I've been using solar lights for a bit over 10 years now, they are easier to install since they do not require garden wiring (and the original wired lights in the garden stopped working after yard work, or sometimes gophers. When that happens, it really sucks to dig out the yard to figure out what wire went bad). So yeah, solar lights have downsides, like:
they ship with too small batteries I replace as soon as I buy them
the solar panels are sometimes too small to properly recharge them except during full summer with short nights
the plastic can be cheap and fall apart after several years of sun (lots of plastic actually does disintegrate in the sun after a few years)
and then, this, the coating/cover on top of the cheap solar panels, also gets damaged by sun after a while (less than a year for a few I got)
Sometimes, I'm also a bit of an overachiever, and analyzed the actual lights in power draw vs amount of light coming out since all the specs online are a lie:
But despite the downsides, it gave me a chance to upgrade them over the year to better ones, including color changing ones which have somewhat held up so far:
Sadly, I have to write two years later (2024/12) that most firefly lights are shit and break after a year or less, from bad solar panels, or otherwise.
