Until your LED bulb starts making a strange noise and you discover these things actually have a cooling fan inside of them. This thing WILL fail if kept running for a long time.
This is excellent. However, please do not say "this is enough for me" after you replace all your incandescent light bulbs with these. Household energy consumption is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket compared to industrical energy consumption and shipping.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying... that the LED bulbs have a much higher energy and environmental "cost" in manufacturing, compared to a standard incandescent? That's quite likely true and has to be considered in the big picture (similar issues with electric vehicles, that their proponents like to ignore).
For me the answer is simple: $13 is way too much to pay for a light bulb, I don't care how efficient it is.
I am unimpressed by 60 watt equivalent bulbs. A 60 watt equivalent is about enough to be a desk lamp, if I need to provide light for even a small room it is a useless amount unless I get a large number of bulbs together.
Unfortunately 60 watt equivalent has become some sort of benchmark for new light bulb technology. If you really want to replace lighting in some meaningful way, start quoting 100 watt equivalent numbers to me.
If only someone made a "fixture" for lighting with multiple bulb sockets in a convenient, attractive mounting that could be attached to the ceiling of a room.
The 60W incandescent light bulb has been the "standard lightbulb" since before most of us were born. Honestly I don't understand this criticism at all. Certainly LED lighting is available in many form factors other than a 60W bulb...
This is kind of an obsolete way of thinking. Most people think of "X-watt equivalent" as the area illumination caused by an X-watt omnidirectional A19 incandescent. Industry expresses equivalency in terms of lumens, or total light output, but not total illumination of a specified area. This is only apples-to-apples for fully omnidirectional bulbs.
LED lighting is costly and complex enough that directional LED bulbs are more or less at cost parity with omnidirectional LED bulbs. In fact, true omnis are often more expensive just because LEDs are inherently directional. This is the first time in the history of lighting where omni wasn't significantly less expensive than directional.
Truth is, there are very few scenarios where a high-output omnidirectional lamp actually makes sense. We're used to omnis because they were much cheaper to purchase than their more efficient, directional brethren and because it's convenient to just slap a bright bulb in a socket and say "eh - good enough."
Since most people buy LED bulbs for the gains in efficiency, doesn't it make more sense to buy the lower-power directional lamps which are more fit for their application? How many fixtures do you have in your home that require a true omni-directional lamp? How many of those fixtures need a high-output omni? Now, how many fixtures do you have that could make good use of a directional bulb (either narrow or wide-beam)?
tl;dr: Talking about incandescent watt equivalency only benefits marketing people and confuses consumers - take a look at directional lamps and you'll be less disappointed.
What I'd really prefer is using LEDs to do novel kinds of lighting fixtures, not just replace edison-screw-base incandescents. I want a glowing uniform ceiling square, wall square, undercounter wide strip, etc.
Even if I want more light, one single high-output bulb is a bad way to do it. Spreading the light out over more sources gives a much more even, ambient-like illumination.
This is Spam. There are a few dozen of these with better economics on Amazon. And if you want to light a house on the cheap, the LED "ropes" are more efficient, and will last longer.
Also a CFT would be 12W and cost $2 ($1.25 if you look around). Over 10 years in most markets that would be cheaper.
PS: My Home is almost 100% LED's. I love them. But that doesn't mean they are always the cheapest, the most efficient, or the best for the planet. I just prefer the dimmable nature and the consistent color across the dimming.
Prices keep coming down. I was at IKEA last week and they were having a sale on their E26 LED bulb for only 6 bucks. Hadn't tried their LEDs before (have others from Home Depot/Lowes) but it has great light/color. Of course it being IKEA who knows what the actual mileage will be, but they're worth checking out.
The most powerful IKEA led is 600 lumen and uses 10W and costs 14$. The OP bulb is 800 lumen and uses 9.5W.
I read an article about the IKEA bulbs being quite good about 85% colour rendition compared to normal bulbs. If you feel like it you can test it by printing a camera colour test chart and compare how it looks under different lighting.
“it being IKEA who knows what the actual mileage will be”
When I moved into my home 6,5 years a go, I bought compact fluorescent lamps at IKEA (the kind that looks like a regular incandescent light bulb). I have yet to replace one.
I'd be pretty happy to get away from compact fluorescencts. They're filled with mercury gas (I think). It's bad news if you break one and inhale it. And I'm not sure what happens to the mercury when you dispose of them either.
If you make a habit of breaking them open near your face and inhaling the gas, you probably have bigger problems. I've read that the actual average mercury exposure from a broken CFL is less than 10% of the mercury exposure from a serving of tuna.
I like the color temperature of incandescent bulbs. That alone is worth the extra electricity expense.
It's a bit funny how many of us obsess about the calibration of our monitors and tablets, even installing utilities that change the color temperature at different times of day to be easier on our eyes. But we don't seem to care as much about the ambient light that we see everywhere.
Also, many of my fixtures expose the bulbs and look ridiculous without a clear glass incandescent bulb.
I obsess about lighting plenty (more than just color temperature - florescent flicker that most people don't notice irritates me to no end,) but I don't subscribe to the idea that incandescent light sources are automatically better.
I recently acquired a 40W-equivalent version of this bulb, and in A/B testing vs a 57W "efficient" incandescent, I lost track of which bulb was which. The LED bulb actually had a warmer color that the incandescent, plus very similar brightness.
Of course, most of my bulbs are horrible, dim, slow, ugly, toxic, cool white CCFLs, installed by the previous owner (even in fixtures with exposed bulbs,) so pretty much any bulbs constitute a serious improvement.
You can match the color temperature. The problem is the color rendering. With CFLs, 10 different shades of red that you can distinguish under incandescent bulbs all look the same.
The CRI of incandescents is 100, LEDs are around 90, and CFLs are around 70. Under real world tests, the human eye can't distinguish additional colors in LED vs incandescent bulbs.
Efficient lightbulbs come in various color temperatures. You don't need incandescents to get the same color temperature. I don't like the harsher blue ones so I buy the warmer ones for at home.
Rant: when are we going to stop using watts as a unit for lightbulb "brightness?" The actual unit we care about is only implied by saying "60 watt equivalent." :(
I just bought a 5k and 2.7k versions from Home Depot here in Canada for $15.97 CAD each.
My only gripe is the ~22% markup over the US pricing when the Canadian Dollar is worth ~2% more than the American (and has been for some time now).
I found it funny the way they had their lights laid out in my local store. There has always only ever been one aisle dedicated to twist-in bulbs.
When I entered the store today, and walked straight to that aisle. All I could find were phillips LED bulbs. Rashes of them. Almost every shelf in the aisle featured a Phillips LED bulb of some sort, for twice the price of the Crees. There were even Phillips LED comparison kisosks where consumers could turn on and off all of Phillips' LED bulbs. It was really quite a spectacle.
I broke down and finally asked a sales rep, only to be told the Cree bulbs were in the "fancy/expensive" lighting section of the store. The one where they sell all of the chandeliers and lamps, and you have never been able to find twist-ins for sale.
My gut feeling is that Phillips is scared they're going to lose market share over this, and are using their massive Home Depot contracts to negotiate poor placement for the Crees (and possibly poor pricing?). FYI 90%+ of the bulbs sold in Home Depots are Phillips.
> My gut feeling is that Phillips is scared they're going to lose market share over this, and are using their massive Home Depot contracts to negotiate poor placement for the Crees (and possibly poor pricing?). FYI 90%+ of the bulbs sold in Home Depots are Phillips.
It'd be interesting to know what kind of maneuvering the companies are doing. Here in the US Cree is paying for a single "end cap" (end of the aisle placement in the front of the store) and the bulbs are selling out fast. Home depot is also their main distributor. But the store is littered with other brands, not just Philips.
So I'm wondering how well this bulb would do in the L-Prize competition[1]. It looks like they have a number of testing requirements, but their primary goal is to have a good lumen output and lumen/watt ratio. It's run by the US Department Of Energy. Consumer Reports[2] started testing the previous winner[3] of the L-Prize competition.
I'm not an expert (just a physics prof), but my understanding is that LEDs always emit one specific color (wavelength) of light rather than white light (which is a mixture of many wavelengths). So if you want to use an LED to produce white light, you set up a material that absorbs light at one wavelength and then re-emits it in a wide variety of wavelengths (that is, the phosphor).
(This is also the way that fluorescent bulbs work: the hot mercury vapor inside produces invisible ultraviolet light, but the phosphorescent coating absorbs that UV and re-emits it in a range of visible wavelengths. And it's no coincidence that they're using a blue LED with a short wavelength: in general, a phosphor can only re-emit at longer wavelengths than it absorbed. That may imply that these bulbs emit little or no violet in their "white" light, since violet has a shorter wavelength than blue.)
1) put red, green and blue LEDs in the same package and either bring all the connections outside for an external balancing circuit (which also lets you do multicolour effect), or balance the currents internally and just bring out two connections.
2) make a blue LED (with substantial UV output) and use a phosphor coating to re-emit "white" light. This coating appears very yellow when the LED is off, and is similar to the way a conventional fluorescent tube works.
2) is cheaper and more efficient, but only emits "white" light - the trick is getting it to not appear too blue as the phosphor doesn't absorb all the blue light.
EDIT: also, the white light from (1) is not really very white - the spectrum is hard to tailor compared to using a phosphor.
Basically, LEDs are typically mono-chromatic, i.e. they generate light within a pretty tight range of wavelengths (what we perceive as color).
There are two ways to get white light (which is light of "all" visible wavelengths) from a LED: combining a red, a green and a blue LED, or using a coating that when energized by (typically blue) light, in turn reacts and emits white light.
LEDs emit light in a narrow frequency band, i.e. LEDs have intrinsic colors. White is not just one color, so your options to make white light from LEDs are:
1) Use multiple colors of LEDs, which will make the light source look white but objects lit by this source will have off colors.
2) Use a phosphor coating on the LEDs, where the phosphor absorbs (most of) the narrow frequency band output by the LEDs and emits the color(s) that you want.
In this case, they went with option 2 with a phosphor that absorbs blue light and emits broad spectrum white light.
Based on the material used an LED produces a specific colour (wavelength). To create white light you need to emit light at all wavelengths simultaneously.
White LEDs work by emitting blue light but being coated in phosphors that emit the other colours when hit by that blue light.
Often you'll see that white LEDs appear a little "cold" in colour which is caused by the slight excess of blue light compared to the phosphor generated other wavelengths.
White light is the combination of many spectrums of light. On your monitor for example, it is red + green + blue.
LEDs however, only output one narrow spectrum. So, to solve this issue, the "white" LED is really a Blue LED + a material that converts the color blue into white.
Something not qualified numerically about LED or CFL lamps, but a moderate consideration for me is analog FM radio interference ("RFI").
In one of the smallest rooms of my house, there are two of the Philips LED bulbs of the "yellow when off" variety. In an adjoining area there is another bulb of the same type.
There is audible RFI with the room's lights on when the battery-powered FM radio (with a rod antenna, about 3 feet from one of the bulbs) is accurately tuned in to a favorite but moderately distant (perhaps 30 miles), moderately powered (6 KW, not a lot) FM station. Moving the rod antenna away can stop the RFI, but then the antenna happens to block a doorway.
Turning off the lighting stops the RFI. The lamp in the adjoining room is apparently distant enough not to interfere with the FM radio.
I wonder if the CREE bulbs are any better in this regard, but not seeing anything in the teardown pictures that looks like shielding or ferrite chokes makes means I'll probably keep the existing bulbs; the RFI isn't bad enough.
As a side note, there is an fxguidetv[1] episode[2] where they talk to Dedo Weigert about LEDs. It is a very interesting interview that talks about some LED myths and color temperature.
Surprised that site has not done a teardown of the (more expensive) Phillips bulbs that have similar specs. They've been around longer and are the ugly oddly shaped yellow plastic ones. Mine have a bit of a buzzing sound when dimmed, even though the packaging claims this won't happen... am thinking of moving to Crees but it would be nice to see a comparison of the innards.
Its amazing how small changes like these can cause a seachange in power consumption real difference in our collective future. This change alone could be a serious bear market for power companies! This, mixed with generally growing renewable means a greener planet may be closer than we think... most data assume constant consumption/or growth with population.
I'm not sure how revolutionary this is mainly because I live in a state the subsidizes the cost of energy efficient light bulbs and the IKEAs sell $10 60W equivalents.
[+] [-] ck2|13 years ago|reply
The amazing part of this bulb is not it's watts or it's cost.
It's that a manufacturer finally put it's warranty where it's mouth is.
With a 10 year warranty I will actually buy it compared to the Phillips.
BTW I've yet to have a cheap chinese led 110v bulb last more than 3 years.
[+] [-] ars|13 years ago|reply
And the biggest problem with this bulb is the CRI of 80. That's much worse than CFL's which are typically around 90.
[+] [-] qompiler|13 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5avJVvrFedc
[+] [-] nakedrobot2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] othello|13 years ago|reply
As a case in point, in 2009, industry consumed 256 million tons of oil equivalent, versus 262 mtoe for the residential sector (ie households).
http://www.iea.org/stats/balancetable.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=US
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
For me the answer is simple: $13 is way too much to pay for a light bulb, I don't care how efficient it is.
[+] [-] com2kid|13 years ago|reply
Unfortunately 60 watt equivalent has become some sort of benchmark for new light bulb technology. If you really want to replace lighting in some meaningful way, start quoting 100 watt equivalent numbers to me.
[+] [-] ajross|13 years ago|reply
The 60W incandescent light bulb has been the "standard lightbulb" since before most of us were born. Honestly I don't understand this criticism at all. Certainly LED lighting is available in many form factors other than a 60W bulb...
[+] [-] benjamincburns|13 years ago|reply
LED lighting is costly and complex enough that directional LED bulbs are more or less at cost parity with omnidirectional LED bulbs. In fact, true omnis are often more expensive just because LEDs are inherently directional. This is the first time in the history of lighting where omni wasn't significantly less expensive than directional.
Truth is, there are very few scenarios where a high-output omnidirectional lamp actually makes sense. We're used to omnis because they were much cheaper to purchase than their more efficient, directional brethren and because it's convenient to just slap a bright bulb in a socket and say "eh - good enough."
Since most people buy LED bulbs for the gains in efficiency, doesn't it make more sense to buy the lower-power directional lamps which are more fit for their application? How many fixtures do you have in your home that require a true omni-directional lamp? How many of those fixtures need a high-output omni? Now, how many fixtures do you have that could make good use of a directional bulb (either narrow or wide-beam)?
tl;dr: Talking about incandescent watt equivalency only benefits marketing people and confuses consumers - take a look at directional lamps and you'll be less disappointed.
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jseliger|13 years ago|reply
Here you go: http://store.earthled.com/products/switch-switch100-led-ligh... , though note that the upfront cost is high. Scroll down to see the performance specs.
[+] [-] dClauzel|13 years ago|reply
The real challenge is to propose an affordable LED bulb that can provide at least 1300 lumens.
[+] [-] lutorm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnriot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drakaal|13 years ago|reply
Also a CFT would be 12W and cost $2 ($1.25 if you look around). Over 10 years in most markets that would be cheaper.
PS: My Home is almost 100% LED's. I love them. But that doesn't mean they are always the cheapest, the most efficient, or the best for the planet. I just prefer the dimmable nature and the consistent color across the dimming.
[+] [-] wtdominey|13 years ago|reply
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/liv...
[+] [-] hmottestad|13 years ago|reply
I read an article about the IKEA bulbs being quite good about 85% colour rendition compared to normal bulbs. If you feel like it you can test it by printing a camera colour test chart and compare how it looks under different lighting.
[+] [-] Samuel_Michon|13 years ago|reply
When I moved into my home 6,5 years a go, I bought compact fluorescent lamps at IKEA (the kind that looks like a regular incandescent light bulb). I have yet to replace one.
[+] [-] tocomment|13 years ago|reply
Edit:
For you downvoters out there, it is considered a serious risk. Here's another article about the problems: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7431198
[+] [-] Nursie|13 years ago|reply
www.popularmechanics.com/home/reviews/news/4217864
If you make a habit of breaking them open near your face and inhaling the gas, you probably have bigger problems. I've read that the actual average mercury exposure from a broken CFL is less than 10% of the mercury exposure from a serving of tuna.
[+] [-] nsxwolf|13 years ago|reply
It's a bit funny how many of us obsess about the calibration of our monitors and tablets, even installing utilities that change the color temperature at different times of day to be easier on our eyes. But we don't seem to care as much about the ambient light that we see everywhere.
Also, many of my fixtures expose the bulbs and look ridiculous without a clear glass incandescent bulb.
[+] [-] nexox|13 years ago|reply
I recently acquired a 40W-equivalent version of this bulb, and in A/B testing vs a 57W "efficient" incandescent, I lost track of which bulb was which. The LED bulb actually had a warmer color that the incandescent, plus very similar brightness.
Of course, most of my bulbs are horrible, dim, slow, ugly, toxic, cool white CCFLs, installed by the previous owner (even in fixtures with exposed bulbs,) so pretty much any bulbs constitute a serious improvement.
[+] [-] jseliger|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcampbell1|13 years ago|reply
The CRI of incandescents is 100, LEDs are around 90, and CFLs are around 70. Under real world tests, the human eye can't distinguish additional colors in LED vs incandescent bulbs.
[+] [-] drivers99|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] officialjunk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|13 years ago|reply
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=99&t=3
In addition, all those places on earth where it's dark at night should be able to use lower power lights, when the price comes down a little more.
[+] [-] ZeroCoin|13 years ago|reply
My only gripe is the ~22% markup over the US pricing when the Canadian Dollar is worth ~2% more than the American (and has been for some time now).
I found it funny the way they had their lights laid out in my local store. There has always only ever been one aisle dedicated to twist-in bulbs.
When I entered the store today, and walked straight to that aisle. All I could find were phillips LED bulbs. Rashes of them. Almost every shelf in the aisle featured a Phillips LED bulb of some sort, for twice the price of the Crees. There were even Phillips LED comparison kisosks where consumers could turn on and off all of Phillips' LED bulbs. It was really quite a spectacle.
I broke down and finally asked a sales rep, only to be told the Cree bulbs were in the "fancy/expensive" lighting section of the store. The one where they sell all of the chandeliers and lamps, and you have never been able to find twist-ins for sale.
My gut feeling is that Phillips is scared they're going to lose market share over this, and are using their massive Home Depot contracts to negotiate poor placement for the Crees (and possibly poor pricing?). FYI 90%+ of the bulbs sold in Home Depots are Phillips.
[+] [-] justin66|13 years ago|reply
It'd be interesting to know what kind of maneuvering the companies are doing. Here in the US Cree is paying for a single "end cap" (end of the aisle placement in the front of the store) and the bulbs are selling out fast. Home depot is also their main distributor. But the store is littered with other brands, not just Philips.
[+] [-] moheeb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyrra|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.lightingprize.org/
[2] http://news.consumerreports.org/home/2012/08/first-look-at-t...
[3] http://www.usa.philips.com/c/energy-saving-light-bulbs/ambie...
[+] [-] ars|13 years ago|reply
The competition requires a CRI of at least 90, but this bulb only rates 80.
[+] [-] lucaspiller|13 years ago|reply
Could someone explain that a bit more please?
[+] [-] Steuard|13 years ago|reply
(This is also the way that fluorescent bulbs work: the hot mercury vapor inside produces invisible ultraviolet light, but the phosphorescent coating absorbs that UV and re-emits it in a range of visible wavelengths. And it's no coincidence that they're using a blue LED with a short wavelength: in general, a phosphor can only re-emit at longer wavelengths than it absorbed. That may imply that these bulbs emit little or no violet in their "white" light, since violet has a shorter wavelength than blue.)
[+] [-] jrabone|13 years ago|reply
1) put red, green and blue LEDs in the same package and either bring all the connections outside for an external balancing circuit (which also lets you do multicolour effect), or balance the currents internally and just bring out two connections.
2) make a blue LED (with substantial UV output) and use a phosphor coating to re-emit "white" light. This coating appears very yellow when the LED is off, and is similar to the way a conventional fluorescent tube works.
2) is cheaper and more efficient, but only emits "white" light - the trick is getting it to not appear too blue as the phosphor doesn't absorb all the blue light.
EDIT: also, the white light from (1) is not really very white - the spectrum is hard to tailor compared to using a phosphor.
[+] [-] unwind|13 years ago|reply
There are two ways to get white light (which is light of "all" visible wavelengths) from a LED: combining a red, a green and a blue LED, or using a coating that when energized by (typically blue) light, in turn reacts and emits white light.
You can read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_ligh..., of course.
Note: I'm just an (embedded) software guy with a hobby interest in electronics. :)
[+] [-] bjustin|13 years ago|reply
1) Use multiple colors of LEDs, which will make the light source look white but objects lit by this source will have off colors.
2) Use a phosphor coating on the LEDs, where the phosphor absorbs (most of) the narrow frequency band output by the LEDs and emits the color(s) that you want.
In this case, they went with option 2 with a phosphor that absorbs blue light and emits broad spectrum white light.
[+] [-] sixothree|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whiskers|13 years ago|reply
White LEDs work by emitting blue light but being coated in phosphors that emit the other colours when hit by that blue light.
Often you'll see that white LEDs appear a little "cold" in colour which is caused by the slight excess of blue light compared to the phosphor generated other wavelengths.
[+] [-] dragontamer|13 years ago|reply
LEDs however, only output one narrow spectrum. So, to solve this issue, the "white" LED is really a Blue LED + a material that converts the color blue into white.
[+] [-] codemonkeymike|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EEGuy|13 years ago|reply
In one of the smallest rooms of my house, there are two of the Philips LED bulbs of the "yellow when off" variety. In an adjoining area there is another bulb of the same type.
There is audible RFI with the room's lights on when the battery-powered FM radio (with a rod antenna, about 3 feet from one of the bulbs) is accurately tuned in to a favorite but moderately distant (perhaps 30 miles), moderately powered (6 KW, not a lot) FM station. Moving the rod antenna away can stop the RFI, but then the antenna happens to block a doorway.
Turning off the lighting stops the RFI. The lamp in the adjoining room is apparently distant enough not to interfere with the FM radio.
I wonder if the CREE bulbs are any better in this regard, but not seeing anything in the teardown pictures that looks like shielding or ferrite chokes makes means I'll probably keep the existing bulbs; the RFI isn't bad enough.
[+] [-] ahen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|13 years ago|reply
1) http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv
2) http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguidetv-170-dedo-on-dedol...
[+] [-] natch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mp99e99|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DSingularity|13 years ago|reply