I’ve been very pleased with the $Tree bulbs.
I can remember when they were hard to find, then available in only 1 brightness (“60 W”, 800 lumen).
Individually, I’ve seen FEIT, Sunbeam, and one other manuf.
When I got lucky and visited right after they had stocked up, I grabbed a whole tray - I still have half a tray of that set in boxes. I buy ’em and leave them when we go visit the kids.
Now, anytime I am in the store, they’ve got 60’s, 75’s, 100’s… I don’t remember by I haven’t picked up additional brighter ones - might be as they’re not the “Warm white”. I love the warm version, and think they must be high CRI - they’re very comfortable to work under, read by. And with the low power consumption, I don’t mind filling every available socket with them. The room I use for my home office has them in the overhead, and on the desk. I have one of the aluminum shield “clamp on” fixtures from Lowes/Home Depot, and I fitted that socket with a two-to-one socket splitter, so I’ve got two 800 lumen bulbs in there, used as a wall washer. Lots of very pleasant light.
Those of mine that have passed on got the flickering death also. I saved them to do a tear down, but I never find the time.
Hm… I wonder how bad it would look to add two more two-to-one socket extenders to the overhead fixture? Four x 800 lumen bulbs…
I guess I should pick up some “100 W” versions, just for comparison. If I think about it next time I’m there, and they have “warm” bulbs, I may buy another tray.
Oh, one last: I have some old X10 controls, including a light-socket insert. They had problems switching, if the load wasn’t large enough - I couldn’t get them to switch a single LED bulb.
I have pulled all those out, and have some Wifi/IP controls instead, like a Leviton Decora DW15P single outlet plugin.
Much better control, individually programmable, don’t depend upon having a minimum load, and controllable from my home network.
I’ve got another 6 or 8 in-line wifi controllers that are on the shelf…
What happens to us that we buy great gadgets with great plans, and never implement them? Boxes of X10 controls, a shelf full of Sonoff wifi controls, and ESP32 wifi boards out the wazoo, and after unpacking them… never look at them again. :-?