The Hinkley is a fantastic light. Not seeing the Led is big deal, looks and feels better, and creats the ambiance that you're looking for in path lights. Also when it comes to path lights, the color temperature is key, anything less than 3000k is recommended at night so that you avoid using the bluish light for the exterior. Hope this helps.

How much snow do you get? The effect of ground based lighting buried under snow can be, um, interesting.

For mad_gallica, we can get up to 4 feet of snow, but it's rare. More likely we'll get 4-8 in. during a moderate storm. For "Beyond..." the color temperatures look ok: the Hinkley comes in at 2700, so on the dim side. The Garden Light comes in several color temps: 2700 and others.

Yardvaark: good point about brightness. I believe that will be "lumens". The Hinkley is 350 lumens on 4 watts. The Garden Light is 230 lumens at 2 watts. However, I doubt it's an apples-to-apples comparison because one is a strip and the other a bulb. One advantage of the Hinkley is that presumably new bulbs could be inserted, even different kinds of bulbs. However, it's most likely the Garden Light is sealed and so no maintenance could be done.

We want subtle and understated with outdoor lighting; when one gets a quote the lighting people could suggest crazy numbers of lights - would look like a Xmas display! We got one quote last week for 46 lights. We let the designer plan it as he wished, without saying much and he came up with that number.

Yes, hard to test and get a feel for outdoor lighting. Maybe I should create a simulator and a person could upload their landscape picture and then place different outdoor fixtures for a given sky darkness? Another project...ha ha.

The lightbulb in the Hinkley will also be sealed.

Have you gone to a lighting showroom and actually looked at either of these, also if you path lighting is to be under snow, you better make sure the material you pick holds up to your environment, Hinkley is a high dollar but its still powder coated aluminum....

My other comment about light output, light travels a lot more at night, and 4 watts is substantial, im not sure what you mean by continuous light, but I don't think a strip over a bulb has a part to play as much as one had a middle, while the other is open at the bottom.

second to that point, if one diode burns out in your stip, you will no longer have continuous lighting, and that happens.

Now garden light has a better warranty, the better grade aluminum, and is made in the USA, personally I think that would be how I made my choice

RL...no we haven't gone to a showroom. That's a good idea and we can put the effort into visiting one; what we have found in the last few years is that very few stores have many specialty items on display, but we should at least try. By "continuous" I mean "strip", like the Garden Light one below. We were told by one contractor that the Garden Light are among the highest quality because they are CNC milled of aluminum and are quite sturdy.

I agree as aluminum goes thats the best, next to brass or copper of course. While I love Hinkley lighting style, they are made in China and it is aluminum. Being that landscape lights take a beating from yard tools, sprinklers, and in your case winter. I always tell people to spend now unless you would just like to spend more again in a couple of years.

Result. After the install we are very pleased. One contractor wanted to install dozens of the Atlantis (Hinkley) shown at start of post, plus many uplights. We did not use him, fortunately. We worked with another contractor and design studio and they were much more experienced. Here's result (3 bollards visible) in daylight and at night. We wanted a subtle look, so fixtures aren't too obvious and fit the style of the house.

can you change the lamps in the sofit lights?

No, I don't believe we can change. They're LED with no regular bulbs. Too bright, too white? The photo makes exterior lights look somewhat whiter than they really are; hard to shoot at night.

IMO you needed more on the pathways to avoid the dark areas in the center of the pathway where most people would walk

Too bright, did you get a dimmer for those or can you have one installed, they are making a hot spot on the walls rather than a soft flood.

@RL Relocation LLC...here's other views. No, we don't have dimmers on soffit lights. I'll look at the lights tonight and get a feel for if they would look better with dimmers and softer floods. Thanks for input...it's hard to tell from pictures.