Why Original Bulb Inside over Copy Lamps?
All over the internet you see Projector Lamp ads touting Original Bulb Inside, then you see what looks like the same lamp on a market place site for ¼ the cost. What gives?
To answer this question, we first need to look at what these lamps are.
Projector lamps have essentially 3 product types.
OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer. This is the company who is branded on the projector. If you bought a BenQ projector, the OEM lamp would be from BenQ, in a BenQ box (most of the time). These are usually much more expensive and when under warranty, its required by most companies to use the OEM.
Original Bulb Inside = Not in the original manufacturers box, but has the same brand of bulb and same design of housing as the OEM. Often the company who makes the lamp for BenQ is the same company that sells the Original Bulb Inside lamp. These are fundamentally the same as an OEM. They are made to the same engineering requirements and perform as well as the more expensive OEM lamp. Same expected life span as the OEM because they use the same Ushio, Philips, Osram, Phoenix or Iwasaki Bulb as the OEM.
Compatible/Copy Lamp = Cheapest of all 3 options per unit. Most expensive when compared by cost to run per hour. These use copy bulbs or non-original brand bulbs. These are always significantly cheaper by up to a factor of 10! However, the only savings is in your initial purchase. On average a copy lamp lasts 70-80% less than the OEM or Original Bulb Inside lamps. They also are significantly poor at color reproduction because of the chemicals used inside to copy the more expensive lamps. There is next to no quality control in the Copy lamp market.
I am going to focus on Original Bulb Inside versus Copy Lamps here. OEMs have their place and will always, but I want to show why Copy lamps are not all they are cracked up to be. Hopefully I will save you some hassle and ideally some money…
Why is a Copy lamp so much cheaper yet I say they cost you more to run per hour? That will make sense once I explain. The copy lamp may be $40 new for a Mitsubishi VLT-HC910LP. Your life expectancy of that lamp is 2000 hours (in most cases that is what the OEM is designed for). That Copy lamp is not made as well as the Original bulb. The bulb is using gases and manufacturing methods to ensure it can be sold cheap. That will guarantee the life expectancy is significantly lower. I may get 200-400 hours if you are lucky.
That means I need to buy another $40 lamp and get another 400 hours (I am being generous at 400 hours) …. I end up buying 5 lamps at $40 apiece to get your full 2000 hours that I am expecting. Plus, I must contact the Copy lamp seller and deal with the returns process and waiting for the new Copy lamp and then having to put it in and reset the timer each time and clean out the likely piles of broken glass from when the last Copy lamp exploded…just so much hassle for no savings once it’s all said and done.
The Copy lamp cost me $0.10 an hour to run, plus all the return shipping, hours spent troubleshooting and dealing with the replacement and lost time enjoying the projector. There are other problems with copy lamps such as color quality and brightness problems but those are not as quantifiable.
The Original Bulb Inside VLT-HC910LP is less than $140 new. Sure, that is almost 4 times the cost of the copy lamp. How can that be cheaper? Let’s do the cost per hour math and see…
Copy lamp = $40 new, 400hr lifespan, 5 x $40 = $200 for 2000hours of use. Plus, RMA shipping fees, restocking fees and hassle. Your Quantifiable cost per hour to get 2000 hours of use us $0.10 per hour. Seems cheap right?
Original Bulb Inside Lamp = $138.00 new, 2000hours life span. No replacing it at 400 hours or less.
Your cost per hour is $0.069 or 7 cents an hour! That adds up over the life of the projector.
Original Bulb Inside lamps are a wonderful cost-effective option to enjoy your projector. You get the same level of quality (in some cases higher quality) for a much cheaper price than the OEM.
Copy lamps only seem cheap when you see the initial cost. Extrapolating that over the life of the projector makes it obvious that your savings vanish the moment you install that copy lamp.
Pureland Supply prides itself on only selling OEM and Original Bulb Inside lamps.
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