OxyLED SL07 Solar Sensor Light – Review

Well now, I’ve got me an LED light which fits on the wall and shines when you walk past it in the dark. It charges via the sun and has a solar panel on the top. On the current US Amazon listing it’s $16.99.

First up, it’s waterproof, which is always a good start if you’re going to have this outside. Secondly, it’s got a number of sensors inside – two to detect movement as you walk past and another to see just how dark it’s getting.

It measures in at around 15cm x 10 x 5.6cm and fixes to your wall. The first thing you’ll need to do though is decide where to put it, and it’s best not to stick it under a gutter or any sort of over-hang because you’re going to need to get as much daylight into the solar panel at the top as you can. If you’ve got the option of putting it in a different place, try and get the spot where the sun shines the most. Putting it in the shade just won’t help.

In the box you’ll find a couple of screws, some 3M tape (for sticking this onto a flat surface) and a little user manual. I chose to use the screws and I made sure that it was placed so that the tilted solar panel was facing in the right direction.

On each side of the light you’ll see a couple of balls – these sensors detect movement and are particularly good at detecting “passing” traffic going from right to left or vice versa.

Pretty simple huh? Well indeed, around the back there’s a switch for turning the device on and off. Flick that on before you mount it to the wall – it’s shielded in a rubber cover. At the front, there’s a couple of rubber buttons.

On the right there’s an “On” button…

– Press this once and the light will glow constantly
– Press this again and it’ll switch to a constant-on colour-changing light.
– Press a third time and it’ll turn off.

OxyLED SL07 Solar Sensor Light   Review

The “Auto” button on the left is to detect movement, so…

– Press this once and the LED lights will glow white when someone gets close and then a colour-changing light for 30 seconds when they walk out of range.
– Press again and it’ll glow super-bright when someone is close and then will dim to a less-bright white light for 30 seconds when they walk out of range.
– Press a third time and it’ll glow at 100% “super-bright” and will then turn off immediately after you walk out of range.
– A fourth press will turn it off.

You can get one or many of these and possibly have them lighting up your driveway or perhaps as a security light outside or near your garage. Inside there’s a 18650 rechargeable battery and the makers tell me that it’ll last for 8 hours after a full charge.

To be honest, LED lighting has really stepped up a level in the last few years – the 12 LED’s here and very bright and, although not as bright as the big security light I’ve got mounted elsewhere, it fills a space very well and means that you can pop out to your bins, play a bit of late-night football or head to your car in sufficient light.

This particular model has a couple of operating modes – for me, I was using it as a security light and as a way to light up our garden so that I could head out the bins. You can also have a red / green / blue or white LED showing constantly when it gets dark. If you have a few of these mounted on your driveway then it can be a welcoming sight as you return home.

During the day, the 1200mAh battery will be charged by the 5V / 110mA monocrystalline silicon panel. Fixing it to the wall is easy enough and I turned it on immediately. To test (in the daylight) you’ll need to cover the solar panel. This makes the light activate.

To be honest, I wasn’t holding up much hope for this. I’ve had garden lights in the past – those ornamental lights that you put in flower beds. They might work for a few brief hours before going flat, but I was pleasantly surprised – this LED light was very bright, it bathed the area well and charged enough to work – particularly as a security light. The sensors had a wide angle of detection and spotted me in each of my tests. They worked very well indeed even considering their size.

Overall, a very good solar-powered external light which I’ll happily recommend. Here’s just how bright it gets at night…