Reece Hardy has seen the light as he reviews a selection of All LED’s latest innovations.
With a forthcoming job that required a quality lighting solution, I was pleased to take delivery of some of All LED’s latest products to help with the task. The package that arrived consisted of 4.7W and 7W dimmable Caterham and Jaguar GU10 LED lamps, 12V LED strip on a reel and F1 straight and 90° angled connectors.
The LED strip was being used as a retro replacement for an existing concealed lighting installation, while the standard BC22 lamp holders were used with GU10 converter plugs for the remaining lamps.
The first thing that I noticed about the LED strip was the terminal block design which allows the strip to be terminated easily without soldering – something which I value highly having (often unsuccessfully) attempted to navigate the ‘soldering minefield’ that can be required of other strips that I’ve tried in the past. It’s important to remember that excess pressure should not be used, and care must be taken when terminating as the strips are only 1mm in size, so are delicate when compared with standard blocks. The design is superb, however, as the units are designed to use solid cable of up to 1.5mm, ideal for T&E.
I used the 90° angled F1 connector and some angled strip wood which was used for mounting. I found the process to be very easy indeed. To mount the strip, simply pull the 3M backing paper from the adhesive, stick the first section and then peel the paper back as it is mounted – job done. Another beauty of this product is the number of different colour variants available, making it suitable for all tasks. There is also a 24V version available for those higher power applications. In use, I found the LED strip provided a sharp, high-quality lighting solution which the client was very complimentary of.
With the LED strip now done, I next had to upgrade some tungsten filament units with the 4.7W 6500K GU10 Caterham lamps. Part of this job involved an angle poise table lamp which needed to be adapted for use, so some reconfiguration of the metalwork was necessary. Upon completion, it was immediately apparent that the light output and quality was considerably better than the previous lamp. It’s also great to see considerate manufacturers like All LED removing excess packaging and plastic from their supply chain!
For the standard tungsten BC lamp holder upgrade, BC to GU10 converters were used, as GU10 free ceiling rose attachments were not available at the time. Where a brighter light was required, the higher rated All LED Jaguar 7W LED was used instead and proved to be an excellent solution. Some of the upgrades that I undertook also included dimmer control, while the rest were standard wall switches. We’re all aware of the issues that surround dimming LEDs, so it’s lucky that both the 4.7W Caterham and the 7W Jaguar LEDs worked flawlessly. The Caterham lamps are equipped with All LED’s Opti-Dim technology, which is an advanced dimming protocol and method that is unique to All LED and has helped to create a product that dims to zero on almost any dimmer – very impressive!
Overall, I’ve had a really good experience with these products from All LED and each of the LED strip, Caterham and Jaguar GU10s boast unique features that I’ve not seen from other brands before, making them a great option for future projects you might be faced with.
Browse the ALL LED Caterham GU10 range here
