Review: Waveform Lighting A19 Centric Home/Daylight E27 bulbs (2700K, 4000K, 5000K)

Waveform Lighting sent me three of their A19 screw base (E27) LED bulbs for testing.

The models tested are:
Centric Home 2700K*
Centric Daylight 4000K
Centric Daylight 5000K*

The ranges also include a 3000K and 6500K model with similar specs. There’s also several other products lines including LED strips.

Waveform Lighting has to be commended for reporting the actual lighting parameters on their site with photometric reports. They do extensive testing of their own products, so this review is more of a 3rd party verification of their claims, which I’m happy to say are exactly as promised. Waveform’s site also includes several handy guides which explain various lighting parameters.

The main selling points and specs are:
-Excellent color rendering
—CRI (Ra) of 95+ and R9 of 80+
—TM-30-15 Rf of 90+ and Rg of 100
-Flicker free, no distracting PWM
–800 lumens at 10 watt power consumption (80 lm/W)
-AC 90-240V compatible with 50/60Hz supply frequency
-Both the American E26 and European E27 socket versions are available (E27 tested here)
-Not dimmable
–25k hour lifetime and 3 year warranty
–30 day money back guarantee

Measurements

All the bulbs exceeded their lumen output rating of 800 at lower than rated power consumption. I measured them at ~850-950 lumens at 30 minutes. The output does sag a bit as the lights heat up. The maximum external base temperature was just shy of 80 degrees Celsius. This is about 20 degrees less than the 1000 lumen LED bulbs from IKEA for example. Power consumption was a tad over 9 watts. Thus the efficiency is also better than specified at 95-105 lm/W.

I also have to note that I was very surprised at how light the bulbs were. Instead of 150 grams for an IKEA bulb, these weigh a mere 40 grams which results in undoubtedly cheaper shipping costs when ordered in large quantities. They are also much shorter and will as such fit more cramped fixtures.

The CRI data is from measurements in a 50 cm integrating sphere, but the bulb’s diffuser works very well so there’s practically no difference in tint or CRI no matter the beam angle. I didn’t do the normal beam profiling, since as is evident below, the tint isn’t really dependent on the viewing angle.

CRI data

Load IES TM-30-18 Color Rendition Reports:
2700K
4000K
5000K

Flicker

The flicker occurs at 48 kilohertz, so there’s no chance of it being visible. Snob index of 0% guarantees this. Interestingly, the modulation depth was higher on the 4000K and 5000K models.

Electrically the bulbs behave identically. They draw current in short burst (25% of the time) at near the peak of the voltage waveform. Scope data is shown from the 5000K version here, but there is no differences between the graphs. Power factor was measured at 0.62.

Cyan line: mains line voltage
Yellow line: current draw of the bulb
Violet line: power draw (voltage * current)

Verdict

To make it short and sweet, these bulbs are excellent with regard to color rendering and tint. The light is clean, slightly on the rosier side below the black body line, which is what most of us usually prefer. I usually prefer 4000K at home during the day, but this 5000K bulb with its pure white tint has to be one of the more pleasant ones I’ve tried. Of course the price of $17 may still sting if you want enough bulbs for the entire home.

Wow! Those are very good!

I can also recommend the warm-by-click bulbs from the German brand Clarus. They offer “sunset dimming” with a very high CRI over the whole dimming range (2700k-1800K) and have basically a garantueed reddish tint (they use an additional red LED). They have the summer built in.

They can’t but I generally just turn off individual bulbs to suit my needs. One 800 lumen bulb in a room larger than a closet is quite dim, especially when ceiling bounced or diffused some.

Well, I have the 2700K 95 CRI 800 lumen varient on order. Still waiting for it. Looks very promising. For residential lighting, I find allot of manufacturers are out of spec. CCT with an upwards bias in color temperature. It’s great to see that isn’t the case here. The Feit bulbs are notorious for this, their 3000K are actually 3500K. GE is pretty bad about it to, around 3000K when they should be 2700K. My newer Philips 2700K A19’s are near 3100K, totally unacceptable. My newer Cree 2700K A19 also shows a 3050K color temperature. I see that blue-ification is the thing everywhere. It’s almost always out of specification CCT with a “cool” bias. There was always this thing that felt off with most LED A19 bulbs.

These bulbs sound like they’re full of win. I’m tempted to order some 4000K bulbs.

The only downside I see is that they’re not dimmable. I wonder what they’d do if I hooked them up to a PWM-based dimmer anyway.

Same thing here.

Will buy a pack of 6 for me, my SO, and will sell the remaining 3 to my friends.

My thoughts exactly, TK. It’s the closest thing to a 219B in a lightbulb form that I’ve seen.

Maukka, did you think about testing the 2400K bulb from Waveform? This opens up so many possibilities like their tape lights…

On another note, I got the CCT readings from some 2700K TCP bulbs in the vanity mirror in my bathroom, and they’re 3100K! Even my 3000K SST-20s are a warmer 3040K. Talk about out of spec.! There were some other people saying don’t mind the out of specification CCT, you’ll like it… eventually. No thanks to that. If I wanted 3000K, 3500K, and so on I would’ve bought it in the first place. Sloppy manufacturing processes should not be justified.

a few questions here;

what kind of IKEA lamps could these go into ?.

what Watt does it have to be over?.

800 Lumens is a lot so I take it it cant be used in a desk lamp ?.

what is best?..got a link for a good IKEA e27 lamp?. desk would be good!.

_

I got 5600k Daylight.

thanks.

These will fit any lamp with an E27 socket. Their low power means that there probably isn’t a light fixture that couldn’t handle them. I use one of these Tertial workbench lights.

kind thanks Maukka!.

Nice pictures and beam shots, thanks for the review! :+1:

Beam shots? I didn’t notice any of those…

… oh, wait. There it is. It took me a moment, but I found it. The beam shot is just under “Measurements”, to the right of the table. It’s really easy to miss if you don’t look very closely, so I highlighted it:

Got my 2700K Waveform A19 bulb, and I am very pleased. My example is closer to 2800K, but a much better match for incandescent then my Philips A19 LED. Will probably be replacing the CFLs in my place with them.

I also got the 2400K filament light from them, but it exhibits some odd behavior. It flickers on startup, but then it seems to smooth out a perciptable amount once running for about half a minute. Do you guys have any idea what this could be?

A day late for a Halloween resurrection… but this was funny. Couldn’t go without giving Kudos :smiley:

Hope to see these easily available, it’s hard to find high CRI home lighting and it’s certainly still at a huge premium.

I’m waiting for some from V-tac to arrive that claim >95 so fingers crossed they are decent. Only 10w but cheap for what they claim to be.

Wow, those lights get HOT !
80°C, 100°C :frowning:
But no wonder when the only exposed metal is the E27 socket…

Bit of an update with my 2400K Waveform A19. I just screwed in a new duplicate lamp, and it appears that after about a year and half this light now has some serious lumen depreciation. I want to say, generously, that this lamp probably has around 3000 hours on it. The rated L70, 70% of initial output end of life, is officially rated for 25,000 hours. It looks like I have a warranty to claim.

I assume that a 30% drop would not even be noticeable. Is it so bad that it is noticeable? Or did you measure it?

I have many Lux24 bulbs that I use a lot, and I also have a few unused ones. Maybe I should measure them.

I have a similar warranty too. did about the same!.

I just measured two of my 2400K A19’s. I used my Extech lux-meter held vertically facing the lamps at 12 inches away. The depreciated lamp measured around 230 lux while the newer light measured 560 lux. The drop in output is noticeable.