Oh man, I thought those compact florescent lightbulbs (CFLs) were expensive at around five bucks a pop. Say hello to the $40 LED light bulb — and that’s an introductory price. It’ll apparently cost $50 later.
So what’s the big deal? Well, the bulb only consumes six watts of power and puts out light equivalent to a standard 60-watt bulb. Also, unlike standard light bulbs, this one’s got an estimated working life of 25 years. Imagine moving into a new house or apartment and bringing the lightbulbs over from your old place.
The lightbulb is made by Lemnis Lighting and will soon be available at Amazon — there are 40-watt versions currently available. According to the company, you’ll realize a return on your investment in power savings within three years.
[via CNET]
I have several LED bulbs around my house (none by this brand, however) and like them quite a bit.
Most of them don’t produce quite as much light as their CFL counterparts, but there is hope. Phillips has a line of PAR38 bulbs that are freaking bright as day and use about 10 watts.
Wo, just googled those philips bulbs and they are over a hundred dollars a piece! They better be bright.
Ok looks like there are cheaper phillips than what I found first.
Hurray for Dutch tech brands ^^
Main advantage of LED over fluorescent is on disposal environmental pollution is far less.
The 60 watt claim is DEAD WRONG ! The Pharox60 made by Lemnis Lighting put out 336 lumens, which falls well short of the 850 lumens of light given off by most 60-watt bulbs.
Wow – 60 watts of light for a 6 watt investment. I wonder what the quality of light is…
The Led lights itself are actually quite bright, and as to say, the light is very sharp. Therefor they make the light artificially softer by adding a coating on the lamp, and thus more comfortable.
You can’t tell the difference until you see your energy bill ;)
The quality sucks. It only gives of 336 lumens. It would need to put out 850 lumens to be comparable to a 60 watt incandescent bulb.
- I prefer (also psychologically) seeing big saving on my account… once money ha gone… over, I stop thinking about it…
- some brands are really less expensive… and you can count on lower prices, not higher… see the compact fluorescents… in twenty years they cost 15 times less…
“…this one’s got an estimated working life of 25 years.”
That’s 219 thousand hours. I seriously doubt this. Even for an LED bulb. Also, LED bulbs have significantly degraded brightness for a significant percentage of their life-span. Finally, some of these LED bulbs have a lot of uV output, enough to be concerned about over a 25 year life-span. Unless you’re bulb specifies uV content prominently, I would be skeptical.
High quality LED bulbs are being manufactured in India and these high wattage LED bulb is priced about $20. Low wattage of one to two watt LED bulbs are available in India that will cost about half a dollar.
Don’t pay $40 now because of the threat of it being $50 later !!! These things will only be getting cheaper and better with time. In fact if you are think of buying LEDs be sure to check the LUMENS ( total light output ). LEDs are directional in projecting light and MAY be as bright as a 60 watt incandescent right in FRONT of the bulb, BUT to the side it will be as dim as a night light bulb !!!!
Lumens is critical. the Phillips bulbs in home depot right now are garbage. Not only are they expensive $60-$70 but the only put out 120lumen for 7 watts consumption!!! a Dollar Store CFL is more efficient than this. a GOOD led will put out 80+ lumens per watt. 100+lumens per watt is possible.
those phillips bulbs in homedepot are putting out a meager 17 Lumens per watt. Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?
BE WARNED if its BULB sized and is not either very lower power OR does not have a rather beefy heat sink on it its probably badly made and will die shortly after you get it.
On the importance of LUMENS, I second that! The web is littered with claims of equivalence between incandescent and LED with no provision of supporting luminance data. Invariably, when the lumens/watt are compared, LEDs are still vastly inferior to contemporary CFLs and the “equivalent” incandescent bulb must be to Edison’s original.
I’d also like to sound out a big raspberry to CrunchGear for parroting these ridiculous claims without reporting the supporting data. What is CG, just a glorified advertiser?
I pay attention to LED bulbs an dhave researched them.
Besthomeledlighting.com sells a good bulb, warm white, less than $25. DOES NOT provide near as much light as a 65watt incandescent. DOES provide adequate light for many uses. Uses 4.5 watts.
My impression of phillips bulbs at Home Depot is good value for money.
35 lumens per watt is about present standard for LED bulbs. I see other figures here. They are wrong.
LEDs make a ton of sense right now at present cost if it is difficult to change a bulb (ie ladders), or for heavily used bulbs.
PS —
LED bulbs work best as floods and spots.
My advice is to wait a year or two for the price to come down and the quality of light gets better. Or just wait until your current CFL’s die.
Build a Better Bulb for a $10 Million Prize :
Check out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/technology/25bulb.html
A CFL lamp is a glass tube with some gases pumped inside. An LED lamp is a sophisticated piece of semiconductor-rich electronic equipment. Saying that LED bulbs will in a few years be available for the price of CFLs is like saying that notebook computers will in a few years be the price of paper notepads. Just as you will never be able to buy a laptop for 20 bucks, you won’t get a $5 LED bulb. $25 maybe, but not $5.
I am sorry but you are simply WRONG. LED’s are NOT complicated are NOT sophisticated. LED’s are easier to make run and design than CFL’s are. They are simpler. Have fewer components and are cheaper to produce.
My first set of LED string lights for christmas cost me $50 the last set I bought cost me $6 and had more LED’s than that first string i bought.
the economies of scale for LED’s are huge and very “short” ie it ramps up FAST.
LED’s are not complicated or sophisticated they are simply diodes.
I would say you both have a point. LEDs are, by themselves, very easy and cheap to produce. Bright ones that put out white light are more difficult, as material purity and quantity of LEDs in an array start getting involved.
The white LEDs currently in production work very similarly to technology in CFLs – they produce high energy light in the range a little above visible (UV), then excite a phosphor coating on the outside that fluoresces to produce a wide spectrum of “white” light. The only difference between the LED and CFL is the source of the UV light.
My personal thought is that manufacturing of the LED instead of the gas tube of the CFL should be cheaper with scale. This is my opinion, but I think it is reasonable to expect LEDs to get as cheap as CFLs in a few years (a few bucks for a light).
There is but one contender in the 60 watt equivalent bulbs in an LED. You can’t buy it yet and Philips is behind it. They are the first and only entry so far into the L-Prize and if all these other pretenders really had 60 watt equivalent bulbs, then wouldn’t they have entered as well?
LED technology has 4 years to make it all happen or it will fall by the wayside as everyone is forced to switch to CFLs.
I am a big fan of LED lighting. Choose a bulb that fits the application (lumens and color) and you will be happy. Unfortunately many manufacturers and vendors overstate (I’m being kind here) their products specifications.
I have purchased 45 LED bulbs and have had mixed reliability.
The good news – some are very reliable. I have five LED bulbs outside that have run dusk to dawn for two years with no problems.
The bad news – some bulbs are VERY unreliable. VERY high failure rates.
I purchased 12 of one type LED bulb and 12 out of 12 have failed (8.5W product 47856 from LEDLight.com). 100% failure rate. To make matters worse they are refusing to replace them now.
Beware of LEDLight.com. This company is selling products that they know are defective. No support for failed LED bulbs. These bulbs are very expensive ($20 – $105) and in some cases last only two or three weeks. They refuse to replace defective bulbs. LEDLight.com is selling known defective products and has bad customer service.
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