The GOOD LED Light Bulb thread

[Telly]

Let's start a thread where those who have purchased LED bulbs can tell us of their GOOD ones.
Let's keep it to bigger bulbs used for area illumination, not night lights and the like.
The more info you can give, the better.

Home Depot Ecosmart 9 Watt (65W) BR30 Soft White (2700K) LED Flood Light Bulb

650 Lumen, Life 22.8 years based on 3 hrs./day
SKU184-441, UPC 887437000694, $15.88 and still the same price today in HD stores

I bought and installed this in June, has a lot of use and on/offs on it already. It is a BR30 flood (face just less than 4" across) which I put into a recessed-can fixture. At the time I bought it, they were just starting to stock it. They also had a daylight 5400K model for a higher (IIRC) cost but I wanted the warm white.

Very happy with it. I'm not one to get excited about light bulbs, but I have run many different bulbs through this particular fixture over the years, and this one puts out a nice light and acts just like an incandescent BR30, without all the heat generated (it is in a very small room, door often closed ). By looking at it, the color of the light it puts out, even flipping the switch on and off, no way to tell that it ISN'T an incandescent.

 

[W2R]

Thank you!!! This is exactly the type of LED bulb I have been wanting to buy. For those of us who have not made the switch to LED bulbs yet, this information is so helpful.

 

[Gumby]

Earlier this year, I put two of these in the bathroom in sconces on each side of the medicine cabinet. I have been told by women who used the bathroom that the light is excellent for applying cosmetics. I guess most bathroom lighting has a yellow cast; this is a much "whiter" light. I'm very happy with them.

Cree omnidirectional 9 watt (60W equivalent) A19 Daylight
800 Lumens
Light Appearance 5000K
Life: 22.8 years (based on 3 hrs/day)
Damp rated
Dimmable
MFG Model # : BA19-08050OMF-12DE26-1U110
Cost $13.97 at Home Depot

Assembled in the USA.

 

[Katsmeow]

I don't remember the specific model but we bought Philips indoor flood LEDs at Home Depot that I am using in my study at home. They have been great.

 

[Fermion]

Costco has a 90 watt flood that consumes 20 watts for $12 after the instant coupon. This thing is heavy...probably $3 worth of aluminum alone. I don't see how they can make it so cheap but it is very bright.

Amazing that a 20 watt led a few years ago would have been many hundreds of dollars for the chips alone.

 

[PatSea]

My wife and I just completed a major remodeling of our kitchen, We installed LED retrofit kits in the can lights. Bought them at Lowes for $30. They are dimmable. They work great, good warm color light. I also bought 5 CREE LED's 60 watt equiv. for the chandelier over the dining table. They give off a warm light, just like an incandecant. I also bought 3 25W equivalent LED's for our outside post light. They give off a very warm, even light. Only problem is one of the three failed after about 3 months. It's under warranty at Lowes. Overall very pleased with the LED's.

 

[Fermion]

Not that it probably makes a difference or many of you care, but it is the electronics that are failing in the LED bulbs, not the LED element itself. I opened up 7 failed bulbs and found the LED elements to be perfectly fine. They are wired as a series string of about 12 LEDs per string...sometimes two parallel strings of 12 LEDs. It takes about 22 volts for most of these to get to the knee in the diode conduction curve and they run on around 36V DC.

The buck converter which takes in 115VAC and outputs the 36V DC uses things like capacitors with a 1000 hour or 2000 hour typical life for rated spec (and this is usually for moderate temperatures...shorter life at higher temps). All of the units were potted and I was too lazy to try and dig out the potting to figure out exactly what failed, but I am guessing it was these capacitors degrading, causing some sort of change in the buck converter. This either blew the converter chip or perhaps popped a non-resettable fuse in the lamp guts.

Sorry if this was TMI. I love the LED lights but I buy them expecting only to get 2000 to 3000 hours out of them. I am going to make a huge 5000 watt LED spotlight someday out of all of these broken elements.

 

[Amethyst]

Our issue with the LED floods is that they take at least 30 seconds to brighten up to full power. That's a long time to wait, especially if someone is showing the house to buyers, etc.

Amethyst

 

[Gumby]

Our issue with the LED floods is that they take at least 30 seconds to brighten up to full power. That's a long time to wait, especially if someone is showing the house to buyers, etc.

Amethyst

As I mentioned in the other thread, we are switching to LEDs gradually. I just today put a Cree BR30 floodlight in one of the kitchen fixtures. It is a quantum leap in responsiveness compared to the CFLs in the other fixtures. I would call it instantaneous.

 

[Telly]

Our issue with the LED floods is that they take at least 30 seconds to brighten up to full power. That's a long time to wait, especially if someone is showing the house to buyers, etc.

Amethyst

Amethyst, by chance, were you thinking of CFL (Compact FLuorescent), instead of LED (Light Emitting Diode)?

LEDs themselves turn on almost instantly. The drive electronics would take longer, tens of milliseconds I would think. Tens of milliseconds to a person is almost instantaneous

 

[Sue J]

We put 2 of the Cree LED bulbs over the kitchen table and they look very nice. Previously, we were using CFLs but after a few years they would flicker and we'd have to change them.

In our bedroom ceiling fan we recently changed to some very nice Phillips LEDs. This fan has a light with a dimmer that we never used in a dimmed mode. I had dimmable CFLs in the fixture but one went bad and I thought I'd try the LEDs. Very nice choice. When I went to Lowes (or was it Home Depot) they had a display with the various types of LEDs so you could see the light quality and color. The LEDs were more expensive than the CFLs, but well worth it.

I think we won't be using CFLs again and I will just go ahead with LEDs

 

[Amethyst]

Telly, I believe you're right. I'll check next chance I get. The slow-turner-onners were much cheaper than the light bulbs you mentioned, so I guess we got what we paid for

A.

Amethyst, by chance, were you thinking of CFL (Compact FLuorescent), instead of LED (Light Emitting Diode)?

LEDs themselves turn on almost instantly. The drive electronics would take longer, tens of milliseconds I would think. Tens of milliseconds to a person is almost instantaneous

 

[pb4uski]

About 15 months ago our utility and a local electrical supplier ran a special and i picked up a dozen 800 lumen LED bulbs for about $5 each. Virtually every open fixture upstairs have them now. They are instant on and the light is good - better than CFLs they replaced but admittedly a notch lesser than incandescent bulbs that the CFLs replaced (to my eyes).

Philips AmbientLED 046677409906 - Energy saving household light

They are dimmable but we don't have any dimmers.

I did notice that our electric bill was a bit lower. I've been happy with them and have sought more bulbs to do the same thing downstairs, but haven't been able to find the same deal again.

 

[MBAustin]

I replaced the candelabra-based bulbs in our kitchen pendants with dimmable LED bulbs I got at Lowe's: Utilitech 394796 4.8-Watt (40W) Warm White (3000K) Decorative LED Bulb

Although they say they are 40W equivalent, they replaced 60W incandescents and they seem just as bright. The light is actually much nicer in the pendants than the old bulbs.

 

[ERD50]

I'd like to know if the LEDs mentioned are dim-able or not, and if you use them in a dimmer, how they perform.

I know some people did include this info - it's important to me as some of the higher use sockets we have are on dimmers, so I have not put CFLs in those (dim-able CFLs are more expensive, not sure if that is a big cost delta for LEDs).

TIA - ERD50

 

[Fermion]

Most will say if they are dimmable or not on the packaging. They dim *ok* but not to the fine degree that you can get out of an incandescent. Probably the electronics are just not very sophisticated to scale to the chopped AC sine wave from the dimmer switch (which is usually just an SCR).

 

[explanade]

I remodeled my home, first putting 4 LEDs in my kitchen, with a digital dimmer and occupancy sensor.

Then I had 24 more LEDs, recessed lights, installed throughout my home with several dimmers.

I read somewhere that the in-house Costco brand of recessed LED modules are made by Cree and compare favorably with the more expensive name-brand models.

So 4 cans in a moderate-sized room is consuming 40 watts and putting out way more light than even a 100 watt incandescent would, not to mention spread out through the room.

However, it's an adjustment getting used to lights in ceilings, after living for years with lamps which bounce light off ceilings and walls. Especially if you're lying down.

 

[Telly]

The Ecosmart BR30 that I led off the thread with says "Dimmable". No dimmers in this house, so I can't try it. With non-linear light sources driven by power electronics, I wouldn't expect CFL or LED to dim much like the nice curve of an incandescent filament.

In a previous house, we had a dining room chandelier with a bunch of flame-tip candelabra-based bulbs in it. The bulbs had a long filament that stretched up and over internal supports. They looked very nice. But when they aged, a filament would burn through, the end of the filament would then flail around, and tack-weld itself to another part of the filament, shortening its effective length, causing it to immediately burn through again with another flash, re-tack again, flash, re-tack, etc. etc.
So turning the light on could be met with some high-speed pyrotechnics, where each flash was brighter than the one before. In 2 seconds, it would all be over, but it would often over-current the triac in the dimmer, turning the triac's junctions into a low-value silicon resistor instead. Which made the dimmer have two positions... OFF, and full-brilliance ON. After replacing the dimmer a few times, I gave up and put in a regular SPST light switch instead. My interest in dimmers dimmed-out.

 

[spncity]

I placed a loose coil of LED rope light under our bed. Pushed it toward the center far enough so that one does not see the rope light itself when looking at the bed as one enters the room.

It casts an other-wordly glow from under the bed - like a uber night light that doesn't shine in your eyes, but makes for a nice lighted path all around at night.

Kindest regards.

 

[easysurfer]

I have some ecosmarts from Home Depot, my bathroom vanity has four GE ones...

GE Lighting 62180 Energy Smart LED 9-Watt (40-watt replacement) 450-Lumen A19 Light Bulb with Medium Base, 1-Pack - Amazon.com

Also, I have some Phillips that look yellow when off...including a 75 watt equivalent for my living room:

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-42222...=1381851353&sr=8-7&keywords=phillips+led+bulb


There's also a 100watt equivalent if I wish to upgrade in the future:

Philips 423525 22 watt (100 Watt) A21 LED Soft White Light Bulb, Dimmable - Amazon.com

I like them all.

 

[Chuckanut]

Are there any LED bulbs that give the same amount of light as a traditional 100W bulb?

 

[TrvlBug]

Are there any 3 way, preferably 50/100/150 LEDs out there? I'd like to replace the one beside my recliner as it throws off too much heat and I end up reading at the 100 or even 50 setting.

 

[ERD50]

Not to sidetrack this too much, but I'm hoping that they add some more features to these long-life LEDs.

For example, some people have mentioned the slow start-up times of some CFLs - but I like that sometimes. It would be nice if one could select features like that, it wouldn't cost much to add some smarts to these lights.

Back in the 90's, I got some 'smart' bulbs made by Philips. They had a chip in the base, and a few different models. One was a three-way dimmer - you hit the switch once for full bright, switched it on/off again quickly to drop down to the different levels. Another was set to time out after 30 minutes, and it would flash a few times over a few minutes to warn you, and a flick of the switch on/off would reset the timer. They had a few others I think.

Those bulbs lasted a long time too. They did a 'soft' start', using the dimmer circuit to start the bulb over about 1 second to lessen the thermal shock of a hard switch on.

Maybe they could build in some of these functions, and you could select them with a jumper or something? I'd like to have bathroom lights that start off dim, for those late night or winter early morning visits. You wouldn't have to be shocked with that sudden bright light. Time-outs on most others.

-ERD50

 

[Fermion]

Oh the next big thing is going to be very cheap smart bulbs...controlled via Bluetooth or something from your I-pad. No connections or setup, just put the led bulb in and presto, full control over timing, dimming, etc. It will be great too for energy conservation and home security.

I predict it will happen in less than 10 years mass market...they just need to get the chipset down to about $0.10 each.

 

[gozer]

Oh the next big thing is going to be very cheap smart bulbs...controlled via Bluetooth or something from your I-pad. No connections or setup, just put the led bulb in and presto, full control over timing, dimming, etc. It will be great too for energy conservation and home security.

I predict it will happen in less than 10 years mass market...they just need to get the chipset down to about $0.10 each.

Once you can control bulbs by Bluetooth, we will have drive by Christmas light vigalantes. You'll be sitting at dinner and the local high school computer club will drive by your house, blasting "Grandma go run over by a reindeer", while making your inside lights flash to the music.