OxyLED Dimmable LED Copper Wire String Lights

LED lighting has come a long way, and one of my favorite companies that’s making the latest and greatest is OxyLED. They always find a way to innovate, taking a product we all thought we knew and changing things up just enough to make the common product shiny and new. The latest is their LED string lights. I’ve reviewed a few before, and a one was, up until now, my favorite. Let me share why this new offering from OxyLED supplanted them so handily.

To start, we’ve all been there. The best laid out plans to decorate and light a fixture in the house come undone because try as you might, you’ll see the wire. OxyLED realized this and decided if you’re going to see it anyway, you might as well make it sparkle with gorgeous, bright shiny copper. And I’m loving it. Gone also are the harsh, bright blue-white lights of LED’s from the past and in their place are soft, warm white lights (2700-2900K warm white range) that aren’t hard on your eyes int he least. But what took it up to 11 for me was the remote control. Not just a simple “on” or “off”, but you can dim them, and they can flash, strobe and fade too. That’s just too cool. Not just for holidays or parties, but I can use these lights for my year round decorating, I can use them for mood light, I can even leave them up for parties and social gatherings. There’s nothing they’re not good for, and at 120 lights on a 40 foot string, the possibilities are endless! And with over 12″ from the first light to the control box, and almost 60″ from the box to the plug, your lights will have plenty of length to hide the cord and keep it hidden. I did notice that at a certain distance (about 20 feet and through a wall) the remote didn’t always get the signal through. Careful placement of the antennae should remedy that, however.

All this and you get OxyLED’s stellar service and support, for the life of the product. 10 brightness levels, 3 modes, a remote control, a beautiful light set with an equally beautiful wire, perfect lighting colors and lifetime support? And for only $14.99? That’s a steal. I’m planning on picking up a few sets, because they have so many uses, I’m making plans right now to light a few projects. I love these lights, and I think you will too.

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I received the above product(s) free of charge from HisGadget and OxyLED.  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.

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Oak Leaf Starry String Copper Wire 100 LED String Lights

I considered the last string of LED lights I reviewed to be the “Gold Standard” for these types of “starry” light strings, and while I like the Oak Leaf LED lights a lot, they fall a little short of me, but I still consider them to be fantastic lights, and recommend these type of lights very highly for holiday decorating, or really for all year round decorating ideas.

To start you have 100 LED’s on a bendable, moldable 33 foot copper wire, with your LED’s spaces about 3 & 3/4″ apart. There’s minimal sheathing on the string, and it will be very visible on things like Christmas trees or anything that’s dark in color. the lights are a soft white hue, not the stark blue or almost purple of the cheaper LED’s. I didn’t like the AC adapter as much as the RTGS lights, but I still like an AC adapter over a set of batteries any day. The RTGS lights also had a longer run of cord from the AC to the first light, and the Oak Leaf lights have only about 9 or so inches before your first light. I also didn’t much care for how the string ended. It’s just some soldered wire with a snip of plastic shrink tube. That’s it. It’s not even fully closed, so there’s a chance, while minute, that something could get into that tube and cause an arc. Unlikely, but possible. It also in my mind fully negates them being “water resistant”. So I would keep that in mind.

the end of the string. Not very “waterproof”!

Looking down the tube at bare wire

The pluses of these Oak Leaf Micro LED “Starry” Lights far outweigh the negatives, and I think lights like these are just gorgeous and have so many useful applications, from the holidays and beyond. I have several strings and use them all year long, and with LED’s you know you’ll get years and years of flawless use, because the diodes themselves are rated to last for up to 20 years! And at a platry 2.8 watts of power, they won’t run up the electric bill, and they run so cool they’re safe for under displays, or near delicate fabrics. They are also backed with a generous 12-month “Refund or Replacement” warranty. I plan to pick up several more of these types of lights, and I can’t imagine a home that wouldn’t look just a little better with a string or two strung around.

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I received the above product(s) free of charge from Oak Leaf & Kohree.  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.

 

RTGS Products Micro LED 100 Light String

With the holidays fast approaching and our proclivity in this house to really overdo it on the Christmas decorations, I couldn’t have been more thrilled when RTGS Products offered us two different versions of their LED string lights with ultra thin wires, and I couldn’t say yes fast enough. I’m glad they did, because in all my years of playing with and decorating with novelty lights, I’ve never come across a set I loved so much.

Way back when, before LED lights came to prominence, there were really only what craft stores called “rice lights”, which were tiny incandescent bulbs on a string, powered by batteries, and were a major disappointment every time we tried them. While they were neat looking, and looked somewhat decent, they dimmed quickly, were difficult to work with, and required a giant battery pack the belied their intended use of lighting smaller, delicate features. RTGS Products Micro LED Light string solves all those issues and makes decorating with their lights a dream. The wire is ultra thin, almost micro filament, so it disappears into whatever you string them on, and it’s bendable so they’ll hold the shape or direction you put them in easily. And the light! Oh, the light. So bright and clear, no “dim” bulbs on the 100 light string, and because they’re powered by a standard DC transformer, you can plug them into any wall socket and be good to go. And with 10 feet of cable from the plug to the first light, you have plenty of distance so you’re not bound to the immediate vicinity of the wall socket! With 4 inches between bulbs, you can stretch them out for a delicate lighting effect, or bunch them up for something bolder, but the choice is yours! The best part? Everything but the transformer plug is 100% water and weather proof, and 100% submersible! And because the RTGS Micro LED Lights draw very little power, they use only a fraction of the power used by a traditional light sting saving you money and being eco-friendly. And, because they’re LED, you have about a 30,000 hour/20 year life span, so you can decorate features in your house with the utmost confidence and not worry about switching out the lights every few years or replacing burned out bulbs.

As if all these other features weren’t enough, RTGS Products offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee and a whopping 2 year warranty! Talk about standing behind their products! I’m in love with these lights. I got two sets, the warm white and the cool white, and I put the warm white up right away on a topiary that came lit, but like every single “pre-lit” tree or decoration, the lights stopped working for no discernible reason withing a few months. I’d given up hope, and the RTGS Products shined a light (pardon the pun) on the possibility of lighting the things around my house I’d given up hope lighting. I can’t wait to put the cool white set up for the holidays, either. I can’t remember the last time I was excited to put up lights of any sort, but with RTGS Products Micro LED stings, I’m all giddy about lights again!

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I received the above product(s) free of charge from RTGS Products.  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.

Esky 3-Piece Solar-Powered Tulips

Sometimes there’s a product that seems like a good idea, like it could be cute under the right circumstances, maybe enhance a yard or planter. And then it gets here, and you just kinda go “Huh!”, because it just missed the mark, and now you have a product you don’t really know what to do with. That is what my situation is here. It’s not even that I don’t like them, because I do, I just don’t know what I’m going to do with them.

I’m old enough to remember the last couple of waves of solar-powered products. They were overpromised and underdelivered. They didn’t last long, weren’t very bright, not at all efficient and were not very attractive looking. We needed technology to catch up with the innovation. And It looks like it has, because these Esky Solar Tulips are bright and vivid and dazzling and last a good long time after about 6 hours of sun (something we’re not exactly lacking in California!) A single monofilament LED is surrounded by a quartet of vivid cloth “petals”, and a pair of pretty green leaves sprout from the “stem” that is the metal rod used to stand both the flowers and the solar cell that powers them. LED’s like these are a very bright, pure white, but are such a low drain diode that you lots of time lit with very little energy used, and they don’t get so hot that they melt everything they touch. And all powered by a single 600mA rechargeable AAA Ni-MH battery. So it won’t cost an arm and a leg to replace and keep lit for years and years!

In the end, they are bright without being overpoweringly so, and are cute in a very novelty way, but they truly don’t look much like tulips, either lit or in natural light, and stand out in a flowerbed because, really, how many of us have light-up flowers? They do everything they say the would, and it’s up to you whether you think they’ll add to or detract from your garden or decor. For me, the shine came off the apple fairly quickly and I couldn’t find a place to put them where I thought they looked nice, and could weather the California sun and heat and not end up some bleached-out stem of white and pale green “stuff” that lights up at night.

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I received the above product(s) free of charge from Esky and HisGadget, Inc..  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.