Manor House Solar LED Marker Lights - Set of 4

I have had my fill of solar powered, led lights that had a cheap battery and just would not remain lighted for any reasonable time. I purchased these specifically because of the replaceable batteries. Please take the advice of the previous posters -- just buy the Energizer batteries that are paired (by Amazon) with this product. The OEM batteries are 900ma and the Energizer batteries are 2300ma which will extend the "on" time by 2.5 times. I put the Energizer batteries in upon receipt (they come pre-charged) and all of the units remained on throughout the night.The lights are certainly bright enough to mark a pathway. The units are constructed of cast aluminum so they should be durable.My only complaint is the fact that the batteries are accessed from the underside of the units. I was hoping to install these lights on the edge of a concrete driveway using a grey construction adhesive (like they do on an airport ramp). However, this installation would make the battery inaccessible. Therefore, I installed them with drilled plastic anchors (which were included). Overall, I am very happy with the units.

I bought these last summer so I can find the dock at night. They're great! Super bright and so far have held up well. I took them in for the winter and removed the batteries, hoping this will help with their longevity, but not sure that's really necessary. My only complaint -- and it's minor -- is the fact that it takes SIX screws (included) to close the lid for the batteries. Pain in the tushie. But otherwise a great product and a very good price. These four lights replaced two almost identical lights that I had purchased for $30 each. Yup. I'm happy.

Puts out good light on my little dock so it is visible in the water but the batteries are weak and don't last all night. Take the advice of other posters and upgrade the batteries. I got the eneloop by Panasonic AA 2000mAh as recommended on here. 3 out of 4 are great. One was dead? They last all night. I contacted Panasonic re: the dead battery. I have the option to return it at my cost for them to test and let me know if they will replace this 1 of 4 battery. Not sure it is worth the cost and effort. Bottom line, these are bright low profile lights and work well for my purpose.

I bought 20 of these for our 400 ft dock on the St. Johns River in Northeast FL. Installed the lights in Feb 2016. As of Oct 2016 all 20 lights still operate perfectly.These lights have been through all kinds of weather and have survived.Just last weekend, Hurricane Matthew came through our area. Our dock was totally submerged for over 24 hours and was also battered by 6 ft waves generated by hurricane force wind gusts.Sadly, our dock was twisted like a pretzel, some sections floating in the water for days after.Through all this i was amazed the next night after the storm when all the lights were still working. Even the one that had been bobbing in the water on the floating , broken part of our dock.

Order them today! I live in the country and don't use bright lights outside because they draw bugs. I have low voltage landscaping lights around the house but needed lights on the steps on both decks. I tried less expensive solar lights over the years but they didn't last very long. Three years ago Lowe's got these in and I bought 2 of their 2 packs for $28. After 3 years of harsh winters, these lights are (finish has dulled) performing as well as the day I mounted them. I have not even had to replace the "generic" rechargeable batteries. I decided that I needed a few more and was going to bite the bullet on the price but found that Amazon had this 4 pack for $32.44. With my free Prime shipping on top of that, they were a steal! Some reviewers have complained that they don't light all night. Well, duh, they're very bright solar charged lights with only one 1.5 AA battery. In my experience, they last long enough into the night to cover the time that they are needed by us. I'm very happy with them and will certainly buy more of them if needed.

Skip my Review and jump to the bottom for the 2016 UPDATE. This is NOT the product I reviewed in good faith. It has been completely redesigned. I gave it 5 stars for 2015. I currently give it 1 star because I have no knowledge of it and refuse to be party to a distortion on the part of NII Northern International, INC, the AMZN retailer selling it, and AMZN itself, for using reviews on an entirely differently engineered product.2015 ReviewTime is up. I have had a set of these since April (3 sets total now), and I'm declaring them a great design and sharp lights to mark your dock, driveway, or property.Pro 1These aren't waterproof. It clearly says water-resistant on the box. They are the only picture-on-the-box marker at Amazon that clearly has a notch hole under the light. Then when you first get them, you can flip them over and see that the notch runs to 2 channels and into the chamber where the LEDs are. Are they nuts? NO.The problem with solar pathway lights etc starts when the water and moisture can't get back OUT. I have been following the markers for sale and just about all of the supposed "waterproof" and otherwise ones, have high failure rates. The important part of the design of these is the small black box which holds the battery and solar panel. When you put in the battery and screw it down (with the right screwdriver and paying attention) that area of the unit IS watertight enough to fend off failures.The water or moisture getting into the chamber with the LEDs is a non-issue, because the LEDs are covered with silicon or something. It's called "potted". The water can't get to them. Then when the weather clears and the sun comes out, any moisture/water which got in, evacuates. These things get over 100*F on sunny days. This is also how most solar pathway lights have been designed for years. They put a hole in the bottom of the light cover. It's too expensive to put in different materials which have the exact same expansion coefficients. Then you have to have intense QC in production. It is done, but they are for commercial apps, and cost about $45 a piece to build and make a profit.Pro 2 - It's a nice-to-have, but these are designed and quality overseen by a real lighting company with their rep at stake. "Manor House" is one of about a dozen trademarks under which Northern International Inc. in Vancouver does business. They are relatively small, but make a cool marker and LED candles..Pro 3- I'm estimating, but the LEDs are in the 4500K-5000K color temperature arena . That means white, as in pure white. Sharp and crisp for outdoors. Not the pleasantly yellowish 3500K range, which is soft and a warm pleasure for the inside of your home. And not that blue/purple tinted florescent-light-gone-bad 6500K.. FWIW, that idiot obsession with blue tinted light started 10+ years ago. BMW put HID projector headlights in their cars. To the BMW driver, he/she saw a stronger more white headlight-field. But to an oncoming driver, over in the other lane, they were just offline enough to see a bluish tint in the light. That wasn't the headlight, it was a refraction/reflection artifact from the side of the lense of the projector. But a zillion kids wanted their first car to have BMW-like lights. So the demand for bluish lights ratcheted up, and bulb companies started making blue and bluish lights. Somehow it bled into the general culture. My neighbor has all three tones.. warm, white, and blue in the LEDs around his property. It looks really bad. I prefer just the 21st Century circa 4500K-5000K pure white. But that's me.Pro-4 I like the NiMh batteries. The NiCDs are old news and I'm not sure about the newish lithium LiPO4 (sp?) batteries yet. The AA 1.2v Nimh batteries can be bought with 2000+mAh (capacity). I think 900 mAh were included. They are OK and you're not going to get twice the capacity with 2000 mAh. But I swapped up..1) It does get them through the entire night after a sunny day. 2) The new NiMhs can recharge as many as 2000 times, and still have 70% of their capacity after 5 years.Con 1 - I bought sets as gifts after neighbors commented on the lights coming off of our new patio. (No fencerails yet, so I thought I'd out some lights on the edge.). And I watched the same thing happen twice and almost a 3rd time. The phillips head screwdriver you keep in the back of the junk drawer in the kitchen is the wrong size. And if you screw-up the screwing back in, the light will be dead in no time.Probably after the first rain. It's should be a phillips head #1. It'll have a 1, PH1 or PH01 on it. The screws are stainless steel (smart) but the screw holes can get out of whack or spring the plastic cover. That cover has to seat perfectly. It's not difficult, but closes/tightens up that box with the solar panel..Water/moisture gets in there, and its lights out.Tips. And some of them may be pure superstition, because I've done them since Day One and have had zero failure over the seasons of Spring and Summer.-For a buck.50 extra, I upped the battery 2000 mAh. Even on a half sunny day, they go all night.-For general air moisture, I put some dielectric grease on both ends of the batteries, before I put them in. You can buy a tiny tube for $3 and do 100 markers. It keeps the battery leads better conductive, and wards off moisture and water.-Since you have the PH01 (not a #4 or 5 and looking like you're a guy opening clams to make it work), enhance your probabilities even further. Put the back cover on the same way the mechanic puts on your wheels to make sure they are evenly torqued. Put in one screw and lightly snug it down. Skip the next hole, and put the next screw in the following hole. etc etc. Then when everything is in, go around in the same skipping order, and give them the final snug down. This is where I think the giftees messed up. They had trouble getting the next screw in, after they cranked down the first one. It tended to "spring" the casing lid so the hole alignment was dicey. Anyway...for the 4 of the 12 which failed on them, every one didn't have that back lid set. And one person just said @#$, and didn't put all of the screws in. They have all returned to service once that was straightened out.- Glue the final bottom cover on the bottom. Just bead it around the perimeter and make sure there are no gaps. Use something gooey, so the bottom cover will still be able to be removed and reapplied. I would say a nice RTV clear silicone. Except for one thing. RTV and other similar goopy rubbery sealers have curing solvents in them. They are known for creating an acid condition that is destructive to components and the circuitboards in computers. The 3 LEDs at each end are mounted and series-ed on a small piece of circuit board. JINC, I spent a few extra bucks for the silicone known as a non-corrosive to computer components. And didn't fill in the water-exit notch.OK, here comes the bigee. This is a result of intense study of Quantum Particle Physics, The Standard Model, and High Frequency Trading algorithms. You just can't get this anyoldwhere.Few things in life are absolutes, it is almost always an issue of probabilities.So,...Let's assume, no matter how crafty the design, no matter how careful we are.... it is probably not a good idea to expose the marker to prolonged driveway streams of rain, nor keep it immersed in a puddle for protracted periods of time.Whether a vertical or horizontal installation,... elevate the marker from the mounting surface. Use anything. I had some washers which were from some prior lifetime. They were about 1/2 inch thick and I glued them to the bottom. Our new patio is 20x20ft and graded for the water to run off. During summer storms, that put the lights under a heavy cascade of water pressure. Now 90% of it just flows underneath.IMHO, The price has steadily grown to just under $50, and I don't know if that is a great value. These lights are an odd widget, yet they do the job they are supposed to do, very well.Handled with a bit of care, Highly Recommended.***************UPDATE2016**********************UPDATE2016**********************UPDATE2016*********************This 2016 product is completely different than the 2015 product. My painfully meticulous and time consuming 2015 recommendation does not apply to the product being sold here. It uses an entirely different power transfer box and only one 900mah battery as the end power supply. That is half the available daily storage capacity of the 2015 product. My review is to be ignored. The product could be substantially better, the same, or substantially worse than all of the Customer product reviews for the 2015 design.I sincerely apologize to any AMZN customers who have purchased this product as a result of my review. I have no control over AMZN policies at their institutional level, but I can refuse to be an unwilling party to having my review shuffled to recommend a product I have never owned.My 5 star goes to 1 star until I have reason to change it.