1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:03,514 As we reach the end of this year’s No Effort November, 2 00:00:03,514 --> 00:00:09,341 it’s time once again for me to embark on my silly quest to make LED Christmas lights 3 00:00:09,341 --> 00:00:11,415 suck less. 4 00:00:11,415 --> 00:00:17,700 If you’re new to this tradition, for the past seven years I have been making the same stupid yearly video 5 00:00:17,700 --> 00:00:22,309 where I attempt to both explain what irritates me  about today’s Christmas lights 6 00:00:22,309 --> 00:00:31,760 and where I attempt my own fixes to make modern,  energy-efficient LED technology look just like the Christmas lights of my youth. 7 00:00:32,527 --> 00:00:35,164 ♫ Hallelujah from Handel's Messiah starts ♫ And guess what? 8 00:00:35,164 --> 00:00:39,352 This year, I didn’t have to do a thing! 9 00:00:39,352 --> 00:00:42,000 That’s right, it finally happened! 10 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:47,199 You see those beautiful red, yellow, blue, and green incandescent mini-lights behind me? 11 00:00:47,199 --> 00:00:52,677 Yeah, well, it turns out the ones on the left side of the screen aren’t incandescent at all! 12 00:00:52,677 --> 00:01:01,060 They’re Vintaglos, a line of LED Christmas lights from the Seasons Reflection Company which are exactly, 13 00:01:01,060 --> 00:01:02,660 to a T, 14 00:01:02,660 --> 00:01:05,777 the thing I have been trying to make this whole time! 15 00:01:06,084 --> 00:01:11,357 I was able to just buy my way out of this nonsense and I couldn’t be happier! 16 00:01:11,440 --> 00:01:17,655 Now, this video is going to be much more than a simple celebration of the fact that someone finally understood the assignment 17 00:01:17,655 --> 00:01:19,850 but before we get any further, 18 00:01:19,850 --> 00:01:27,557 it is important to me that you know I bought these with my own money and I have absolutely no relationship with this company. 19 00:01:27,557 --> 00:01:34,199 I found out about these through my friend Dan and immediately ordered some to see if they were as good as they looked. 20 00:01:34,199 --> 00:01:37,976 And they were, so I immediately ordered much more. 21 00:01:37,976 --> 00:01:39,540 These are not cheap: 22 00:01:39,540 --> 00:01:47,635 these are $25 per set of 100 (though at the time of video release they are currently on sale for $20 per set if ordered via their website) 23 00:01:47,635 --> 00:01:50,360 and they aren’t perfect. 24 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:54,889 They’re extremely close to perfect, so my complaints are just nitpicks, 25 00:01:54,889 --> 00:01:59,102 but I will go over them in the spirit of fair product reviews. 26 00:01:59,102 --> 00:02:06,644 Before we get there, though, I want to back up  and explain the problem that these have mercifully fixed once more. 27 00:02:06,644 --> 00:02:17,033 Because, well, I’ve not done a very great job of that in years past which I can tell because of how excited people got to share these with me. 28 00:02:17,033 --> 00:02:26,127 Yes, the Midwest's own Menards has come out with a line of supposedly vintage LED Christmas lights which, at a glance, 29 00:02:26,127 --> 00:02:29,567 sure do look like the sort of thing I’ve been asking for. 30 00:02:29,567 --> 00:02:37,214 They have deeply-colored caps - I think they’re even glass - which look awfully close to this incandescent set, 31 00:02:37,214 --> 00:02:42,532 and aside from the inclusion of purple which I’m not thrilled by, this looks promising. 32 00:02:43,601 --> 00:02:47,792 Until you plug them in and... 33 00:02:47,792 --> 00:02:49,644 that happens. 34 00:02:49,644 --> 00:02:55,248 Yes, the diodes under those caps are color-matched to the cap. 35 00:02:55,248 --> 00:03:05,000 And that means the actual color produced by these lights is coming  from the LEDs themselves which emit monochromatic light of a single wavelength. 36 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:13,987 That spectral color is just plain ugly and way too harsh, especially the greens and the blues. 37 00:03:13,987 --> 00:03:16,519 This is not what Christmas looks like, 38 00:03:16,519 --> 00:03:18,570 this is what a vape shop looks like. 39 00:03:18,570 --> 00:03:21,054 Or worse, a gaming PC. 40 00:03:22,230 --> 00:03:24,153 That was a joke, please don’t come after me. 41 00:03:24,153 --> 00:03:29,007 What do I mean by monochromatic light and color-matched diodes? 42 00:03:29,007 --> 00:03:34,564 Well, okay, I don’t want to go too deeply down the rabbit  hole of human vision and color theory yet again 43 00:03:34,564 --> 00:03:41,676 but the visible spectrum of light is simply electromagnetic radiation that our peepers happen to be able to detect, 44 00:03:41,676 --> 00:03:46,407 wavelengths between 750 and roughly 400 nanometers. 45 00:03:46,407 --> 00:03:53,549 Each of the individual wavelengths along that range is interpreted by our eyes and brains as a color. 46 00:03:53,549 --> 00:04:00,095 It’s literally the rainbow: that visual phenomenon allows  us to see the entire visible light spectrum 47 00:04:00,095 --> 00:04:05,714 from the reds on the long end to the violets on the short end and everything in-between. 48 00:04:05,714 --> 00:04:08,685 There was also a Pink Floyd album about it or something. 49 00:04:08,685 --> 00:04:16,110 White light, the kind of light the sun makes  as well as pretty much every kind of general illumination technology we’ve ever had 50 00:04:16,110 --> 00:04:18,057 (with a few noticeable exceptions) 51 00:04:18,057 --> 00:04:21,373 is a big ol’ mess of all those wavelengths, 52 00:04:21,373 --> 00:04:29,252 or at least a combination of wavelengths that activates the color-detecting cones cells in our eyes roughly equally. 53 00:04:29,252 --> 00:04:35,962 If those cone cells are all activated together, our brain interprets that as colorless, white light. 54 00:04:35,962 --> 00:04:44,339 But when that white light lands on colored objects, those objects will absorb some wavelengths more than others, 55 00:04:44,339 --> 00:04:54,743 so the wavelengths that get reflected back to our eyes are a little different and they activate our cone cells in a different ratio which we interpret as a color. 56 00:04:54,743 --> 00:05:03,525 But light which appears colored due to reflecting off of something is very different from a light source which itself is colored. 57 00:05:03,525 --> 00:05:07,939 Before the LED came along and both made everything better and screwed everything up, 58 00:05:07,939 --> 00:05:17,707 when we wanted a light source to be a particular color we had to start with white light and then filter out the wavelengths we don’t want. 59 00:05:17,707 --> 00:05:22,267 That’s what’s going on with this set of Christmas lights: 60 00:05:22,267 --> 00:05:25,750 these are the same exact incandescent filaments as these, 61 00:05:25,750 --> 00:05:28,150 producing a full-spectrum white light, 62 00:05:28,150 --> 00:05:35,230 but before that light exits the glass it goes through a color filter which only lets some wavelengths through. 63 00:05:35,230 --> 00:05:38,031 Now, here’s the key thing: 64 00:05:38,031 --> 00:05:41,080 This filtering is not perfect. 65 00:05:41,080 --> 00:05:51,778 The green filter, for example, doesn’t let a single wavelength of green light through, it lets a cluster of wavelengths in the region of green through. 66 00:05:51,778 --> 00:05:57,240 And that means this green is not a pure spectral color - 67 00:05:57,240 --> 00:06:03,712 it’s awfully green, to be sure, but notice that when I get up real close and look at the filament directly, 68 00:06:03,712 --> 00:06:10,698 the actual hot glowing filament producing the light looks… more of a lime green than an emerald green. 69 00:06:10,698 --> 00:06:18,193 It looks that way because we’re looking at the very brightest spot and that imperfection in the color filtering becomes more noticeable. 70 00:06:18,193 --> 00:06:26,831 If I unfocus the camera's lens so we’re not able to see the filament, the green appears much more intense and really does look like an emerald green 71 00:06:26,831 --> 00:06:30,340 but it’s still not a spectral color. 72 00:06:30,834 --> 00:06:36,629 Light-emitting diodes, on the other hand, well they do emit spectral colors. 73 00:06:36,629 --> 00:06:39,801 LEDs emit light of a single wavelength. 74 00:06:39,801 --> 00:06:41,419 Just one. 75 00:06:41,419 --> 00:06:51,725 So whatever wavelength of “green” is being emitted by a green LED is the one and only color of light it will ever appear to be. 76 00:06:51,725 --> 00:06:55,996 And in this light set, those are green LEDs. 77 00:06:55,996 --> 00:07:01,463 Yes, they have a dark green color filter over them, but that filter isn’t doing anything! 78 00:07:01,463 --> 00:07:10,403 There’s a single wavelength of light being emitted by the diode, so that filter literally cannot change the appearance of the light that makes it through. 79 00:07:10,403 --> 00:07:18,864 It might reduce the output a little bit, but it’s going to look the same  exact piercing green no matter what. 80 00:07:18,864 --> 00:07:24,025 That is why these LED light sets look so stinking harsh. 81 00:07:24,025 --> 00:07:30,524 They are a cluster of colors which are literally as intense as they can possibly appear to our eyes, 82 00:07:30,524 --> 00:07:34,680 and while some of you may like that, I really don’t. 83 00:07:34,680 --> 00:07:37,783 Especially when it comes to blue: 84 00:07:37,783 --> 00:07:46,675 incandescent light sets have pretty dull blues because incandescent filaments don’t produce that much light on the shorter end of the visible light spectrum. 85 00:07:46,675 --> 00:07:52,071 So when you’re filtering out all the long wavelengths (the reds, oranges, yellows and greens), 86 00:07:52,071 --> 00:07:55,177 you just don’t have that much light output left. 87 00:07:55,177 --> 00:08:02,213 It’s still a very pretty and intense blue color, but it’s not overwhelming the rest of the colors at all 88 00:08:02,213 --> 00:08:04,220 like it is here. 89 00:08:04,220 --> 00:08:09,619 And the greens in an LED light set are almost always just as bad to my eyes. 90 00:08:09,619 --> 00:08:15,500 The wildest thing to me about this problem is that it’s trivially easy to fix! 91 00:08:15,500 --> 00:08:21,917 White LEDs have been a thing for a long time now, and they just keep getting better and better every year. 92 00:08:21,917 --> 00:08:27,274 These days we have LED lighting which is virtually  indistinguishable from incandescent lighting, 93 00:08:27,274 --> 00:08:33,397 made possible by complex phosphor coatings which shift blue and near-UV wavelengths emitted by the diodes 94 00:08:33,397 --> 00:08:39,314 down to all the other wavelengths of light we need to  produce what looks like white light. 95 00:08:39,314 --> 00:08:46,012 And what I’ve been doing these past seven years is buying white LED Christmas light sets 96 00:08:46,012 --> 00:08:53,752 and painting them with various colored stuffs to demonstrate that that is, in fact, a thing which could be done! 97 00:08:53,752 --> 00:08:58,570 I found it kind of baffling that nobody else had had this thought. 98 00:08:58,570 --> 00:09:05,700 Why not just make Christmas lights exactly like we always used to do before LEDs were a thing 99 00:09:05,700 --> 00:09:11,156 but swap the incandescent filaments for a nice, warm-white light-emitting diode? 100 00:09:11,156 --> 00:09:14,321 Then we could have the best of both worlds! 101 00:09:14,321 --> 00:09:18,871 Luckily, a few years ago Tru-Tone started up and did exactly that. 102 00:09:18,871 --> 00:09:24,620 Tru-Tone makes incredible C7 and C9  Christmas lights which I’ve talked about before. 103 00:09:24,620 --> 00:09:28,447 These are made exactly like the incandescent bulbs of the past 104 00:09:28,447 --> 00:09:36,158 but rather than have a tungsten filament generating the light,  they have a warm white LED faux-filament inside. 105 00:09:36,158 --> 00:09:38,047 And they’re amazing! 106 00:09:38,047 --> 00:09:49,001 They are essentially perfect, the only thing that gives them away as LED is the fact that they are actually flashing 120 times per second with the incoming AC power, 107 00:09:49,001 --> 00:09:56,737 but unless you’re very sensitive to that you probably won’t notice  unless you move your eyes really quickly while staring at them. 108 00:09:56,737 --> 00:10:03,173 Now, because this idea is so obvious, for better and worse Tru-Tone is starting to get imitators. 109 00:10:03,173 --> 00:10:11,161 Menards, as a matter of fact, is now selling  ceramic multicolored C7 and C9 light sets which are just about as good. 110 00:10:11,161 --> 00:10:18,012 However, Tru-Tone is still the only place that I know of to get these transparent colored C-style bulbs - 111 00:10:18,012 --> 00:10:21,636 this is what Menards is selling and… 112 00:10:23,426 --> 00:10:24,778 yeah it’s awful. 113 00:10:24,778 --> 00:10:29,806 Those are colored diodes under the glass  and they shoot into the eyes like laser beams. 114 00:10:30,480 --> 00:10:35,514 But, personally, I don’t use these big lights very much or at all. 115 00:10:35,514 --> 00:10:43,591 I’ve always been a mini-light person - I just prefer the way  they look in most applications and that’s what I grew up with. 116 00:10:43,591 --> 00:10:49,150 Tru-Tone doesn’t make any of these, and nobody else has understood the assignment quite correctly. 117 00:10:49,150 --> 00:10:54,115 Lots of retailers are selling things now which are vintage-ish, 118 00:10:54,115 --> 00:11:02,765 and for what it’s worth I actually do kind of like this new implementation where a tiny diode under a resin blob is sticking up into the envelope - 119 00:11:02,765 --> 00:11:06,104 that mimics the look of a filament pretty well. 120 00:11:06,104 --> 00:11:11,759 However, that’s nowhere near as important to me as the color accuracy 121 00:11:11,759 --> 00:11:21,943 and so I’ve just been patiently experimenting with ways to hand-color these LED lights to figure out a half-decent way to get what I want. 122 00:11:21,943 --> 00:11:23,718 Over the years I’ve tried sharpies, 123 00:11:23,718 --> 00:11:25,264 I’ve tried nail polish, 124 00:11:25,264 --> 00:11:28,560 I’ve tried spray paint, craft paint, transparent craft paint, 125 00:11:28,560 --> 00:11:29,633 dyed resin, 126 00:11:29,633 --> 00:11:31,982 literal dye like for clothing, 127 00:11:31,982 --> 00:11:36,949 and other things I’m sure I’ve forgotten and while most of them worked to various extents, 128 00:11:36,949 --> 00:11:43,265 they were either extremely annoying to apply or had some sort of flaw which annoyed me. 129 00:11:43,265 --> 00:11:49,787 The best option so far has been transparent modelling paint applied with an airbrush. 130 00:11:49,787 --> 00:11:56,317 I let this light set stay out all summer and, surprisingly, the colors haven’t really faded at all. 131 00:11:56,317 --> 00:12:00,190 Uh, half the set doesn't work cuz a wire broke but the colors haven't faded at all 132 00:12:00,190 --> 00:12:04,300 so if worse comes to worst there’s always this option. 133 00:12:04,300 --> 00:12:10,625 But this year, oh this year, I have finally found the holy grail. 134 00:12:10,625 --> 00:12:19,331 Someone who bothered to do this at the time of  manufacturing and pulled the strings to put a product called Vintaglo into the world. 135 00:12:19,331 --> 00:12:21,938 And they really went above and beyond. 136 00:12:21,938 --> 00:12:28,463 First, let’s ignore this multicolored set and instead look at this white set. 137 00:12:30,841 --> 00:12:38,620 This is, without a doubt, the best-looking set of white miniature Christmas lights I have ever seen. 138 00:12:38,620 --> 00:12:44,472 Most white LED sets have diodes which can best be described as… cheap. 139 00:12:44,472 --> 00:12:50,549 They’re often not unpleasant to look at - I have seen some fairly nice golden-white colors over the years. 140 00:12:50,549 --> 00:12:53,935 But the quality of the light that they cast is… 141 00:12:53,935 --> 00:12:55,700 pretty craptastic. 142 00:12:55,700 --> 00:13:02,890 If you were to illuminate a room using a typical set of white LED Christmas lights, well it would look very wrong. 143 00:13:02,890 --> 00:13:06,690 The color rendering index on those LEDs is poop. 144 00:13:06,760 --> 00:13:13,031 These, though, these are warm-white diodes that  you could light a room with and actually be happy. 145 00:13:13,031 --> 00:13:17,671 The light they cast on objects looks perfectly normal. 146 00:13:17,671 --> 00:13:26,654 This is so close to what an actual incandescent light sets look like that I have exactly zero complaints. 147 00:13:26,654 --> 00:13:34,347 The only thing I could possibly wish for was some smoothing so these weren’t strobing at 120 Hz, which I can notice. 148 00:13:34,347 --> 00:13:40,603 However the fact that these actually are full-wave rectified is itself a huge and rather uncommon bonus. 149 00:13:40,603 --> 00:13:49,393 A lot of AC-powered light sets like this are only half-wave rectified which means they flash at only 60 Hz which is super noticeable. 150 00:13:50,211 --> 00:13:55,189 These appear to be burning quite steadily and it’s hard to notice the strobing at all. 151 00:13:55,189 --> 00:13:56,815 Great stuff. 152 00:13:56,815 --> 00:14:06,142 A base of actually-good warm-white diodes laid the groundwork for the thing I’ve been hoping for years someone would finally just do: 153 00:14:06,142 --> 00:14:12,361 put those same warm white diodes under intensely-colored plastic caps 154 00:14:12,361 --> 00:14:20,793 so we can have a multicolored light set which actually looks warm and festive rather than laserbeamy and technodystopian. 155 00:14:20,793 --> 00:14:23,125 And that’s exactly what these are. 156 00:14:23,125 --> 00:14:25,926 And in my preferred color scheme, too! 157 00:14:25,926 --> 00:14:34,378 I don’t care for pinks, teals, or oranges in my Christmas lights, and I cherish the way the yellow pops out against the other colors. 158 00:14:34,378 --> 00:14:41,573 I have always felt this combination looks nicest, especially at a distance since you can still make out different colors. 159 00:14:41,573 --> 00:14:48,761 When yellow is swapped for orange or amber, at a distance that combination looks like a dull orangey-red mess to me, 160 00:14:48,761 --> 00:14:55,920 and when there’s another warm color in there like pink or magenta, I find it really hard to pick out the green and blue at all. 161 00:14:55,920 --> 00:14:58,642 But anyway, pedantic color preferences aside 162 00:14:58,642 --> 00:15:02,701 this is as close to perfect as I could reasonably expect. 163 00:15:02,701 --> 00:15:07,120 Next to a real incandescent light set with the same color scheme, 164 00:15:07,120 --> 00:15:09,432 they're nearly indistinguishable! 165 00:15:09,432 --> 00:15:20,390 The green is slightly desaturated on the Vintaglo set and the yellow itself has just a tinge of green in it - I think I know why and I’ll explain that later - 166 00:15:20,390 --> 00:15:22,266 but honestly that’s just nitpicking. 167 00:15:22,266 --> 00:15:27,963 I’ve decorated with a whole bunch of these light sets and oh boy it’s hitting me right in the childhood. 168 00:15:27,963 --> 00:15:30,605 I could not be happier. 169 00:15:30,605 --> 00:15:34,159 And the sets have some other quality-of-life improvements, too. 170 00:15:34,159 --> 00:15:37,843 Out of the box the wires are remarkably flexible. 171 00:15:37,843 --> 00:15:44,143 Usually when you get a new set of lights like this you have to really stretch it out to keep it from accordioning back on itself 172 00:15:44,143 --> 00:15:46,757 but these hardly need that at all. 173 00:15:46,757 --> 00:15:51,020 Which says to me the wire and insulation was specced really well. 174 00:15:51,020 --> 00:15:58,338 The overall quality of the lamp holders and plugs is really top-notch, but I will grant that's not saying that much - 175 00:15:58,338 --> 00:16:04,211 these are the same basic things in every set of lights but they’re at least among the best of the same basic things I’ve seen. 176 00:16:04,211 --> 00:16:06,417 So what are my complaints? 177 00:16:06,417 --> 00:16:12,138 Well, I have two: one of which is technical, the other has to do with quality control. 178 00:16:12,138 --> 00:16:22,897 I’ll start with QC - a couple of the sets that I bought have a few blue lights which didn’t seem to get a very strong coating of color on the cap. 179 00:16:22,897 --> 00:16:24,480 Which was a bummer for two reasons: 180 00:16:24,560 --> 00:16:34,261 one, I was really hoping the plastic itself would be colored that way the coloring was throughout the plastic and it was less likely to fade with time and sun exposure. 181 00:16:34,261 --> 00:16:36,530 It does appear to be just a coating, 182 00:16:36,530 --> 00:16:44,477 though it may very well hold up much better than the coloring on glass incandescent sets so perhaps I have no reason to be bummed about that at all. 183 00:16:44,477 --> 00:16:52,592 But besides potential longevity issues, the mere fact that a few of the lights have inconsistent coloring is… disappointing. 184 00:16:52,592 --> 00:16:56,346 Not a huge deal at all, but a little disappointing. 185 00:16:56,346 --> 00:17:02,107 The second complaint is technical and one that will probably be pretty hard to fix. 186 00:17:02,107 --> 00:17:06,360 While these warm-white LEDs are fantastic, 187 00:17:06,360 --> 00:17:14,627 there’s no way that they’re actually producing the same full-spectrum output that a glowing incandescent filament does. 188 00:17:14,627 --> 00:17:26,843 I’m much too lazy to get my hands on a spectroscope to show you this but white LEDs actually have fairly spiky spectral emissions which our eyes almost never notice - 189 00:17:26,843 --> 00:17:35,505 they’re tuned really well these days and you have to have a really good sense of color rendering to ever notice that but… 190 00:17:35,505 --> 00:17:43,520 in this case, because we’re using a color filter on a light  source which has somewhat spiky spectral output,   191 00:17:43,520 --> 00:17:50,400 the color filtering doesn’t behave exactly the  same way as it does with an incandescent filament. 192 00:17:50,400 --> 00:17:55,045 Now, before you think this is a big deal, let me be clear that it’s absolutely not. 193 00:17:55,045 --> 00:18:05,066 The effect of this is miniscule but it’s probably why I’m  seeing a teeny bit of a green tinge coming from the yellow lights. 194 00:18:05,066 --> 00:18:13,025 To make yellow light from a white light source you really just have to filter out blue and violet wavelengths and you can let the rest through. 195 00:18:13,025 --> 00:18:18,091 To our eyes a combination of red and green wavelengths looks like yellow - 196 00:18:18,091 --> 00:18:21,258 that’s how your screen is making this yellow right now. 197 00:18:21,258 --> 00:18:25,563 It’s just red and green subpixels lighting up together. 198 00:18:25,563 --> 00:18:34,899 But this filter over an LED isn’t going to let a huge collection of wavelengths starting at green and ending at red through, 199 00:18:34,899 --> 00:18:42,013 it’s letting… whatever spiky emissions from the white diode are shorter than blue, 200 00:18:42,013 --> 00:18:48,004 and if the green is a little strong compared to, say, orangey wavelengths, 201 00:18:48,004 --> 00:18:50,128 well you’re gonna be able to see it. 202 00:18:50,128 --> 00:18:52,450 And I can. 203 00:18:52,450 --> 00:18:57,143 In an actual display of lights this is practically irrelevant. 204 00:18:57,143 --> 00:19:00,607 When I look at the decorations I’ve put up, I can’t notice this at all. 205 00:19:00,607 --> 00:19:03,618 They look exactly like I want them to look. 206 00:19:03,618 --> 00:19:10,857 However, where it is more noticeable is in the overall glow that the light sets as a whole produce. 207 00:19:10,857 --> 00:19:19,074 Again, this is super nitpicky stuff, but if I have an  incandescent set of these multicolored lights up in my window, 208 00:19:19,074 --> 00:19:24,000 then at night they produce a very warm, pleasant glow in the room itself. 209 00:19:25,213 --> 00:19:27,369 These don’t quite do that. 210 00:19:27,369 --> 00:19:30,912 It’s not bad by any means, but it's not the same. 211 00:19:30,912 --> 00:19:37,383 It’s a little too green and a little too…  artificial, I think that’s the best word to use. 212 00:19:37,383 --> 00:19:42,152 But in all reality, that’s a tiny, tiny complaint. 213 00:19:42,152 --> 00:19:45,173 When you’re actually looking at the lights themselves, 214 00:19:45,173 --> 00:19:53,473 you’d be hard pressed to know these are LEDs unless you get up close enough to actually see the tiny little diode chilling at the base of the cap. 215 00:19:53,473 --> 00:19:55,588 And that is, in a word, 216 00:19:55,588 --> 00:19:57,716 fantasicawesomazing. 217 00:19:57,716 --> 00:20:04,296 I am so thrilled that these exist and I really, really hope this continues to be a thing. 218 00:20:04,296 --> 00:20:08,367 There are so many advantages to LED Christmas light sets - 219 00:20:08,367 --> 00:20:15,868 obviously they use hardly any power at all, we’re talking about 5 watts per set of 100 rather than 40. 220 00:20:15,868 --> 00:20:25,390 And that means you can connect dozens of these light sets end to end (Vintaglo claims 48) rather than just three or four. 221 00:20:25,390 --> 00:20:32,167 And of course they should last much, much longer (at least if handled carefully and removed and stored promptly) 222 00:20:32,167 --> 00:20:37,857 since they’re not incandescent and they won’t  start burning out by the end of the second year. 223 00:20:37,857 --> 00:20:44,949 Yet until this year, I have never found a set  of multicolored LED mini lights that I could tolerate. 224 00:20:44,949 --> 00:20:46,749 They have always been… 225 00:20:48,411 --> 00:20:49,938 that. 226 00:20:49,938 --> 00:20:52,237 I strongly dislike that. 227 00:20:52,953 --> 00:20:56,838 There have been a few sets which I can stomach a little better - 228 00:20:56,838 --> 00:21:04,600 a few years ago Walmart had some which actually had far fewer blue LEDs than any other color which really tamed things,   229 00:21:04,600 --> 00:21:07,151 and they did have yellow. 230 00:21:07,151 --> 00:21:12,334 In fact that yellow was made by using a white LED under a yellow cap, 231 00:21:12,334 --> 00:21:21,993 and that’s really good because prior to that the actually-yellow LEDs which were used in multicolored sets were extremely dull compared to the rest. 232 00:21:21,993 --> 00:21:28,980 At least the yellow is actually bright now - and this is actually repeated  in these Menards so-called-vintage lights. 233 00:21:29,360 --> 00:21:35,340 Which is both great and infuriating because  it means whoever is in charge of the larger Christmas light industry 234 00:21:35,340 --> 00:21:44,846 seems to understand the value of putting a warm white LED under a colored cap but for some reason has decided yellow is the only color they’re gonna do that for. 235 00:21:44,846 --> 00:21:47,328 The red is still pure red, 236 00:21:47,328 --> 00:21:53,194 the green and blue are still pure and disgusting green and blue, 237 00:21:53,194 --> 00:21:56,979 and in this set the purple... 238 00:21:56,979 --> 00:21:59,666 honestly I’m wondering if that’s a UV diode. 239 00:21:59,666 --> 00:22:05,593 It excited the phosphorescent print on that clock back there so it’s definitely violet if not UV. 240 00:22:05,593 --> 00:22:11,923 But anyway, at long last the folks behind Vintaglo have actually done it. 241 00:22:11,923 --> 00:22:15,010 And for that, I am very grateful. 242 00:22:15,010 --> 00:22:19,523 There is, of course, a link in the description to the product page for these if you wish to order some 243 00:22:19,523 --> 00:22:26,027 and I really, really hope that they’ll be taking pre-orders if and when they sell out of this year’s inventory. 244 00:22:26,027 --> 00:22:32,794 It’s possible that they may offer more color combinations in the future besides this objectively best one... 245 00:22:32,794 --> 00:22:35,981 though I understand some people disagree with me. 246 00:22:35,981 --> 00:22:43,863 I've also included a link to Tru-Tone in the spirit of supporting small, independent businesses and I wish them continued success as well. 247 00:22:43,863 --> 00:22:47,337 OK, well. Uh, that’s it. 248 00:22:47,337 --> 00:22:51,095 Both for this video and for No Effort November. 249 00:22:51,095 --> 00:22:56,805 And, y'know, this might very well be the last time I have to make this video. 250 00:22:56,805 --> 00:23:04,176 Clearly there is a strong yearning for vintage-looking yet modern-tech Christmas lights - 251 00:23:04,176 --> 00:23:09,454 lots of big box stores are starting to sell variations on the vintage theme. 252 00:23:10,554 --> 00:23:15,203 But so far they really just haven’t gotten it! 253 00:23:15,203 --> 00:23:16,408 At all! 254 00:23:16,536 --> 00:23:18,284 [tumbling boxes] 255 00:23:18,284 --> 00:23:22,892 It takes a special kind of nerd to insist on the correct diodes 256 00:23:22,892 --> 00:23:24,271 driven the correct way 257 00:23:24,271 --> 00:23:26,365 placed under the correctly-colored caps 258 00:23:26,365 --> 00:23:28,440 using the correct manufacturing procedures 259 00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:34,952 and so far I know of only two small companies who have  such a dedicated nerd in their ranks. 260 00:23:34,952 --> 00:23:40,290 But I’m so glad they exist and that they actually got it done. 261 00:23:40,290 --> 00:23:48,134 Happy holidays to everyone out there, and may your festive displays glow with the cozy, welcoming warmth the season deserves. 262 00:23:49,005 --> 00:23:52,521 ♫ we-wish-you-a-merry-christmasedly smooth jazz ♫ 263 00:23:59,041 --> 00:24:02,684 Sorry, no bloopers this time. 264 00:24:02,684 --> 00:24:06,551 There were only two and I didn’t feel they’d be worth it. 265 00:24:06,551 --> 00:24:12,265 I mean, neither was great and then it would just be silly  to have two and be like 266 00:24:12,265 --> 00:24:16,359 “yucks, no more bloopers” 267 00:24:16,359 --> 00:24:19,894 so you just get this explanation instead! 268 00:24:19,894 --> 00:24:23,044 Oh and some pretty lights. 269 00:24:23,044 --> 00:24:28,825 Those are incandescent twinkling lights which will be really hard to replicate well with LEDs. 270 00:24:28,825 --> 00:24:32,453 But hopefully somebody's gonna try!