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BELL + HOWELL SOLAR-RECHARGEABLE DISK LIGHTS

Bell + Howell Solar-Rechargeable Disk Lights, retail $19.95 (disklights.com)
Manufactured by E Mishan & Sons (https://emsoninc.com/)
Last updated 05-23-20

The Solar-Rechargeable Disk Light is a garden accent light that can be placed virtually anywhere outdoors where a little splash of light will do good.

They feature four high-powered phosphor warm white LEDs that project a wide flood of light and a photoelectric switch (often referred to as an, "electric eye") that turns them on at dusk and off at dawn.

They are supposedly weatherproof (though I have read some claims that indicate otherwise) and can also supposedly be placed in a lawn and safely be run over by a lawnmower (though again I have read some claims that indicate otherwise -- the lawnmower reportedly shredded the product!)

Since there is no lawn here, I cannot perform this potentially deadly (to the light!) test (which I would simply call, "The Lawnmower Test") myself.

Jeez I've used up a lot of parenthesis just in my opening statement, hahaha!!!

The Solar-Rechargeable Disk Light is sold in packages of four; to the best of my knowledge you cannot purchase them singly.

Size of product w/hand to show scale

SIZE

Using the Solar-Rechargeable Disk Light is easy: just turn it on by pressing the rubberised button on the unit's underside (the unit will not turn its LEDs on when you do this unless you're already in near-total darkness) and deploy them outdoors in any place that will receive at least eight hours of direct sun every day.

The units come with pointed stakes so you can just push them flush against the ground and they'll stay put. Use these stakes especially if you deploy them in a location that gets mowed such in a lawn; without the stakes they might be possibly sucked up into the mower blade and become damaged or destroyed when you run the mower over them.

The photo directly below shows you what the stake looks like.

Note that the unit itself is upside-down in this pic so that the stake points skyward.

The Solar-Rechargeable Disk Lights are solar-rechargeable, so I don't have to tell you which part to take off, throw in the yard, start the lawnmower and then rather emphatically tell you not to.

Just place them outdoors where they'll receive seven or eight hours of direct sunlight per day and that should take care of things.

This product is meant to be used as a garden accent light outdoors, not as a flashlight meant to be carried around, thrashed, used, and abused; so I won't try to drown it in my toilet, bash it against the concrete floor of a patio or a steel rod, let my landlady's puppies and adult doggos uranate (piddle) on it, run over it with a 450lb Quickie Pulse 6 (motorised wheelchair), or perform other indecencies on it that a flashlight might have to go through.

So this portion of the web page will be significantly more bare than this section of the web page about a product that was born to be a flashlight and nothing but a flashlight.

One thing that I noticed almost immediately was just how fv▎♂g dim they are considering that they use high-powered LEDs.

I mean, you can comfortably look directly at the LEDs when it's lighted!!!
They might as well been made with 5mm flat-top LEDs but they still would have been dim.
I had compared this unit with the other three while I still had them, and all four units had subpar intensity.

On the subject of water-resistance, there are no environmental seals such as O-rings anywhere in the unit (I looked for them when I disassembled the unit to get to the battery); I wouldn't be a bit surprised to come home some rainy night to a dead unit and find it full of water.

The product looks well-constructed -- but the looks are cosmetic only; once I had it open, it had a cheap chintzy feel to it like many other products of the, "Hoo Phlung Pu" brand frequently do -- that is to say, products made overseas, typically in perspiration shops by droves of far-underpaid employees.

The aluminum cover gives the unit a solid look, but that's about where it ends.

NiMH batteries tend to perform somewhat poorly in extreme temperatures such as what you might find inside these lights in tropical and subtropical latitudes; many users report that the battery in these units can crap out in a matter of weeks because of this. Your mileage can and probably will vary however, but it's something to take note of in any case.

I noticed that the LEDs are under PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) at a low AF frequency (est. 30 to 45Hz) -- that is, although they appear to be steady-on, if you look at them while rapidly turning your head, you can see them flicker. This was done presumably to help to extend the usable charge of that tiny AAA cell, and I do not consider this to be a negative in any way, shape, or form.

Photograph of the product at the base of a tree as you might have it deployed.

Photograph of the product at night, illuminated of course.

Spectrographic analysis of the LEDs in this light.

Spectrographic analysis of the LEDs in this light; spectrometer's response narrowed to a band between 445nm and 455nm to pinpoint native emission peak wavelength, which is 457.870nm.

The raw spectrometer data (tab-delimited that can be loaded into Excel) is at disk.txt

USB2000 Spectrometer graciously donated by P.L.

A beam cross-sectional analysis would normally appear here, but the ProMetric System
that I use for that test was destroyed by lightning in mid-July 2013.

TEST NOTES:
Product was purchased online at a now-unknown website on 12-31-18 and was received on 01-10-19.

They come as a set of four; however I only have a single unit for testing; the other three were left in Shelton WA. USA when I moved to Fresno and were subsequently stolen. Therefore, the dreadful, "

*" icon will be appended to their listings on this website, indicating that some -- but not ALL -- test units were stolen from me.

UPDATE: 11-28-19
The product turned on at 6:30pm PST on 11-26-19 and extinguished sometime between 3:02am and 3:12am PST (though it was quite dim when I saw it at 3:00am PST straight up) on 11-27-19.
That gives a runtime of ~8 hours.

UPDATE: 11-29-19
The product turned on at 6:30pm PST on 11-27-19 and extinguished less than two hours later.

UPDATE: 11-30-19
The product turned on at 6:30pm PST on Thanksgiving (11-28-19) and extinguished (it was actually still illuminated but only extremely dimly so) less than ten minutes later.

UPDATE: 12-03-19
It's dead, Jim!

After spending one night out in the rain, the unit failed to turn on the following evening. Though I have not yet performed an autopsy, water entry is HIGHLY suspect here.
As a result, the always-dreadful, " Failed or was destroyed during/after testing

Failed or was destroyed during/after testing

" icon will be appended to its listings at once, denoting total product failure.

UPDATE: 02-22-20
Some butt wagon stole the damn thing.
I hope that they're happy with it.

UPDATE: 05-23-20
Wouldn't you know it? The ass blossom that stole it was apparently so piddled off at the asinine thing that they returned it!

PROS:
They're rather nice looking units
***MAY*** fare OK in decent weather
Photoelectric switch which means you don't have to fv▎ with them once deployed

NEUTRAL:

CONS:
Dim, dim, dim!!! What went wrong?
Dim, dim, dim!!! What went wrong?
DIM, DIM, DIM!!! WHAT WENT WRONG?!?
Not all that water- and weather-resistant

E Mishan & Sons

Solar-rechargeable garden accent light

High-power phosphor warm white SMD LED

Wide flood

N/A

Pushbutton on/off on bottom; also photoelectric

Plastic w/ aluminum bezel

Aluminum ring

1x size AAA NiMh 600mAh cell

Unknown/unable to measure

Possible light weather-resistance at maximum

﹛｜N TRUCO O CONVITE GOER VESTIDA COMO UN MONSTRUO ATERRADOR ORINANDO EN UN JACK-O, NO!!!

Batteries (already installed)

Unknown/unable to measure

109g (3.840 oz.)

Unknown; though probably China)

2 years

aka.

Bell + Howell Solar-Rechargeable Disk Lights * disklights.com

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