Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Backstory: I got two of these lamps, and both flickered from day 1. Hence the critique in this review cannot be dismissed as a one-off. The lamp is as good as anything out there, once the switch is replaced. Seems Ikea -- whose products are ever leading the race to the bottom in quality, consistency and durability -- saves pennies per unit by using a very cheaply and poorly designed/manufactured switch. Surprised? Easy to remedy, if you have an amateur's skill with electricals. The connection inside the switch is the "pinch" kind, aka "insulation displacement" type, which is why the light flickers or just stops working. Ikea could care less, of course. But there's no need to throw the lamp away, without at least giving this a try first. STEP BY STEP FIX FOR A FLICKERING LAMP Tools: phillips screw driver, wire cutters, wire strippers, hammer, eye protection Go to a locally owned hardware store, and buy a Leviton single pole cord switch, cat no. 5410, or equivalent. Leviton 5410 Appliance Switch, Feed-Through Switch Rocker, Single Pole, Single Throw, 3A-125V AC, Brown. (Don't buy the pinch kind. It won't work because this lamp does not use standard gauge lamp wire. Also, I can't recommend buying an inline dimmer, since this is an Ikea product we're talking about, and it could easily melt or exude meatball gravy or lingonberry juice.) Unplug the lamp, and remove the existing lamp switch by smashing it with a hammer. Yes, you have to smash it, don't cut the wire. Put on safety glasses or some sort of eye protection, and hold the switch sideways (seam up) on something hard and well supported, like a concrete floor or doorway threshold, not a table or countertop. Hammer the switch straight down on the seam. Two or three well placed whacks, and you get the halves to split open enough to tear them apart by hand. You'll see two lines, one cut, the other continuous. Pull out both lines. Discard and banish all further thought of this defeated carcass of a worthless Ikea switch. Don't cut the uncut strand of the wire. Trim the ends of the already cut line, removing the "pinch" connectors. Discard those too. Strip the insulation from the ends you just trimmed, about 1/2 inch. Unbolt the casing of the new switch, and you can easily see where your exposed wire ends should go. (Twisting your wire ends before wrapping and tightening under the lead screws helps. The Leviton thing ought to come with instructions and diagram, but you can ignore the polarity issue, the plug used in this lamp is not polarized.) Put your new switch back together, and you should now have something almost unknown on planet Earth: an Ikea Jansjo lamp which will actually work -- until the bulb burns out, that is. Guess I'll write another review when that time comes. UPDATE: JUNE 2017 I still have two of these lamps, and both thrive, even after 5 years! I have pointedly bought next to nothing from Ikea in the intervening time, but they have no doubt "solved" their end of quality problem by raising the price of the lamp from $10 to $17, or more. I feel certain their materials and most importantly labor costs have only diminished, not increased. Currency fluctuations and transport fuel costs are another story (as is the horse meat in the Swedish meatballs, revelations of slave labor, and the globalist-instigated flowering of "no-go" zones throughout a once proudly peaceful European country). Their problem, not mine. Thank you to all who have commented on this review. It is very gratifying. UPDATE: APRIL 2018 I still have both lamps. The longevity of the bulb is impressive: 6+ years of daily use! So at the risk of sounding Ahabesque Moby-Dick (Bantam Classics), this lamp repair thing has become something of a personal mission. Starting a few weeks ago, one of the lamps started to fail. It didn't flicker like before (I never doubted the new switch -- nor should the reader), but the lamp simply didn't come on immediately, seemed to need some jostling of the power cord, near the adaptor. Then it just stopped coming on entirely. At the end of the power cord (top image), you will see a molded plug which fits exclusively into the power adaptor. This part has failed, and cannot be repaired. "Durn," I said to myself. I set the whole thing aside for a few days. This being Saturday, I got to work trying to find a new adapter which matches the power ratings (middle image), and see if it costs more than it's worth to replace. I make it habit to share such absorbing dilemmas with my neighbor William, who knows a lot about such things as electronics, computers, old cars, and so forth. I mentioned the power rating of the inferior Ikea piece, specifically the output (4V=0.75A 3W). His reply was: "Oh, that sounds like a cell phone charger." Sure enough, I dug out an old flip-phone charger bottom image). Its rating is close enough, so I spliced it to the lamp cord. The thing works. DISCLAIMER: I don't generally recommend splicing a power cord, so I won't offer a step-by-step on this particular hack. But the equipment rating, the numbers and specs, are there for a reason. Seeing that We Americans are ever awash in Cheap Imported Plastic Electronics Junk, it seems sensible to make do with what's available, as well as to proactively figure it out. And here I have a zero-cost lamp fix. Knowledge + Action = Power ... literally, in this case.