I have been using halogen bulbs in all the fixtures of my self-designed and installed landscape lighting system. The transformer sizes I installed (there are 2) are based on the total watts of the halogen bulbs pulling power from each transformer. All of the halogen bulbs are 20 watt, with a few 35 watt for specific applications. I have purchased halogen bulbs constantly over the years from various sources and found that in a landscape lighting plan that covers an entire property, the system regularly has a fixture with a dead bulb.

Decided to replace the halogen with LEDs to get a longer life out of the bulbs and reduce my operating cost by getting equal or more illumination per bulb using less wattage to operate. I felt I had to replace all the bulbs at the same time to avoid an odd look because I thought the color temperature would be very different between a halogen vs LED; and, it would look odd until all have been replaced.

The last time I needed to purchased bulbs I stumbled across these Sunthin 5w LED bulbs that claim to be a 50w equivalent. I decided to take the plunge. I have had them for several weeks and just a few days ago put the first one into a fixture, and a second one installed just yesterday. Well, I am ecstatic. There is no significant difference between the Sunthin bulb and most of the halogen bulbs in terms of color temperature. And, in terms of candle power (wattage), they are at least equivalent in illumination to the 20w halogens they replaced. They may even be equivalent to a 35w halogen; not sure they are equivalent to a 50w halogen, as claimed. I can live with difference since the bulb is using only 5w of power. I will eventually replace all the MR16 bulbs with these Sunthin LED bulbs. With all halogen bulbs my system has been at the maximum wattage allowed by the transformers and would have to buy a large transformer to add more fixtures. With bulbs using less wattage I can add additional fixtures without concern of exceeding the maximum wattage and avoid buying a larger, expensive transformer. On one transformer alone I will go from 600 watts of power needed for the halogen bulbs to only 150 watts needed for the same number of fixtures but using LED bulbs.

I will update this review Sunthin LED bulbs have been in use for an extended period of time.

Addendum: Just received my 3rd box of these bulbs. They work great. Much brighter and have a longer life, plus use less electricity.

These are very good color matches for incandescent bulbs. Purchased to replace the halogen lamps in the landscape lighting, but I didn't want to replace all the bulbs. The light quality from many LED lamps is very blue-white and appears harsh. The difference when mixing the standard LED lights with incandescent is painfully obvious, but these lamps are a very good match and can live in the same garden with the original incandescent bulbs and the look is very good.

The big pluses for the LED lamps are that they run very cool, and that they use about 1/5 the power. So we could increase the number of lamps in the garden and the number for lamps inside the house without upgrading the transformers.

If you are using these indoors, the light is also very good, and warm. However, if you use a dimmer with them, the light will flicker unnaturally at very low intensity settings. It still gets 5 stars because that is not a fault of the LED bulb. It is unavoidable without a special low voltage dimmer filter. the light is great from 20% brightness all the way to full on. So I like these and will buy more.

The only negative is that the housing is a little bulkier than the original Halogen types and might not fit every fixture. So maybe its 4&1/2 stars...

As shown in the listing images, these bulbs are 53mm tip to tip in length and 50mm across, whereas standard halogen MR16 bulbs are about 47mm long and 50mm across. I wanted them for Elco ET528W track light fixtures and the bulbs don't really fit, the bulb extends too far in front of it's flange for the fixture's glass lens / UV filter to be put in place. I was able to use them by leaving out the lens & using it's spring retaining clip to hold the bulb in place directly, although the bulb is then slightly wonky. This was ok for us, it's an office and we'd rather go without the heat & smell of halogen lamps but if you cared about using the lens then these bulbs are too big. The lens also acts as UV filter, but since LED lamps emit next to no UV, and we don't have any pricey artwork or fabrics in the room, I guess this is a wash.
The light is a nice warm white light but as regards brightness, these are not direct replacements for 50W halogens, they're maybe 2/3 as bright. It seems that 8W LEDs are more comparable to 50W halogens, but just like the early days of CFLs there's plenty of exaggerated claims out there (we won't use the L word) as to what's comparable to what.

I recently converted my house to solar and so got conscious about energy use in more detail. At the same time I was re-sodding my yard and thought why not put in led bulbs? I looked at the actual led fixtures but they're a fortune and I really don't see the point since you can just use bulbs like these at a fraction of the cost. The light from these is better than my halogen, albeit 35w, bulbs. It's crisp and very white--looks very professional. What it saves in energy is incredible. When I first decided to do the LV as led it was a kind of afterthought, sort of why not just to be a little more efficient but the reality, once I added up all the fixtures is startling. Without boring you with the details, I went from 680 kWh per month to around 45 kWh just by swapping out all my lights! Where I live that is a savings of about $60 per month and so easily pays for the bulbs in a few months. What I never really factored in was just how many fixtures I had and how long they ran every night. As an added bonus, since they don't get hot, or at least heat the lv fixture's glass, the irrigation doesn't tend to affect them. My old halogens frequently had to be replaced, even after siliconing each fixture, because of the temp differential when the sprinklers hit them.

This review is very similar to the review I just left for a 10 pack of a similar bulb but at a lower price point. They look very similar and I wonder if they LED device inside. This style has the single lens in the center whereas most of the previous designs that have not lived up to my expectations have 3 or 4 lenses over the individual LED chips.

I have been going through a lot of MR16 LEDs in my landscape lights over the past three years. I have tried bulbs that cost about $5 each and cheap import bulbs that cost about $2 each and none of them last. A couple of the $5 bulbs lasted 2 1/2 years. If they are running every day for 6 hours on average, that is only 5500 hours out of the longest lasting of the bulbs- far less than the advertised 30,000 to 50,000 hour lifespan. I did out the math, and even if the $2 bulbs only last 18 months, it is still less expensive to use them than halogen bulbs that also last about 18 months but use far more electricity. So, now my goal is to find the longest lasting LED bulbs. (I have 20 spotlight fixtures in my yard so I get tired of changing bulbs all the time and want ones that will last!) Which brings me to these bulbs that are approaching the high end of the price range.

There was a key feature of them that I was eager to try out- they were shorter than the previous MR16 LED bulbs I had tried, which means they will fit in my landscape light housing with the front protective lens on and sealed. On previous bulbs, the front housing glass always hit the front of the bulb and may have prevented good weather sealing. I have tried running some of the previous LED bulbs without the glass front on the housing to see if heat build up in the housing was contributing to premature failure, but the failure rate for those with the front glass and those without are the same. These bulbs are short enough that they fit into the housing without contacting the front glass similar to the original halogen bulbs. So, I am running them with the glass covers on. It has been 8 months so far and no bulbs have failed. I will continue to update this review with longevity details.

Beyond the life length, these bulbs put out a pleasing light. It doesn't look quite like 2700K to me. They seem closer to 3000K to me as they are a tad bluer than some of the other LED bulbs I already had in use. That isn't a problem for me in a landscape application, but indoors it might be more of a problem. The lights are very bright and have a nice beam spread. Other LED bulbs had significant light fall-off at the edges of their illumination angle, even those with a wider rated angle. These have good illumination even at their periphery which lights up the bushes they are aimed at very well.

So performance is good and worthy of the four stars here. Longevity is still under review. The similar bulbs that I got in a 10 pack are looking like a better deal at more than a dollar less per bulb, assuming they both last the same time.