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I'm looking at installing some spotlights in my kitchen. I have a set of 3 in another part of the house which have E27 bases fitted with R80 reflector bulbs. The bulbs are rated at 10.5 watts and 800 lumens.

Most of the spotlights I've seen online are of the GU10 variety. They are rated between 4-6 watts and produce only around half or even as little as a quarter of the lumens of the R80 bulbs.

Is that a limitation of the technology used in the GU10 style bulbs and why are there so few spotlights available with E27 type bases?

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    smaller bulbs have less surface area to cool the LEDs and power supply components than larger bulbs, limiting the power they can reliably handle. Until somewhat recently, tungsten (virtually always using e27) was hard to make spot lights with as it takes a long filament to make enough usable light, which would overheat when coiled too tight, and spots ideally have a tiny point from where light originates. Flood and unfocused, no problem though. When halogen arrived, the light assembly could be much smaller, and thus make for better spots without expensive optics to refocus large bulbs.
    – dandavis
    Commented Aug 6, 2021 at 8:36
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    LED luminary despite the incandencet is very sensitive to overheat, so the heat dissipation for it very important. Bigger size is better cooling.
    – user263983
    Commented Aug 6, 2021 at 10:31

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There are lots of LED E27 R80 bulbs on the market some as big as 25, 27W, maybe more. There are also all kinds of other fixtures that use different kinds of bulbs that provide lots of light.

Why don't you want to use those for your kitchen? Why are you specifically looking for very bright GU10s?

There are 7 and 8W GU10 spots, and bigger GU10 corn bulbs. The main reason there are no 100W equivalent GU10 spots is that there are no 100W GU10 halogens. So there is no replacement market, and hence more risk in making and selling them.

Sure, people do make and sell LED bulbs that are not replacements for anything, they are entirely new in what they do. But to make and sell 10W+ LED GU10 bare bulbs in the hope people will use them for anything other than retrofitting would be a bad bet, and people would be unlikely to retrofit bulbs that are double the brightness because, IMO, these bulbs are very harsh to begin with.

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  • I would rather use the E27 R80 bulbs as I already have some spotlights with them and I am impressed with the amount of light they put out. It's just that when looking online most of the spotlights advertised are the GU10 type. I don't have a problem using them except for the fact that they seem to be much less powerful.
    – user82609
    Commented Aug 7, 2021 at 0:07
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    You can get what you want ... you are just searching wrong! Both kinds of bulbs are available as both floods and spots, but the GU10 ones are much more commonly used as spots. BR80s are floods. Similar to BR80 that fit in the same fixture but spots are PAR30s or PAR25s. The number 80/30/25 refers to the spread angle of the light beam. So you won't find BR80 spots, because they are floods. The GU10s aren't named that way ... you have to read their descriptions and data sheets to determine their spread angle, and often with cheap ones it's not documented or BS.
    – jay613
    Commented Aug 7, 2021 at 2:33
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    You probably just want PAR30 LEDs but if it's important to you that they actually be spots not floods, by good name brands because the cheap ones might just be randomly named anything at all regardless of their beam angle.
    – jay613
    Commented Aug 7, 2021 at 2:34
  • So, does GU10 just refer to the base like edison screw or bayonet etc? I realize you can get all different types of lightbulb with an edison screw base. Is that the same with the GU10 bulbs?
    – user82609
    Commented Aug 7, 2021 at 3:35
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    Yes, GU10 is a base type, but it is used almost entirely with one bulb type, "MR". There are some other bulbs made with GU10 bases but they aren't common. So GU10 is the common name for an MR bulb with a GU10 base.
    – jay613
    Commented Aug 7, 2021 at 11:19

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