How often do lamps fail? (1 Viewer)

[David Ruiz]

I very much want to buy a projector pretty soon. I'm looking at the Sanyo Z4. Most websites that sell it also sell a 3 year lamp warranty which is said to replace two lamps should they fail prematurely.

My question is, just how often do lamps fail way before they are supposed to? I've heard horror stories about lamps failing about 12 hours in and some at about 120-300 hours in. I know that lamps are supposed to last 2,000 hours, but how often do they fail before their time and do you guys think that the 3-year lamp warranty is worth getting?

 

[Allan Jayne]

I would select a "low" lamp setting on the projector and take the chance without buying the lamp warranty.

The Sanyo Z3 has such a low setting, which needs to be chosen for each input being used. Not sure about the 'Z4.

The life of the lamp is greatly prolonged if you don't turn the projector back on for at least a half hour after you turn it off for any reason including accidentally.

The life of the lamp is generally computed as the time from when a batch of lamps of a given model is connected up and turned on and left on until the time half of the lamps in the batch have failed.

Warranties are always a big profit item for the seller which by definition means that on average they are not a good bargain for the buyer.

 

[Leo Kerr]

Also, almost all lamps come with some sort of premature failure warrantee. This may expire at or before 500 hours, and/or be pro-rated as you approach that mark.

Leo

 

[Jim Mcc]

What is the cost of the warranty? How many hours do you expect to use your projector weekly? Just like any other product, every batch of bulbs has a few "lemons". You can't predict it.

 

[David Ruiz]

Well it's a little too late to do anything about now since I already ordered the projector along with the warranty. I just didn't want to take the chance of the lamp accidentally failing on me because $350 per lamp is a hell of a lot of money, especially if lamps fail as I so frequenty read on forums such as this.

The cost of the warranty was $120 which I felt was a little bit pricey, but it does cover lamps for up to 3 full years, which I guess isn't that bad. The only thing I'm wondering about now is if it's supposed to cover just the lamps that came with the projector (two lamps) or if it's supposed to cover ANY lamp that one buys within those 3 years, because I'm pretty sure that I'll have gone through many, many, many lamps in 3 years.

As for the amount of hours I plan to use it weekly, it's not going to be only me using it. My whole family will be using this as the primary display. I expect that it will get at least 8 hours of use per day, if not more. If my math is correct, I should be needing to replace the lamp every 7-8 months, or maybe even 2 per year (if used more). So in 3 years, I expect to have gone through 5-6 lamps and I wonder if all 6 lamps will be covered by this warranty.

 

[Jim Mcc]

I think you made a good choice getting the warranty. You're going to put a lot of hours on it.