Outdoor Solar Lights in Malaysia

Of the 106 outdoor solar light listings in our catalogue, 70 state a wattage. 68 of those — 97% — state a figure that is physically impossible. 19 claim more than 100,000W. The highest is 700,000W, on a lamp selling for RM374.

For scale: 500,000W is half a megawatt. An average Malaysian household draws around 1,000W in total. A garden light claiming to draw 500 times your entire house is not exaggerating a real specification, it is quoting a number with no relationship to anything.

Not one listing in the whole set stated a figure at or below 100W, which is where every genuine solar garden or street light actually sits. A real integrated solar street light draws roughly 15 to 60W of LED. A fence or pathway light draws 2 to 10W. If a listing tells you the truth, it will look weak next to the ones that do not — which is precisely why nobody does it.

Battery capacity in mAh, and the voltage it runs at. This is the one figure that actually predicts whether the light lasts the night, and cheap listings often omit it — which is itself informative. A 1,200mAh 3.7V cell holds about 4.4Wh, which runs a genuine 5W lamp for roughly an hour at full brightness. Look for the capacity, and be suspicious when it is missing.

The solar panel's physical size. It is visible in the photographs and it cannot be faked the way a number can. A panel the size of a phone will not refill a battery that runs a bright lamp all night, whatever either of them claims.

The LED count and, if stated, lumens. Lumens are the honest measure of brightness and a minority of listings give one. Where you see a lumen figure, weight it heavily — a seller quoting lumens is a seller who has stopped competing on invented watts.

IP65 as a minimum for anything outdoors, IP67 where it will sit in the open. And check whether the panel is separate from the lamp on a cable: an integrated all-in-one is simpler, but a separate panel lets you put the light where you want it and the panel where the sun is, which in a Malaysian garden with mature trees is often the difference between working and not.

Anywhere a cable run is expensive or ugly. A gate 30 metres from the house, a garden path, a fence line, a back lane, a surau or a kampung walkway. The cost of trenching and an electrician dwarfs the lamp, and that is the real saving — not the electricity, which for a few LEDs is negligible either way.

Where it does not win is as your main lighting. These are supplementary. A light that depends on yesterday's sun will eventually have a night where it does not perform, and that is an acceptable trade for a garden path and an unacceptable one for a staircase.