Is it just Preference? CHE or Black Light Heat Bulb

Ive had the Big Apple Pet Supply CHE for quite some time now, but it broke down. The metal part that is screwed into the lamp fixture is loose and now i have to send it back to Big Apple Pet Supply which costs me around $10 to ship (~$20 item)

In the meantime, I bought a Zilla Black Light heat bulb for ~$12 and it seems to be doing the job fine.

I have a on/off lamp fixture. I had a dimmer lamp fixture but every time i used it, it was either maxed out or off. So i decided to just make it more simple with the switch. Plus its a little cheaper for me.

So back to the title. Preference? Thanks for reading.

a dimmer i sbest so that you can keep a constant temp instead of on and off cycles. i use the one below from home depot for my rack and it works great, just make sure to plug it into a lamp to see how it works (from off position, you have to turn it half way on, and then you can lower it).

i never had any luck with any bulbs from zilla, they always broke like yours did. i would stick with the che, just because they have no light. it gets annoying after a while if you happen to have your setup in your bedroom like i used to.

http://www.homedepot.com/Electrical-...&storeId=10051

Neither honestly, when I used heat bulbs the only bulb that I ended up liking was this one:

http://m.petsmart.com/mt/www.petsmar...3&lmdn=Reptile

CHE's get too hot and blacklights don't put out enough heat. The infrared bulbs put out a form of light that your snake cannot see and can be used 24/7.

Snakes see both near and far IR. Most reptiles do to some degree, Royals being in the middle of the pack that way. I think rattlesnakes see the farthest into IR spectrum. Just to be clear however it really doesn't seem to matter as all heat sources are IR so they can see all of them.

Regardless if they can see it or not, infrared bulbs bother snakes much less than white bulbs do. And I know that some reptiles associate UV (blacklight) with day time. (though I don't know if BP's do.