Mali is the small one, and that is the whole point of it. At 1.5 W it draws lessthan a tenth of what the big garden floods take, its head is 27 mm across, and at the price of a decenttakeaway it is the fitting you buy six of rather than one of. It is not a tree uplight and it will notpretend to be. What it does is put a low, even wash of light onto the things you walk past a low hedge,a rendered wall, the edge of a bed, the base of a letterbox without any part of the garden looking litfrom a floodlight.

The beam is 50, and the 90 in the title is the tilt

These two numbers get confused constantly, including in our own catalogue data, so it is worth beingplain. The tilt is 90 that is how far the head swings to let you aim it. Thebeam is 50 that is how wide the light comes out. Havit’s ordering table gives thebeam as 50 and their product page repeats it. Fifty degrees is a soft flood: at a metre it lights apatch a little under a metre wide, which suits a shrub or a wall panel and is far too wide to throw lightup a tree. If you want a tight column on a trunk, its sibling Napa does 20 instead.

This is a 12 V fitting and it needs a driver

Mali runs on 12 V DC with a built-in LED there is no globe to buy,match or replace and it must be fed from a suitable 12 V DC LED driver. Do not connect the fittingdirectly to 240 V; a low-voltage fitting is destroyed instantly by it and the damage is not a warrantymatter. The upside of low voltage is real: the cable run in the garden is safe to work near, and at1.5 W each you can hang a great many of them off one modest driver. Havit’s own compatible list splitsinto plain non-dimmable drivers and 12 V DC Triac-dimmable ones, and Mali is Triacdimmable so if dimming matters, the dimmable driver is the part that has to be right, not thelight.

Living with it outdoors

• IP65 and IK08 sealed against driven rain and hose-down, and rated against aknock. In a bed that gets whipper-snipped, IK08 is the number that matters.
• 182 mm spike in a light 1.5 W head it stays where you push it, including inloose mulch where a heavy fitting leans.
• Clear glass diffuser, not plastic, so it does not haze or yellow with UV.
• Tri-colour selectable at 3000K, 4000K or 5500K, giving 90 lm, 95 lm and 100 lmrespectively a small enough spread that you should choose on the look you want, not on brightness.

Aluminium with a poly powder-coated black finish, protection class 3 (no earth required), CRI above80, and lamp life rated to over 30,000 hours. Backed by a 3-year replacement warranty.Low-voltage garden wiring is still electrician’s work.

Buying several? Send Lights For You your fitting count and cable run and we will tell you whichdriver actually covers it undersizing the driver is the most common way a cheap, well-chosen set ofgarden lights ends up disappointing.

Questions

Is 1.5 W bright enough to be worth it?

For accent work, yes; for uplighting a tree, no. Mali puts out 90100 lm across a 50 spread, which reads as a soft pool on a shrub, a wall or a bed edge from about a metre away. If you need to throw light up a trunk or across a driveway, step up to the 5 W Napa or the 24 W Oasis instead Mali is designed to be used in numbers, not in isolation.

Why does the beam say 50 when everything else says 90?

Because they measure different things. 90 is the tilt how far the head physically swings so you can aim it. 50 is the beam how wide the light spreads once it leaves the lens. Havit’s ordering table and product page both give 50 for the beam.

Can I run it straight off the wall?

No. It is a 12 V DC fitting and must be fed from a suitable 12 V DC LED driver. It must not be connected directly to 240 V doing so destroys it immediately, and that is not covered by the warranty.

Is it dimmable?

Yes, by Triac, provided the driver is a 12 V DC Triac-dimmable model. The dimming happens at the driver rather than in the fitting, so the driver is the part to specify carefully a non-dimmable driver on a dimmer will flicker or simply not respond.

Will it survive the garden?

It is rated IP65 for water and IK08 for impact, with a clear glass diffuser and a poly powder-coated aluminium body. IP65 covers rain, sprinklers and hose-down; it is not an underwater rating, so do not put it anywhere water actually sits and pools.

Which colour temperature should I pick?

3000K for planting and warm-toned brick or timber, 4000K for rendered and painted walls, 5500K only where you want a deliberately cool, modern look. The output barely changes across the three settings, so choose on appearance. The switch is set before the fitting goes in the ground.

How many can one driver run?

More than most people expect, because each fitting is only 1.5 W but the honest answer depends on total load, cable size and run length together, not on fitting count alone. Give us the layout and we will size it; a driver run at its limit is the usual cause of dim or flickering garden lighting.