I have many solar lights and while I managed to coax out more run time out of them by replacing with quality batteries only the string lights from Ikea (from years back) worked till dawn out of the box on a full sun that is until this one.These lights are amazing in the sense it manages to soak up enough light even on 3 consecutive days of overcast days to stay lit till dawn. And even more amazing is the panel is placed under an oak tree so it hardly gets any direct sun light. Is it still as bright as in the beginning of course not but still lit perhaps at 40% brightness. It is worth noting I have it in it's default mode setting so it cycles through it's different modes--having it on constant ON may have a different outcome haven't tried it yet.The build quality appears to be good -- panel / stake certainly didn't feel flimsy, wire is thin but didn't think needed extra extra special care while I was placing it. Some have mentioned about getting tangled up --I found it easier to unwind one loop at a time as I would wrap around the tree trunk that is as opposed to unwinding the entire length at first. I basically staked the panel to the ground first then started winding around the tree releasing one loop at a time --no mess at all.Mode setting, it appears the mode setting needs battery power to maintain so just as a battery powered watch it will loose it's setting if battery is fully drained before dawn. You can see that if you switch it off and on again --it will be lost.Overall, I am pleased with these lights. They are probably somewhere between 3 and 5 lumens (don't have a way to measure it) in brightness however, in a cluster appears much brighter. There may be other string lights brighter than this but may not last all night so it is a trade off and not to mention a good value. I also found the color of the wire adds to the overall appeal -- in my case copper.