LED Light: Beware of LED Bulb Replacement Products
As part of LED research I bought over $1,000 worth of LED light bulbs to see if any would meet my own personal needs. Most were too expensive and too dim for general use, but some worked reasonably well for house exterior and hallway lighting. No light bulb replacement products worked well for reading lights or other areas in need of bright light.
The three light bulbs that worked the best were the 60 LED Floodlight, the 72 LED Spotlight, and the LED light bulb, which may be used it for exterior home lighting. The spotlights and floodlights themselves are about $44 each and the light bulbs are around $30.
To give you an idea of the savings possible with these products, the spotlights pull 8 watts of power and the light bulb pulls 3 watts. All of these products use LEDs that are relatively old when compared to the bulbs that Cree, the leading U.S. LED manufacturer, announced earlier this year, so even greater savings may be possible with Cree and other newer products.
I did find one LED desk lamp for about $100 called the Mini-Z that both puts out enough light for reading and keeps that light, if you use it by your bed, away from your spouse's eyes. This kind of light might make a nice back-to-school gift or a marriage-saving gift for that late night reader. Of all of the products I tested this one was the most impressive and showcased the real lesson that may be learned from today's LED technology.
That lesson is that, generally, LEDs are best when the fixture is designed around them; as bulb replacements, right now, frankly, they kind of suck. For those in the midst of designing a house or commercial building the best vendor I found that might be helpful in this area, and which has a wide assortment of LED fixtures, is Color Kinetics. The fixtures aren't inexpensive but they work and are in common use for general lighting today.
As part of LED research I bought over $1,000 worth of LED light bulbs to see if any would meet my own personal needs. Most were too expensive and too dim for general use, but some worked reasonably well for house exterior and hallway lighting. No light bulb replacement products worked well for reading lights or other areas in need of bright light.
The three light bulbs that worked the best were the 60 LED Floodlight, the 72 LED Spotlight, and the LED light bulb, which may be used it for exterior home lighting. The spotlights and floodlights themselves are about $44 each and the light bulbs are around $30.
To give you an idea of the savings possible with these products, the spotlights pull 8 watts of power and the light bulb pulls 3 watts. All of these products use LEDs that are relatively old when compared to the bulbs that Cree, the leading U.S. LED manufacturer, announced earlier this year, so even greater savings may be possible with Cree and other newer products.
I did find one LED desk lamp for about $100 called the Mini-Z that both puts out enough light for reading and keeps that light, if you use it by your bed, away from your spouse's eyes. This kind of light might make a nice back-to-school gift or a marriage-saving gift for that late night reader. Of all of the products I tested this one was the most impressive and showcased the real lesson that may be learned from today's LED technology.
That lesson is that, generally, LEDs are best when the fixture is designed around them; as bulb replacements, right now, frankly, they kind of suck. For those in the midst of designing a house or commercial building the best vendor I found that might be helpful in this area, and which has a wide assortment of LED fixtures, is Color Kinetics. The fixtures aren't inexpensive but they work and are in common use for general lighting today.
