Lights from Serious Readers

I have recently acquired a dimmable classic floor lamp. However, although it had been PAT tested, it didn't work. It had a date of December 2016 on the base, and I thought I'd contact Serious Readers to see if they could advise me. I couldn't have wished for a more helpful service. The lady told me it was covered under the 5 year guarantee, that they would send an empty return box to my address within 2 days, I'd return it and they'd replace it immediately. That's exactly what they did. I haven't had the light very long, but it certainly does the job, and the quality and service has made me feel that I have made a good choice. Thank you Serious Readers.

Hi - I was looking for a replacement bulb for a serious reader lamp and found this forum thread. Now I totally understand that the thread is old and the original posters have moved on but nonetheless these forums also act as reference to troubleshoot problems even once the original conversation has ended so I thought I'd add my experience.

My SR lamp bulb went this morning (or at least I assumed it was the bulb the lamp just would not switch on) and so I started trying to find a replacement. The SR site does sell the bulbs (my lamp was updated in late 2018 it seems so I needed their bulb with ref number 15191/A/B or 15189/A/B) - but the price was £29(!) so I started googling.

I have a SR Classic lamp with a GU4 (sometimes referred to as a MR11) bulb. The original one from SR is a 12v 3x1w bulb with three cree LED bulbs and 3500k (coolish white). It also has a narrow beam of about 15 degrees and is dimmable. These exact specifications can be difficult to find via Amazon etc or something similar is either in a pack of 10 or has high delivery fees.

I found a similar bulb at BandQ (own brand Diall) for about £3 it was 2.9W Warm white (2700k) and has a wider angle of 36 degrees. The good news is that the bulb works great. The wider beam angle really does not seem to affect things too much (we use our lamp as a bedside lamp so having a narrow beam was useful) and the bulb seems to dim in a less smooth way than the original. So, in fairness to SR, the original one does seem better made with a full aluminium body and maybe works slightly better but £30 vs £3 seems unjustified and I can't help feeling that SR are abusing their customers a bit with the replacement bulb prices.

KR