Review on Required Replacement Fluorescent Circline Circular by Dave Hersma

In general I am satisfied with these lamps. There have been some issues with the switch from fluorescent to LED (see below) and there is a small issue with the bulbs. Discrete LEDs are mounted on a flat circuit board under a transparent plastic cover. Although the light has a translucent white diffuser, you can still see the outlines of the bulbs and even fuzzy little bright spots where the discrete LEDs are located. Replacing the clear plastic cover with a translucent white diffuser would probably not be a problem. It's not bad enough that I would call it a downside; Let's just say the design could be improved. Another need for improvement is the connection type of the LED lamp. Although the LED lamp must be connected directly to the household network, the pins on the lamp and the socket on the new plug are identical to the standard configuration used in a conventional fluorescent lamp. This means that people who don't read the instructions (and there are many of them!) can easily insert a new LED bulb directly into an unmodified socket and damage the LED bulb. Or vice versa, the one who was not present when the lamp was changed will try to replace the burnt out LED light bulb with a fluorescent one, since the connectors are compatible. It was just a bad design choice, plain and simple. Pros: These bulbs (12" and 8") fit into existing sockets. They are significantly brighter than the old fluorescent tubes they replaced. use 35 watts compared to 54 watts for older fluorescent lamps - no ballast required, so one less component to fail and need replacing. 1st paragraph).- They use the same four-pin connector as fluorescent lights (and therefore can be plugged directly into the fixture), but are NOT compatible with a standard fluorescent power supply.- The cable nuts provided were too small to screw on 14- Gauge household wiring plus two jumper wires. - The plug supplied is too short to fit through the base of the light into the electrical junction box, so I had to run the AC power cords through the base of the light, which is not common. - One of the new plugs was fairly easy to fit onto the bulb , but the second one was so tedious I was afraid I would either break it or the lightbulb. I recently lost the ballast in a fixture with two round lamps, 8" and 12". Replacing the ballast was about $26 and the bulbs were 10 years old and pretty dim so I planned on replacing them too. These LED bulbs are significantly more expensive than traditional fluorescent bulbs, but since LED bulbs do not require a ballast, these savings make most of the difference. Whichever lamps you buy, pay attention to the "color temperature"! Check the lamps you have and choose the one that suits you best. If you want to replace your old fluorescent lamps, you have to remove (or at least disconnect) the lamp ballast, whether it worked or not, since the LED lamps have to be connected directly. to the household power. So get ready; This will most likely mean that you (or someone you hire) will need to do the following: - Remove and disconnect the fixture (since the household power cords connect directly to the ballast). - Reinstall the light by threading the power cords down through the base of the light (due to the short plugs supplied with the light); I was able to leave the grounding cable in the junction box because it is grounded directly on the lamp's metal frame. - Reconnect the household power cords to the LED lamp connector(s); You will need to have wire nuts on hand that are much larger than the ones that come with the bulbs. Luckily, you only need to do the above work if you are converting your fluorescent tube to LED for the first time. After that, it's just a standard bulb replacement task.