size and weight to cause them to 'slump' off-centre. I have the lamps pointing not that far off vertical, so they sit pretty well. I have flush-mounted downlighters in the kitchen with similar bulbs in and they fit completely within the housing. Note that many modern downlighters are designed to accommodate these longer bulbs. Older ones can be fixed in depth and not so well suited to longer low energy bulbs.

Now, onto the specifics of these Aurora bulbs. I did a fair bit of research using my favourite search engine in order to track down the best I could and the Aurora's were consistently well reviewed. I had tried some earlier Aurora bulbs just over a year ago and found them to be very good but not quite as bright as the ones that I finally chose for my kitchen. I'd say these current Aurora 6 Watt bulbs are the best I've tried so far. Compare them to the rubbish you can buy from your local DIY warehouse and the brightness, colour spectrum and build quality are massively improved. Only time will tell about the longevity of these bulbs, but that's got a lot to do with the effectiveness of the heatsink and I'm highly encouraged by what I see. Hopefully, it'll be a long, long time before I find out how quickly they fail!

LED bulbs are expensive compared to their halogen counterparts, but it's important to remember that they're expected to last many, many, many times longer (so that you're not replacing one every week) and, of course, they consume nearly 90% less energy! They are an investment, but one that will certainly pay for itself and without the burden of halogen.

I also want to give a shout-out to the Amazon Marketplace supplier that I bought them from, Lights4U. I swear that when I placed the order, someone must have grabbed the bulbs and sprinted to the courier's depot, because they arrived the next morning (and delivery was free, too)! I've no idea what their after-sales service is like, because nothing went wrong. I'm intending to buy a fair few more of these bulbs, soon, as I still have around 20 to replace, but I won't hesitate to buy the Aurora's and neither will I hesitate to buy them from Lights4U.

I've tried energy savers - both CFL and LED - before and they've never been bright enough to replace my existing (8!) 50W GU10s. Well rest assured, these Auroras are absolutely as bright as a 50W halogen GU10. The only two reservations I have - and they are minor - which is why I've only given 4 stars is that as others have said, these are not just slightly bigger than halogens but are MASSIVELY longer - in my light fittings where the halogens are flush with the fitting, the Auroras stick out by nearly 2cms. The wife hasn't seen it yet, but I suspect she'll throw a wobbler and we will be sticking with halogens unfortunately - it really is that bad. In terms of light colour, despite these being 3000K "warm white" they're still noticeably colour different from the halogens. It's not an unpleasantly harsh difference, and I probably wouldn't notice it if I hadn't deliberately stuck one hand under each of the halogen and these Auroras to check. But it is definitely a colder light than halogen so if you're in a room with cold colours it may be an issue.

My advice is to absolutely get one and try it as the brightness is superb, but you will need to check the size and the light colour before committing yourself as they are not a like-for-like 50w halogen replacement.

I have done a lot of research into LED bulbs and these represent a great value purchase. These are genuine Aurora bulbs, which are a quality brand. I originally mixed a few into a ceiling which had Megaman compact flourescent energy saving bulbs. The Megaman have been consistently failing well before their advertised life expectancy and I decided it was finally time to move to LED. One of these new LED bulbs did fail after a couple of weeks but a replacement was dispatched to me very quickyl with no trouble at all. To me they seem only slightly less bright than an 11W Megaman CFL bulb (which is a 60W equivalent). Very happy overall. I'm just waiting now for dimmable LED GU10 bulbs to come down in price! These are great in the meantime as long as you don't need a dimmer function.