Useful Gadget of the Week: Dimmable Megaman 6 Watt GU10 LED Bulbs

You could spend days trawling on-line forums reading opinions on LED light bulbs. There’s such a vast range of quality, price and colours to look at, and that’s before you get into dimming performance.

Some time ago I asked an installer friend to recommend a bulb for us to replace the halogen GU10’s in our kitchen.

From his experience of a large variety of makes and models, employing them across many different installations with various dimmers he recommended the Megaman LR1206dDGv2-WFL.

Megaman say these 6 Watt LEDs produce 410 Lumens and are equivalent to 35 Watts in old money. We replaced the dozen 50w halogens in our kitchen with them, reducing our power consumption from 600 Watts to just 72.

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That 88% in power reduction has made very little noticeable difference to the light level in the room and the beam angle (quoted as 35 degrees) seems ideal.

The body is very slightly longer (57mm) than the halogen bulbs they replaced and sit a little proud of our eyeball fittings in the kitchen ceiling. But once they’re installed you don’t notice and it’s not been an issue.

The “Warm white 2800K” colour is a lot more attractive that some of the bulbs we’ve tried in the past that had a much colder commercial feel. Bulb life is quoted as 25,000 hours.

Prices fluctuate but these bulbs are around £10 at the time of writing.  You can buy cheaper of course, but they’re by no means the top price, these Philips Master LEDs have a good reputation for example but are currently around 40% more.

After around 20 months of daily dimming I’m confident in recommending these Megaman GU10 6 Watt LED PAR16 Dimming 2800 k Light Bulb [Energy Class A+] LR1206dDGv2-WFL

Let us know in the comments below which dimming LED bulbs you’ve had most success with.

megamanuk.com  :  Available from Amazon

Last update on 2024-03-14 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

21 Comments on "Useful Gadget of the Week: Dimmable Megaman 6 Watt GU10 LED Bulbs"

  1. 6W is getting a little long in the tooth now – have they got a higher power version – A lot of lamps seem to be in the 9W range now.

  2. 9w is 50% more more per bulb. I want less not more 🙂

  3. Roy Donaldson | January 13, 2016 at 11:37 am |

    I’ve got about 50 of these in my house and I’d agree with Mark on how good they are. They have about the same output as a 50W GU10, fit pretty much perfectly as replacements and MegaMan had offered a 5Year guarantee when I bought mine. Ask at your local electrical supplier and see if they can give you a better wholesale price.

  4. After lots of research I too have been using 12 of these 6W dimming 2800K GU10s and am very impressed with them.

    However for some rooms the light is still a little cold when dimmed (I prefer a warmer light when dimmed, just as with Halogens) so recently I’ve fitted the new megaman “dim to warm” GU10s to our lounge and bedroom. These are great and really are a like for like swap for halogens.

    I’ve been using Varilight V-Pro dimmers (which work very well), but would prefer to use a HA solution which enables dimming locally on the switch and also has the ability to program schedules (via an app for example). Ideally the switch should be polished chrome. The only solution I’ve been able to find has been lightwave RF but I’ve read very mixed reviews. Does anyone have any other suggestions or ideas? Thanks!

  5. @Phil S – how about a Z-Wave micro module behind a regular wall switch?

  6. Thanks, am I a correct in thinking that this would give master on/off control at the wall switch, with dimming only available separately via an app? If the wall switch is ‘off’ I assume that the z-wave module cannot turn the light on?
    Any recommendations on which module and control system? Ideally I’d like a system which I can also use for security monitoring/ alarm purposes (heating and audio are already taken care of with Evohome and Sonos)
    Cheers,
    Phil

  7. What’s the startup time of these Megaman bulbs like, i.e the time it takes from switching the light on to the LEDs lighting up?

    I brought a load of Philips dimmable bulbs about a year ago and there is about a 1 second or less delay in the light output, it might even be as low as half a second even but still enough to be annoying. The delay is also there when just using a normal on/off switch as well.

  8. @Phil – have a look at this post and this one.

    You get local control of dimming by holding in the switch and the light can be turned on and off remotely via Z-Wave too. Check out our forums if you have any more questions.

  9. Steve Daniels | January 13, 2016 at 3:40 pm |

    Hi Mark,

    How few of these work with an X10 DIN rail dimmer? I know 5 * 6W is a little low, but that’s what I’m after…

    Steve

  10. @Steve – good question 🙂

    I have some circuits with as few as 2 x GU10’s so it’s never going to work with them. Hoping to move over to these Z-Wave DIN Rail dimmers soon instead.

  11. Used these on my C-BUS system in my old house and I loved them. Nice amount of light with the correct colour temperature for a lounge / bedrooms. Never had any trouble with them either.

  12. There is a misconception about LEDs and meeting minimum load requirements for dimmers. If the dimmer is a three wire type i.e. it has both Live and Neutral power input connections, then it will generally work with LED loads lower than its rated minimum.
    However typical wallbox dimmers have only Live in and Load out connections and so must rely on the load to pass a small current at all times to power it, making LED dimming unlikely to work so well as a three wire dimmer.
    In fact with LEDs the bigger problem can be too much load rather than too little. This is because LED lamps with integral driver electronics have an inrush current at switch on each half cycle that can typically be up to 10 times the rated load!

    So a 6W LED can momentarily draw as much current as say a 60W load. If you use multiple 6W lamps together then the total inrush current can easily exceed the maximum rating of the dimmer, say 400W. This can clearly stress the dimmer components and may result in failure.

    There are of course many other issues with dimming LEDs such as poor low end performance variable start up times, etc. but manufacturers do seem to be getting better at it!

  13. As it happens I need 5 Megaman e14 bulbs that are dimmable and works with LightwaveRF dimmers. The Megaman 143236 is now discontinued, does anyone have any recommendations?

  14. Michael Dewhurst | January 14, 2016 at 11:59 am |

    I’m using the Philips master 5.5W in your link. They are exactly the same height as halogens, if that is important to you.

    For the last two years we’ve had 11 cool white in the Kitchen/Utility, 6 warm white in the hall, all dimmed via CBUS dimmers.

    They replaced 50W halogens, and and the cool white ones actually seem brighter than the halogens, probably the different colour.They really bounce white off the white worktops, so much so that we run them dimmed almost all the time.

    Incidentally the mimimum load limit for a CBus dimmer is 15W, just took out one of the bulbs to try the dimmmer with 11W and it worked fine, dimmed down to off and stayed off with no flicker.

    Apparently, good quality dimmable bulbs have a circuit in them that stops flicker and actually shuts off the lamp below a certain level, non-dimmable, and low quality dimmable bulbs don’t have this circuit, and will flicker constantly when they are dimmed off.

  15. I’ve just put these lamps into my 3 wire Qubino install. One quirk I have is although they dim well when controlled by software, local dimming via the switch doesn’t work. In a bank of for lamps, I have replaced one of these LEDs for a halogen and now local switch operated dimming works.

  16. @Panny that’s a strange one. Let us know what Qubino say.

  17. David Rhodes | January 19, 2016 at 2:52 pm |

    I have around 150 of the Megaman 6w Bulbs all controlled via Fibaro relay and dimmer modules they have been running for over 2 years so far 3 bulbs have failed

  18. If you don’t need the dimming function, the 4W version are nearly as bright. We have the 6w in our kitchen, and the 4w versions in the hallways.

    I find the megaman dimmable led bulbs generally ok with our Zwave wall dimmers (Quibino), though not quite the range of dimming as a normal bulb.

    However with a POPP plug in module, set for LED, I’ve not got them dimming nicely at all.

  19. I should add, they are the first bulbs I found to actually be good enough to replace 50W Halogens bulbs properly.

    People did’nt even realise they aren’t normal bulbs, as the light output and quality of light is really good, and miles better than the usual cheap supermarket offerings.

    I would always advise trying a couple of bulbs before you commit to buying a house full.

  20. will these work with LightwafeRF dimmers?

  21. A big response to the LED issue! I have good news then. I found that ‘Trillion’ do LED bulbs as cheap as ordinary bulbs. I have installed lots of them and the colour is good and no failures yet. I haven’t dimmed them though.

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