dont buy LED strands from Deal Extreme

Homiesinheaven · Post by **Homiesinheaven** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 12:06 pm

Someone on this board had posted a great deal on these LEDs:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.6483

I knew this was too good to be true. I wanted to order 20 of these but I bought 1 to make sure it was a good product. This comes from Hong Kong and it has all the signs of sweat shop production.

The battery case was cracked which might have just happened at shipping. One of the battery terminals was missing so it doesn't work at all. I got it to work with paperclips to complete the circuit. The battery terminals that did arrive are rusty. A lot of the wires and soldering points are dirty and also rusty. WTF? This was horribly manufactured, dont waste your money.

Bounce530 · Post by **Bounce530** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 12:32 pm

Damn that sucks...I bought a bunch of these strings last year from the same place...
So with one burn and two camping trips worth of wear on them, the only problem I had is, the wires did get brittle, and one of the sliders on the battery box broke off.
I had planned on buying a couple more strings since they are so bright, and cheap, but now...???

Post by **Sham** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 12:42 pm

Those look like the same ones they sell in the evil big box stores at Christmas time. I think the price is about the same, but if you wait until right after the holidays, the price goes down to 75% off. They have every color imaginable there. The ones at Walmart this year really sucked. They had a very cheap switch and they ran on "c" batteries.
As a recommendation, Home Depot and Target had the best ones last year and I would guess that they would have the same this year.
Target had one a while back that had color changing LEDs on the string of 20. What an amazing effect that was.

Homiesinheaven · Post by **Homiesinheaven** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 1:21 pm

rad, i'll check with Target. no big deal on this, i only lost 5 bucks but want to make sure to warn people buying in bulk. there's an old adage in spanish that fits this perfectly... "cheap things end up costly."

lollypopsickle · Post by **lollypopsickle** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:24 pm

that's sad that your dealextreme lights were so bad!!

just to put it out there, i have had really positive experiences with them getting bright, inexpensive battery-powered lights.

good luck GLOWING!!

bm_cricket · Post by **bm_cricket** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:28 pm

Homiesinheaven wrote:rad, i'll check with Target. no big deal on this, i only lost 5 bucks but want to make sure to warn people buying in bulk. there's an old adage in spanish that fits this perfectly... "cheap things end up costly."

Good idea. I only buy from moral, non-sweat shop producers like Target.

Now the fact it was poorly shipped and broken.. well, that just sucks... yeah. Avoid them..

Post by **Sham** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:57 pm

Now before you go and toss that piece of crap in the trash, try this idea.
You can run two set of the LED lights on one 4 'AAA' battery pack. They use a tiny amount of power and a single set of batteries will last the whole week. I set up the lights in parallel and then attached them to my night time coat. 40 lights running on 4 batteries. I think I'm using it 3 years straight on the same batteries. Ho-dee freakin' doe!

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 4:32 am

All the reviews mentioned that the battery case sucked and would be best replaced.

I suggest at least AA batteries though, and Ds where you can.

I never saw any battery powered strings in stores, other than solar.

And you can always do the fiber optics thing and get real LEDs.