Review on ⚙️ Adjustable 220V Control Regulator by HiLetgo by Ashton Dahmer

Bought one of these to reduce the stress on some old Christmas lights and to extend the life of the bulb. They only draw about 2A so the device won't overheat. However, upon reviewing the product I found that it uses a BTA16 triac which is rated at 16A RMS instead of the advertised 25A RMS, resulting in a 4 star rating instead of 5 stars. I also doubt it could handle 2000 watts of power without a fan cooling it and not blowing it out. With this type of controller, heat dissipation is the limiting factor because the heatsink is very small. As an experiment, I hooked it up to a Christmas tree with lightbulbs drawing 5.2A at 120VAC (measured with a clamp-on ammeter) to see how hot the heatsink got. As expected, the temperature exceeded 224F (the room was 68F) for a few minutes (hotter than boiling water) and hotter than I would imagine. The semiconductor die inside the triac chip will heat up even more, probably by about 15°F, so this is approaching the 150°C maximum operating temperature for the triac. I'm comfortable using it with my 2A Christmas garland, but personally I wouldn't go much larger. Assuming you are running the device at lower currents I think this is a great value. It's well packaged and works great. However, it does have exposed AC power cord connections, which is very unsafe for small children or pets, so it really needs to be in some sort of protective case. Enclosing it in a case wouldn't be easy as there are no mounting holes on the PCB, and enclosing it could lead to even higher temperatures if the case doesn't have good ventilation, including maybe a fan.