Anyone using LED home lighting replacement bulbs?

"As for price, yes they are pricey up front, but the lifetime cost (considering they last for decades) is much cheaper than old fashioned bulbs or cfls."

In theory. Without having tested them for that long I wonder if we can trust their models. I know I've personally had some CFL bubls go out WAY earlier than they should have.

 

If you're looking for great home lighting... give these a try -
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They're available from any of the 2 thousand high school FIRST Robotics teams across the nation, and even better, half the cost of the bulb goes towards the team as a fundraiser.

 

The Mall of America is replacing all the Fixtures in the parking ramps with LEDs.
It will save enough energy to power the Malls theme park for 6 years or power more than 11,000 homes for a year.

Mall of America continues to ‘Go Green’ | MOA Blog

 

Forget Home cheapo......... why pay $30 a bulb when you can get them from the same place they do CHINA Cool Gadgets at the Right Price - Worldwide Free Shipping - DealExtreme

it takes two weeks to get you items at times but I have converted our hunting camp to LED. first I just tried the bulbs power cosumtion was cut but 60%, now keep in mind the camp/cabin has exposed walls so tihs was easy. I ran new wire and supplied all the lighting circuits with only 12V supplied from one transformer at the box. now all of the lights are 12V LED. power consumtions is now only 15% of the original draw. since transformers are not efficient the next step is a Battery bank and solor or wind. I'm even toying with the idea of hydro but we sometimes get a lot of snow during hunting season.

 

Hey great site. I was lucky to escape by only spending less than 100 bucks!

Thanks!

 

Which one did you get? I've used DX before and it's pretty darn inexpensive and does work.

 

Here's what I recently did. I went on ebay, and starting buying all the different types of e27 110V soft white bulbs to replace everything in my house. (e27 is the USA screw in base bulb) Sorry to say that the experience was nothing short of wasted time and lost money. Pretty much all of the LED e27 bulb dealers are in china, many have multiple accounts as I just found out the hard way. More on that later...

I work with electronics for a living, and I know my business. The first type of LED e27 bulbs you want to avoid are the "multi led" types. These are the kind that have hundereds of individual LED wired in a way to make up the input voltage. These have no regulation, and will fail right away. You might get 4 weeks max, and then the LED's will start dropping out.
There are many different looking types of these multi LED bulbs, but all of them suffer from the same problem. The only LED e27 bulb worth its wieght, but not its pirce, uses a "single 10watt high power chip" LED. It's shaped to look like a bulb. These are regulated, and can opperate from 85V AC~220V AC. You'll want to see that rating in the details.

The next big issue is the actual light you'll get. These dealers and manufactures are "over rating" the light output and wavelength. Warm white LED's will still give you cadaver looking skin! To date, there are no warm white LEDS with the same wavelength
as the tungsten filament bulbs. Light output, LED bulbs rated close to 1600 lumens will produce about the same ammount of light as a tungsten 60watt bulb. The LED is very bright right where its emitting, but over a distance it does not throw the same ammount of light. You'll be very dissapointed in larger rooms.

Ebay and LED dealers/manufacturers:
My company has both UL, and CE products on the market. I know this industry well.
All of the LED bulbs we purchased had "CE" stickers on them. None of the LED bulbs have CE certification, these CE stickers are being made on a PC! How do I know this? I opened seven designs, and found that not one of them had their printed circuit boards mounted in a way that was safe/fire proof for consumer application. These designs had a piece of paper sadwiched between the LEDs and circuit board. Bad bad bad!!!

Unfortunately,
the CFL bulbs are currently the best option we have. I'm not a fan of the slow startup, but once they're on I have plenty of light, and the price is reasonable. The "warm white" CFL is as close as you're going to come to a tungsten look. The color is fine, no cadaver look.
My suggestion is to start with a 16watt "soft white" CFL and see where that takes you. The 16watt soft white throws plenty of bright light.

 

Great first post, thanks.

I've since looked from time to time on Amazon. There do seem to be some decently rated LEDs, at least the small ones (like for small can lights, GU10), but yeah they are definitely hit or miss, mainly miss. I'm not surprised to hear the unbranded LED bulbs from China are junk!

Still looking forward to decent instant-start LEDs that truly last a long time.

Home Depot & Lowes have some. Did you try any of those?

 

Yes.
Sorry to report that everything I"ve seen so far was made overseas, and not worth the price. There's no reason for them to be charging so much for these. LEDS are the cheapest form of light we have.

This whole thing started with me because I have 30 recessed lights down stairs. The halogen spots are expensive, and do not last. In the end I bought 30 CFL 16watt warm white floods, and haven't looked back. They're brighter than the halogen 50watt floods, cost less, and produce good color vs the weak LED junk.

I still have 3 high power warm white 10watt single chip LED bulbs I used in a tiny bathroom. These are exspensive (now 22.00 ea. USD+ship), but work ok for such a small room. These are not instant start, they're regulated and designed to start slow for a very good reason. In a large room these won't cut it. You'll have lots of shadows which all of the LED bulbs cause.
We have a long way to go before the LED can ever match the CFL,
or tungsten bulb. Save your money, and wait for it.

 

Thanks. I had been looking on Amazon at gu10s because I have 10 that crank out huge amounts of heat (as halogen all do). Fine in winter, but don't care for that in the summer. I may just wait, though. even the decently reviewed dimmable LEDs don't dim very well or very much.

 

The problem with the LED dimming is the lack of a good circuit.
These lights are made to make money, not quality light.
I'm very disgusted with what I've seen on the inside these bulbs.
We have better LED technology but nobody is using it. Cost is the reason.

 

Since you seem to know quite a bit about LED lighting, have you checked out these bulbs before? They are regulated, from what I've seen have a pretty decent circuit behind them, and the insides aren't too shabby. We have one that we've been using for demonstrations for several years now, and I can tell you they don't break easily - the things been dropped, stepped on, and crushed in trunks more times than I can count. We also have them in some frequently used areas, and haven't had to replace one yet.

 

I see this bulb is UL listed so I'm sure its built correctly/safely.
I haven't seen this bulb in person, but from what I'm reading/seeing
it appears to be a single chip LED (better of the bunch). However, an 800 lumens rated LED does not equal a 60watt tungsten bulb. Nor will its light wavelength. No LED ever will. $26.00 ea? I bought 30 warm white 16watt CFL floods (sylvania) on ebay under 100.00, and I have quality lighting. Large rooms, no shadows. Non cadaver looking skin. The LED's cost me almost 4 times this. I really wanted the LEDs to work, but its just not there and I can't live with poor light quality for that kind of price. We still don't know how long its really going to last, and either do they.
"North American Product: designed and tested in Florida, manufactured in Mexico."
Where were the LEDs made???

 

Eagle, I looked for the luminous efficacy of the bulb you mentioned but could not find it on the website or "tech specs" pdf. Any idea ?

 

zeebra -- Seems rather clear production is in Mexico. Monterrey more specifically.

 

Assembly is in mexico, where's the manufacturing of the power supply board and LED??
I don't think anyone is making chip LED's in mexico.
I'd love to see the guts, I'll be happy to tell you what I see.
CAn someone post a picture of the inside?

 

In lighting design, "efficacy" refers to the amount of light luminous flux produced by a lamp (a light bulb or other light source), usually measured in lumins as a ratio of the amount of power consumed to produce it, usually measured in watts.

 

The standard 60W lightbulb most people think of is only 630 lumens... so how does an 800 lumen LED bulb not compare? They aren't measuring the light from the individual LED - it's measured outside the entire casing for this bulb. Trust me, they're very bright. I've seen a single bulb decently light a 20x20 foot area (although with just a single bulb in that large an area, there were shadows).

Also, as mentioned in the tech specs, the color temperature is 2700K, which is identical to the normal incandescent bulbs Home Depot sells. Part of this probably comes directly from the LED bulbs, but a larger part undoubtedly comes from the housing, which is not in any way clear (unlike most other LED bulbs I've seen). It really does look like a frosted glass light bulb when turned on - I've noticed no difference.

I don't have any more information than you... but the tech specs do list "efficacy" of the bulbs as 50 for the 40W bulb, and 59 for the 60W bulb.


Personally, I'm planning on getting as many of these as I need, when I need bulbs again. Any place I could use these is currently using 5+ year old CFLs (they've actually lasted longer than I expected!), so I figure I'll get to replace those pretty soon!

 

I have several LED bulbs. They are expensive, but I like them. I have not had any burn out yet. I've had CFLs burn out quite rapidly, though others seem to last forever. I have no idea what goes on inside them. Most are from Home Depot.

 

Last year was the first year I replaced all the "seasonal lights" with LEDs... total investment was $124 - and the frau thought I was nuts.

This season, I saved a measured $140 from the last time I had regular lights on lines in the month, which includes the rate increase from SMUD.

I have replaced interior bulbs as they burn out... currently, only three lamps have LEDs... and it isn't a problem with dispersion or intensity...

When I move back into our house down the street (cause now the daughter is employed again and I can let her live in this house on her own) we intend to replace as many of the fixtures and movable lighting with LED also... yes it is pricey right now, but I think if they can last as long as advertised (which IS the real question) then I will be saving coins before a couple of years passes.

I haven't looked into getting anything on-line (mostly because I am lazy, and Lowes is on my normal walking route while at work, and there is a Home Depot a couple of blocks from my home) but I am sure additional savings could be had if I wasn't as lazy at tryine to find them.