Awesome LED lamp deal from HD

[kb0nes]

Stopped by Home Depot last night and saw this deal. These are 3rd gen Philips 60 watt eq lamps. 830 lumens 11 watts (75 lm/w efficacy) 2700K color temp (Incandescent color) and they are dimmable with standard dimmers.

The Cree 60w is still a great deal for $13 (also HD) but for $8 these are a steal. I resisted the urge to grab an armload but only because I have all I need!

 

[sudsmaster]

Haven't seen those. Our local HD has two types of CREE 60watt LED bulbs. One for $13, one for $8. The $13 one uses more watts but has a very high CRI. The $8 one, lower watts and lower CRI.

 

[dj-gabriele]

What is the colour rendering index on those lamps?
I'm quite sceptical on led lighting... just recently accepted compact fluorescents.
Halogen is the way to go for me, like real daylight but... what a cost! :S

 

[kb0nes]

Rich,

I believe you are confusing CRI (Color Rendering Index) for Color Temperature. They are different, here is a great link for anyone that is interested:

http://lowel.com/edu/color_temperature_and_rendering_demystified.html

Cree does offer two different color temperatures in the 60w eq version, both Soft White 2700K and Daylight 5000K. CRI is listed at 80 for all the Cree "A" style bulbs. To my eye the Daylight is a bit blue and the Soft White is very "incandescent like", slightly too warm. Nice to have the choice though. Here is their spec sheet

http://www.creebulb.com/Content/downloads/product_info/75w60w40w_StandardBulb_DataSheet.pdf

They just released a 13.5w / 75w eq offering I haven't seen in person yet. At 81 lumen/watt efficacy that is a great deal for 2700K![this post was last edited: 12/19/2013-13:10]

 

[petek]

I've got enough CFL's stocked up to last for years although I wouldn't mind a couple of those for the ceiling light in the tv room so I can dim them. It wouldn't be cost effective to change many out from the current CFL's. I get the CFL's in a 6 pack (60 watt equiv) for $1.99 at Meijer

 

[kb0nes]

Gabriele,

CRI of most LED offerings today is in the 75-90 range, so they don't quite meet Halogen in that regard. I'd say they are every bit as good as the CFL's though. I would bet that if you tried an LED or two you will never consider another CFL again. I chucked all my CFL's about 2 years ago. Even though the florescents have got much better, they still have warmup issues, most aren't dimmable, have durability problems (especially when frequently cycles) and create RFI I hear on the radio. LED's have answered all those issues.

I do agree that Halogen creates wonderful light, but they are just too power hungry. At best a Halogen lamp is about 1/3rd the efficiency of an LED. The other day a buddy who is a camera man for a local news channel showed me his new on camera light. Its a focusable LED lamp that replaced the old Halogen. It looks better, has way more output and it can run for hours without denting the battery! He doesn't miss the Halogen.

 

[mattl]

I'm more than ready to switch to LEDs but cost is an issue. Once the price drops another 50% I will start buying them more often. I have a few and like them much better than cfls.

 

[dj-gabriele]

Domestic LED lamps with a CRI of 90? I must be dreaming... the best I found was in the 80-82 range with poor red rendition! (You must value the colours separately to have something even vaguely meaningful).
Anyway, I really like my CFL, got all of them on the "quick start" variety and they switch on within a couple of seconds at 70% luminous flux and from there full brightness is achieved in 20 seconds or so. Desk lamps, bed side, bathrooms and hall all have hi-efficency halogens.

Out of nostalgia I keep a 25W tungsten light bulb in a 50s stainless-steel desk lamp, when it burns out it'll be a pain to find a suitable substitute as the space is very tight even for "compact" low powered CFL and LED lamps.

At my father's we put hi-cri fluorescent tubes (in a commercial laundry you really need good lighting) with a CRI of 98. When on at full power you can hardly notice the difference with real daylight!

But the thing that outrages me the most is that ALL the old lamps I had were proudly "MADE IN ITALY" or at worst France or Germany. Now the best I can expect is Poland otherwise there's China... even the "classic" fluorescent tubes, that used to be made here all come from east, I'm sick.

 

[foraloysius]

I love LED's! Especially when they have a color close to incandescent bulbs. The LED's are so much better than the CFL's. Here is a picture of the LED in my desklamp.

 

[mrb627]

YAY for LED's

I just cannot stand the CFL's. I have friends that use them in their dining room chandelier. Just awful.

LED's are definitely the way to go.

Malcolm

 

[davey7]

My building just installed an LED driveway light to replace a faulty (and ugly ugly ugly) sodium vapor light. I'm waiting for comments from the troops.

 

[kb0nes]

I'm more than ready to switch to LEDs but cost is an iss

Matt,

I agree initial cost is slightly higher, although it has dropped a TON in the past 2 years. But the cost of the LED's is FAR less if you factor in energy cost.

If you have a 60 watt incandescent bulb you run currently for 4 hours a day and you pay $.11/kwh, the LED lamp I mentioned at the start of this thread is PAYED FOR in only ONE year! And you will get years more use and no required service/replacement costs to boot.

I don't see LED technology ever falling far under the pricing we see today, although I expect efficiency and aesthetic aspects to improve. Consumer Reports a while back stated that LED lamps costing less then $50 will easily payback in their life. For me the tipping point was the $15 for a 60w eq lamp.

I just bought one of the brand new 100w eq. Philips bulbs last night, Payed $32 for it. There are predictions that over its life it will save better then $200. Maybe it will or maybe like much in sales it will fall short of marketing promises. Still it will pay for itself and then some I am sure.

 

[jeffg]

Davey, let us know what they think. I'm guessing it will be mostly positive. I can't see for anything in sodium vapor light and it washes out all other colors.

 

[petek]

Big Savings ?

That's all if you're replacing incandescent bulbs with LED. You won't garner any where near those savings if at all for years and years and years by replacing a CFL with an LED.

 

[kb0nes]

Pete, I agree CFL's are darned close to LED's in the efficiency department. If you have CFL's and you like them its folly to replace them before they fail!

I replaced the CFL's because I don't like them and their issues.

As an interesting aside I used to manage a large pool room that had incandescent lights over all the tables ~220 lamps in all. Almost 17,000 watts total! The switch was made to CFL's and roughly $5000 was saved yearly. The power company rebates payed for the lamps initially. The downside was all the CFL's tend to fail early as they are cycled frequently (every time a table was rented). Now they use CFL's and leave them on all day so the durability issues aren't as pronounced.

 

[cfz2882]

home LED lighting

about 55%of my lights are LED from these 4 mfg so far:
-lights of America
-GE
-LG
-3M
I mostly use the LEDs in aplications that are on for long periods of time or the cooler running is a benefit.I find the LED bulbs weight puts some lamps off balance and they also are unsuited to some enclosed fixtures(as are CFLs)because of heat buildup could damage them or affect operation.I still use incandescent where heat given off is a benefit,low usage,certain lamps and fixtures-some I run incandescent in winter/swap to LED for summer-bathroom for example.

 

[danemodsandy]

Does Anyone Make What I Need?

My whole house is on CFLs, with which I'm happy until they burn out, then I can go to LEDs, no problem. EXCEPT -

In my bathroom, over the medicine cabinet, there are two light fixtures with ruffled glass shades; they were designed to use a 40W standard-base candle bulb.

Try as I may, I can't find an LED equivalent for them, and I refuse to use CFLs in these fixtures, because the bulbs are visible, and CFLs look like radioactive bee butts when they're sticking out of a fixture.

Anyone know of an LED bulb meeting these requirements?

 

[retropia]

The problem I have with some of these high-tech bulbs is their hit-or-miss life span. If they fail early, then you have to deal with the warranty. The store won't do a return after their return period ends, which means contacting the manufacturer.

I remember an expensive CFL (styled and sized to replace a halogen recessed can light bulb) that failed early, and the manufacturer wanted me to pay shipping to return it, PLUS a $10 processing fee, which was only slightly less than what I'd paid for it in the first place.

What the warranty experience is like with an LED bulb is something I haven't yet experienced. I know I'd be honked off if I paid $50 for a bulb, it failed early, and the manufacturer wanted me to pay for the shipping plus a $50 "processing" fee.

 

[cfz2882]

LED reliability

All the LED lamps I have bought over the last ~3yrs have been totally reliable-did have trouble with some early Chinese made(Ca.2009)"lights of America"floodlight LEDs:this had groups of standard discrete "t 1 3/4 diodes in series strings and some would short and upset the voltage balance,blowing more until whole sections were out or flickering...Later LOA lights,~2010 on,are"assembled in USA"and have been 100%reliable,i have had an outdoor one on for about 3yrs straight now.

 

[travis]

Sandy,

Not all light fixtures can or should be updated. CFL's or LED bulbs look terrible if the light bulb is exposed. I really don't understand the push for efficiency. What people need is a bit of common sense when using utilities. I have 37 25 watt incandescent bulbs in 16 vintage light fixtures. There are rarely more than four on at one time. Thankfully, the bulbs I use are specialty bulbs and not part of the phase out.

I have repaired enough vintage things and not over-consumed cheap throwaway products to offset my use of this terrible inefficient lighting.

 

[travis]

There are 12 sconces around three rooms. If someone will make a molded flame bulb with LED's inside that screws into a medium base, then we'll talk. I am more than happy to pay a little to not look at ugly lighting.

 

[kb0nes]

Lifespan

So far out of the ~50 lamps I have, some are 4 or more years old with decent runtime, I have yet to see one fail!

Based on what I have seen I have no reason to doubt the general predictions that the reputable manufacturers make. LED's don't have the high voltages and odd starting habits like those that plagued the CFL's which surely did have a checkered reputation. Of course at this point we are dealing with predictions based on accelerated aging and there could be some marketing in play. My hunch is that any decent quality lamp should give a typical service life of 10 or more years depending on things like usage and temperature of operation. In any case far long enough to pay back on energy saved and reduced maintenance etc.

I started dabbling with LED lighting about 1998 which was a couple years after the idea of a white LED came to be. The early offerings were fairly low power T1-3/4 package LED's which were basically similar to the indicator LED's we had for years. These devices had no provision for heat sinking and cooled themselves entirely through the leads, this greatly limited what they could do output wise. It was fun to solder them into arrays and see how much light one could get from a watt or two. We have all seen the
LED flashlights that have 9 or more LED's, these are all the old "indicator style" devices and are basically worthless for lighting compared to todays high power devices. In the mid 2000's Philips LumiLEDs broke the barrier making the Luxon devices which got us up to about 1 watt per LED. In the following years Philips, Cree and Nichia and others have pushed the device power up to at much as 20 watts or more!

So my personal take is that I tend to look to the companies that make the LED's themselves when I look at a lamp. I like Philips and Cree for instance. A company like Lights of America is simply rebranding lights made in China and typically they are marginal at best. LoA just lost a lawsuit to the FTC (~$22 million) due to exaggerated claims of light output and lifespan. I might buy cheap lamps from them but at the $10 price point there is much better to be had! Initially I was a fan of the 3M Advanced LED lamp but now I find them to be high cost, high complexity and heavy. My guess is that 3M will leave the market eventually, perhaps only selling the optical products (diffusers and light pipes) they make.

The big change with LED lighting still has yet to hit. Here we are trying to fit this new form of lighting into a package that is 150 years old, trying to provide omnidirectional light and offering replaceability This all comes at the cost of getting the heat out, this has been the bane of the 100 watt equivalent A19 style lamps. When we start designing the fixtures for LED's and embrace their design and longevity then solid state lighting will truly shine!

 

[frigilux]

Every bulb in my house has been a CFL for years. I purchased a bunch of them at Home Depot and couldn't figure out why others were complaining about dim starts and overall quality of light. Then our local utility delivered a sample bulb of a different brand to all their customers. I put it in the laundry room and immediately understood what all the complaints were about. It was terrible! Later, Consumer Reports top-rated the Home Depot bulbs. It was dumb luck on my part, I guess.

Now that LED prices have come down, I'm definitely going to switch over to them. I'd rather have bulbs with no mercury in them.

Can LEDs be used in enclosed fixtures? The bulbs in the ceiling fans in my kitchen are housed in enclosed "globes". I've had CFLs in them with no problems.

 

[arbilab]

Lighting is a VERY small portion of my energy cost. I run 80W FL and 30W dimmed INCAN 16hr a day plus 20W dimmed INCAN 8hr. Do the math, compared to 1500W cooling that runs almost continously in the summer and 3500W intermittent heat in the winter. Such that I'll stick with conventional instrumentalities as long as they are available.

3200K is the indoor standard, it's what television lighting was when I worked there, but those are quartz/halogen and hot enough to start fires. 2700K is what household bulbs do, substantially warmer/orange, but my dimmed incands are even warmer than that.

Incand however, is a very gentle curve CENTERED upon 2700-3200K. Whereas ultraviolet reradiation lighting (FL, CFL, LED) is a gapped spectrum unless the CRI is very high.

Well, they're working on that. I may live long enough for them to get it right. Meanwhile on Socalled Security, I'm not paying no stinkin $30 for a gawdam lighbulb that will outlive me by 15 years no matter WHAT its CRI is.

 

[kb0nes]

Decorative LED's

Sandy,

Unfortunately to a large degree the decorative "flame" lamps have very few offerings. I'd wager that with the cost to develop and bring a product to market the manufacturers want to hit the designs that have the highest sales and ROI. I have struggled to find a good set of Candelabra LED's. The ones I do find cost more then what I am willing to pay. In my case I think its more prudent to change out the fixture, helps I was never fond of it to start with...

There are a few medium base candle shape lamps on the Super Bright LED site, but none have the output of a 40w incandescent bulb. It is a complicating factor to attempt to get higher output from a decorative lamp, the required heat sinking detracts from the look of the lamp. There may be more offerings in the 25w eq class but this likely won't give enough light.

For those not familiar with superbriteleds.com is a great resource for finding almost any LED lamp. Odd indicator bulbs, automotive or even discrete parts can be found here. Only thing I dislike is they often sell lamps where the manufacturer isn't proud enough to put a name on them, buyer beware.

For some of these style fixtures, one just has to remain with the old incandescent bulbs. They will give the proper look in any case.

 

[kb0nes]

Can LEDs be used in enclosed fixtures?

Eugene,

Initially manufacturers were wary of non-vented fixtures for LED replacement lamps. To some degree this is changing today, especially with the lower wattage offerings. I did just buy a new Philips 100w eq lamp and it had explicit instructions not to install it in an enclosed fixture.

I have some of the 8-1/2 watt (40w eq) Cree bulbs in 6" round globe fixtures at Annette's parents house and they don't seem to run too warm. As an aside I don't think anyone in that household has noticed I substituted their incandescent lamps for LEDs.

 

[sudsmaster]

KBONE,

No, I know the difference between color temp and CRI. I don't need a lecture on that.

The $13 60 watt equiv CREE bulb at HD has a CRI of 94, as stated on the packaging. It also uses about 13.5 watts. It's one of their "TW" series.

The $8 60 watt equiv CREE bulb at HD does not, as I recall, list the CRI. Or, if it does, it's in the low 80's. It uses about 9 watts.

Both of these are soft-white, 2700K.

Try reading the packaging?
[this post was last edited: 12/20/2013-11:16]

 

[kb0nes]

Rich,

I wasn't offering a lecture, I was merely making sure we were on the same page, my sincere apologies if you took it as such.

I did look at documents on Cree's and Home Depots own website. ALL the Cree lamps are listed as having a CRI of 80. Does the packaging say otherwise? I have never personally bought one of their Daylight lamps so I can't read the packaging, I have to go by the information I have on hand.

I did expect to see the higher color temp lamp having a higher CRI, but when I saw them listed as being the same I thought perhaps your comments were regarding temperature.

 

[sudsmaster]

KB,

The CREE bulb with the 93 CRI is a TW series, soft white, 2700K.

The packaging on the product IN THE STORE clearly stated a CRI of 93.

Here is info from the CREE website on the TW series bulbs:

1. What is Color Rendering Index?
Color reproduction is an important characteristic of any type of lighting, including LED lighting. Color
reproduction is typically measured using the Color Rendering Index (CRI). CRI is measured on a scale up
to 100. The higher the CRI, the more accurately you will see the actual colors of objects that the bulb
illuminates (i.e. reds will look red).
Daylight has the highest CRI (~100), with a 2700K incandescent bulb being relatively close, and
fluorescent lighting being much less accurate (CRI 70-85). Certain types of specialized lighting, such as
sodium lights (street lights with yellow orange colored light) exhibit a relatively low CRI (as low as about
CRI 20 – 30). The Cree TW Series LED bulb has a high CRI of 93, unmatched for LED bulbs, making colors
look the way they were intended.

http://www.creebulb.com/Content/downloads/product_info/TWseriesFAQ.pdf

 

[kb0nes]

Rich,

Just found the TW series on both the Cree and HD sites. Indeed these are high CRI lamps. Here in MN I have never seen a TW series bulb in a store.

Looking over the Cree specs the TW lamps have much lower luminous efficacy, they drop down to about 59 lumen/watt. This is about a 30% decrease compared to that of the standard lamps.

Again apologizes, for any incorrect assumptions I made.