Cree releasing 100W LED light bulb equivalent

Sometimes taxpayers pay for it, sometimes utilities do it as a last ditch effort to reduce consumption because they’d lose less money than if they were forced to buy power from expensive generators, but it’s usually somewhere in between with a dose of pr lies.

The downside is that locals like dchomak could buy hundreds and sell them to me on the other side the country. I’ve been tempted to ask, but won’t because he and his neighbors would pay for it somehow.

That is true. However OSJL deals mostly in odd lots from closeouts, bankruptcies etc. A manager told me he thinks that with the CREE’s, OSJL worked something out with both the State of Connecticut and CREE where they were able to get them for free.
If there was a way to get some to members here economically I would do it. Shipping is a killer.
I have been passing out bulbs to friends and strangers like Johnny Apple Seed.
BTW, while I am in OSJL I point other customers to the CREE displays and tell them about the “free” bulbs. A question I often hear is “are they bright enough”
It occurred to me that LED’s have gotten a bad reputation in many peoples minds due to the poor quality of light from the first LED flashlights and devices like the solar landscape lights. Most people who have never tried one probably imagine a very dim, purplish light.

Have you noticed that the most Liberal States in the Country also have the highest cost of living?
They also generally have the highest average incomes too.

That is the picture of the insides of the MaxLite and I count 54 LED’s
Here is a picture of the FEIT next to the MaxLite and the FEIT does have 30 LED’s!
How did you know that :wink:

Yes, I remember you mentioning that, and I remember you did get a good deal. I also remember telling me how much you like those bulbs. You are right, they are very nice. 99 cents is a steal.
When I first came across the MaxLite 100W they were not a Crazy Deal. Straight up price of 99 cents, just like the FEIT’s and I bought 1
A month later I decided to buy more at the 99 cent price and I just happened to grab 10. That is when I found out that they too had gone to a Crazy Deal. Buy 10 and get a gift card for the total purchase price. I am hoping the FEIT’s go the same way. In fact yesterday morning when I first saw the FEIT’s I bought 2. One to use and 1 to tear down, destroy :slight_smile:
At the end of the day it occurred to me that maybe they were on Crazy Deal and having only bought 2, the deal would not have kicked in at the register. So I went back and grabbed another 10. It they were on CD, I would pay cash and receive another CD card. If not, I would pay with a CD card I got from buying the MaxLites.
It turns out no Crazy Deal on the FEIT’s yet. I paid with a CD card I had gotten on the MaxLites.
Out of pocket was the 63 cents for the sales tax.

BTW, the only reason I was in the store yesterday was to take part in a special Fathers Day promotion and yesterday was the last of the 3 days. Buy a $50 gift card and get additional $20 gift card.

In effect I can create my own “sale” at any time by using them to buy $70 worth of merchandise for the $50. About 29% off. My brothers’ kid needs 16 of those LED shop lights that are $14.99. 5/7ths of $14.99 is $10.71 :slight_smile:

That’s cool that they’re working on deals to lower costs. SDG&E used to give away CFL’s, and I seriously doubt they got those bulbs for free. I can’t remember if that was before or after deregulation, but either way I’m sure they found a way to pass along the costs.

I have a bad opinion of them due to their poor quality. I’ve had a very high failure rate from Cree and G7, and my first Feit is failing after less than a month in use. I knew LED bulbs weren’t going to last 50,000 hours like some marketing says, but they should have lasted as long as the old CFL’s. The light quality is nicer while it lasts though.

I just bought some 5000 lumen LED sealed headlights that perpetuate that old reputation. They were 6500K, and they sure looked blue and purplish. The beam pattern was so poorly formed that the hotspot was barely 1/10th that of the halogen lights. Maybe they really put out 5000 lumens, but it was in all the wrong places. These were DOT approved too, so I expected much better.

I now work in one of the lowest paid cities in the nation. It’s a very conservative city. If I move, it’ll be back to a liberal state. Cost of living may be higher, and housing costs may double or triple, but my earning potential will far exceed that. I laugh when people say how great the cost of living is here. I don’t give a damn about that. It’s all about discretionary income. Here I might have enough to buy a used motorcycle every year, and in other places it could be enough to buy a new car, even a 6 figure car. I haven’t been at my new job long enough to know if they’ll pay according to my contributions instead of average wages in this area.

Anyone else tried the LED filament style bulbs? I did my whole house using those, mostly the 60W equivalent Utilitech from Lowes.

https://m.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-2-Pack-60W-Equivalent-Dimmable-Soft-White-A19-LED-Decorative-Light-Bulb/1000125329

So far I have been fairly happy, 6 months in and I have had about 6 fail out of about 24 fixtures. Most of them have been infant mortality though, that is, they failed within a few hours. I think 2 lasted a month or so before they failed. Thankfully lowes has been very good about just giving me free replacements (they do have a 3 year warranty).

Otherwise the light quality is very good, and the dimming is fantastic, you can’t start them too low, but once they are on you can bring them all the way down to just a faint glow. That’s with a standard cheap incandescent dimmer too, none of the fancy LED compatible stuff. I also much prefer the nice even flux geometry of the filaments compared to the chip style LED bulbs.

I have 11 of the Candelabra style filament bulbs and no problems yet. They are super nice and for awhile I thought that perhaps the filament bulbs would take over the market for in home light bulbs. I have heard of the short life spans from others and perhaps that is their limitation.
I do know this, NOW is an exciting time for both flashlights and lighting in general.

I have an LED filament bug light in an outdoor patio fixture that has been running 24/7 for about 6 months now with no issues. Feit brand, 60W equivalent.

I also have several Hyperikon branded 5W G25 globe LED filaments in a bathroom which have been working great for about a year now. I Really think for household lighting they will take over. They just look so much nicer IMHO.

I have a 40W equiv filament globe from EarthLED and they are pretty nice but the low CRI bugs me. I use them in places where I want to save even more energy like a light that I would leave on all night.

I got a crazy good deal on them. I paid like $8 for 20. I originally bought 10 but 1 bulb was DOA and they shipped me an entire extra box of 10 as a replacement.

I think they are closing out stock on their website, though. Most items are out of stock. I also bought a ton of BR30 for cheap while they were still in stock.

I believe the ones I have are high CRI (aside from the bug light). Not sure if they list it anywhere, but the light coming out of them is certainly pleasing, and shows colors very well.

Cree has significantly changed the design of their sealed 100W bulbs. The heat fins are gone, and now it more closely resembles a traditional bulb with a stylish shiny ring. I found this out today when warranty replacement bulbs arrived. Cree did a very good job with warranty support, and while not unpleasant, I hope it’s the last time I need it.

Good to hear. The future of lighting has been moving slowly, except here on BLF.

I just looked at the specs. The output went up from 1600 to 1700 lumens, but power consumption dropped from 18W to 15W. Both are 5000K. Not sure about CRI. That’s a significant jump in efficiency, which explains how they were able to eliminate the heat sink fins.

My first 60W Cree bulb went bad. It’s the OG bulb, with 2012 stamps inside. I’m reading 316V across the pads, which is about 100V over spec, so it’s a driver failure. As many of us expected, the drivers are going to fail long before the LED reach their rated service life. I don’t know which component on the driver went bad, but the larger capacitor looks fine, not that I’d attempt to fix it. I think I only have one Cree bulb left, another 60W, that wasn’t warranty replaced at Home Depot or directly by Cree.

I’ll keep the bad bulb around. The metal column and diffuser might be reused for a lantern.

Believe it or not, these 100W CREE bulbs are now 99 cents each at some OSJL in MA and RI.
AND they are a “CRAZY DEAL” 100% of the purchase price is refunded at the register in the form of a Store Gift Card when you buy 12.

We need this store to come to Canada, pronto

Can't beat that deal. A few months ago I purchased 6 x 100W equivalents at Costco here in Canada for $17.98 or just under $3 each and thought that was a great deal.

OSJL is an “odd lot” type of store. They deal in close outs etc that are returned from other stores. From the discussion of a few posts above, it is clear that these finned bulbs are old technology. Hence the reason they have shown up at OSJL.
Leaftye and I have already had some of these older CREE’s fail. In my case I believe the cause was moisture in outside fixtures.
Nevertheless, I am thrilled to have found these. They complete my “collection” of bulbs and I have always lusted after them because when they were first released I considered them unattainable because of their cost. Back then, just a couple of years ago, they were $24.97 each. I even passed on them when they were cleared out at about $5.

BTW, someone mentioned buglights. Has anyone else noticed what I have noticed? It seems that the filament type LED’s that I installed outside do not attract bugs

When I want to get a real bulb, I grab one of these:

With built-in heater and top scores in any colour-rendering benchmarks you may think of. :-D

Cheers ^:)

When the EU banned them, there was an enterprising German vendor who promptly started marketing them as “globular radiative heaters” which just happened to emit light as a byproduct :slight_smile: