The Altair 837016 LED outdoor fixture from Costco

Last Updated on April 25, 2026 by Dave Farquhar

My front porch lights sustained damage in a storm, so that gave me an excuse to modernize to an Altair 837016 from Costco. Priced at about $38, it has two energy-saving features: It turns itself off if it’s light outside, and it uses LEDs that deliver 950 lumens while consuming 10.5 watts.

These worked for me for about 10 years, but today there’s another option I like better that works just as well.

I installed them under a front porch, so they’re in the shade. But when I installed them in the early evening, they still sensed enough light not to turn themselves on. They really do turn themselves on around dusk, or if a storm blows in a little before dusk. The photosensors save energy and save the useful life of the LEDs, which is nice. If you accidentally flip the outside lights on, the lights still won’t come on unless you need them. And having some light on at night is a good security measure.

The light itself is 4500K, visibly harsher than any indoor LED I’ve used, but outside that’s OK. You won’t be reading by this light. The LEDs have a 60,000-hour life expectancy, so the lights should last about 13 years if I run them for 12 hours a night. The brightness is close to what 75W incandescents throw out. It’s enough light to light up the porch and light the path from the driveway to the front door. It’s enough light for me to see the house number visible from the street. So the lights do everything we buy lights to do.

In theory LEDs attract fewer bugs than incandescent or CFL light. In practice, maybe it’s fewer, but not zero.

The downside is that the LEDs and drivers, while replaceable, and instructions are included, the instructions don’t say where to buy them. That’s really only an issue if they fail outside of the warranty period.

Even with that downside, I’m happy with the lights. I’m glad I bought them, and I might buy more.

2026 Update: I got about 11 years out of the Altair 837016s before they failed. It started with them blinking when the weather was cold, but eventually failing entirely.

That’s a little less life than I expected when I bought them in 2015 but not terrible. Not knowing where to get replacement drivers or LEDs, I opted for an easier solution. Today you can get dusk-to-dawn bulbs with a built-in photosensor for under $10. So I bought a set of conventional fixtures and a pair of dusk-to-dawn bulbs. When the bulbs burn out in several years, I can simply unscrew the bulb and swap in a new one. I also bought bulbs for my remaining conventional fixtures so now I have dusk-to-dawn LEDs all around the house.

Yes, I converted all of my conventional outdoor fixtures to dusk-to-dawn by changing the bulb. Fixtures with built in LEDs are trendy, but I like the convenience of being able to just swap a light bulb in five minutes as needed.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.