White Solar LED Post Light Cap 4.5" x 4.5" for Bridges, Fences, Decks, & Posts

I have six of these, installed as a set on stair railings in early 2009. The original NiCd batteries that came with them started dying off after about a year, so I replaced them with NiMH batteries, and so far the NiMHs have stayed alive (as of March, 2011). Here are the good things:1. The light is not terrifically bright, as with any LED solar light, but is definitely enough to see the stairs at night.2. The caps fit my railings, which are apparently an odd size (4.25" x 4.25"). These caps fit 4.5" x 4.5" without an adapter, then have adapters for 4.265" x 4.265" (the one I used), 4" x 4", and 3.5" x 3.5" (the adapters nest to make the increasingly smaller sizes).3. The style goes well with the rest of my railings and caps, which are either vinyl or composite.There have been two drawbacks so far:1. These are now noticeably yellower than my railings. Not really noticeable at a distance or at night, but definitely close-up during the day.2. I recently noticed that one of them was off at night and thought it might be the batteries refusing to charge, but it seems to be condensation inside the solar cell. I am currently researching to see if it can be fixed or if I have to buy a new one.

Bought 5 of these for my deck. Two years later, all 5 have died (no longer have light) and all 5 have gone from white to a faded tan off-white that looks out of place on my still-white composite posts.When they worked, and were white, they were fine. After two years, they are done. Would have liked to have got more time out of them..

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The bulb/charging section is the same used by thousands of cheap Chinese night lights. And they rarely work.We purchased 4, and 3 were dead out of the box. I even put NiMH batteries in them, but no luck. I tried a new and charged set of NiCads in all 3, no luck. Evidently they do little quality control during manufacturing, and Maine (importer) does no QA at all before shipping them to Lowes.The LEDs are surprisingly low output (for the one unit that worked) - we measured them at less than 2 lumens. A normal AA flashlight produces about 150 lumens. It's barely visible at night. It basically lights up the unit itself, but is much too weak to shed light on anything else. No, it won't help you find the steps. In fact it didn't even light up my hand 1' away.To make matters worse, they're using 1960s technology Ni-Cads, which will usually only last 5-6 months in the very best of conditions. They could have used NiMH, but that would have cost another .10c per battery - a cost they were not willing to absorb. The newer NiMH batteries last about 30x longer than NiCads, and their shelf life is upwards of 10 years. And they run in extreme cold and hot, unlike NiCads.An finally the electronics section of this unit is full of hand soldered electrical parts, hand soldered because automated circuit board manufacturing would have produced working units at the increased cost of about .05c/unit. All electronic parts are of horribly sub-par quality with broken wires, loose battery connections, defective charging circuits, and defective/low rated LED bulbs. Again they could have used reliable capacitors and transistors and solar panels, but all told that would have added another .15c to their manufacturing costs.As an electrical engineer, we took one apart just to see what the issue was. Some parts were actually manufactured in the 1980s, and the capacitors had leaked and rotted - apparently before assembly. The transistors are of a 1978-ish design, and when the "tech" soldered them to the board she broke one of the stems rendering it inoperable from the factory. The solar panel was micro-split in 3 places, and one of the units was never form-finished at all. And it was assembled and shipped to a Lowes store in that condition.Now I know we owe the Chinese $trillions of dollars, but must we accept this normal sub-par exports from them? Come on Lowes, who's doing your buying over there? Look at the other reviews - most only work for 3 months, and most don't work out of the box (like mine).

I bought 6 of these a long time ago and very disappointed. All burned out within 6 months. I then bought a rechargeable battery pack, charged all the batteries and no luck. I then bought new batteries... still failed. I am finally going to replace them since I need light.

This is just not a good product. The claim that they hold a charge for "up to 12 hours" is a joke. They do not hold a charge for more than about 3-4 hours each evening, even after being in full sunlight all day. They also did not fit the post properly, in spite of the post being a standard size and carefully measured before purchase.