I’ve had at least 6 60w equivalent LED bulbs fail on me in the last three years. It could be more. My wife doesn’t always notify me when they die and are replaced.
Some may not like the fixture that they are placed in.
All of ours that failed were in open fixtures.
I made 2 LED arrays not long ago, replacing a tube light of 30 Watts (which smoked its circuit)
I made 2 strips of 15× 5730 LEDs running an easy 5 Watts each (0.33 Watt per LED) using 3S 600mA mains drivers, on 40cm lengths of aluminium curtain rail.
LEDs are 3000K (specified as 2700K but it’s a bit cooler) 95CRI Osram Duris E5 (new old stock) from a German Ebay vendor.
I reflowed them on cheap ribbon which had crappy LEDs on them.
Very nice lights. Good tint, plenty of red.
So these LEDs are probably 5 years old, but it puts out a similar amount of light as the tube light.
Maybe even a little more.
I have also replaced some small CFL lights with LEDs in outdoor lights.
Stepping down from 11 to 3 Watts, and still the same amount of light.
So in my experience LEDs are 3 times as efficient as CFL lights, even warm white high CRI LEDs.
There Is No Free Lunch If you buy bulbs subsidized by the local power company, that subsidy is built into the rate charged for all customers. Nevada Power Company (now known as NV Energy) was mandated by the state legislature to operate some energy savings programs including providing low-cost CFL bulbs, buying up old refrigerators, and home energy audits. They partnered with a local non-profit to sell CFLs at one time and near the end of the program the cost was 50 cents each. I bought a bunch, including spares, but soon learned how horrible the color rendition was for CFLs. Ended up changing to LEDs and donating all of my CFLs to our local Scout camp. I also hated how slow CFLs were to reach peak intensity when it is cold outside.
As to energy efficiency. LEDs are light years ahead of incandescents and more than twice as efficient as CFLs for the same number of lumens. The comparison shown here http://www.usailighting.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/1/92ffeb328de0f4878257999e7d46d6e4/misc/lighting_comparison_chart.pdf is for a 60W incandescent. Relative cost per year for LED/CFL/incandescent is $1.11/$2.56/$10.95 if you ran all three for the same number of hours.
The point where LEDs became more cost effective than CFLs has already passed because the price has dropped so much. I could go to two local “dollar plus” stores and buy cheap LED bulbs for a dollar or two. I don’t expect them to last as long as the bulbs I bought overseas because the components in them are so cheap. It is not the LEDs that fail but the AC/DC converter built into the base of the bulb that is the weak link. In any case, they should last longer than a comparable incandescent bulb which will become unavailable as of 2020.
Philips has CFL LED 1:1 replacements 3000 or 5000 Lumens on 27/42W
those are already more efficient have good tint no heat up time ect, just the price is a bit high as they are pretty new
I bought this bulb to light the garage of my parents house, should receive it tomorrow
Specs
E27
42W
5000 Lumens
Also will upgrade my living room
bought last week
CRI97
445lumens compared to 4 year old Philips spots with CRI80 and just 350 lumens
http://www.lighting.philips.de/prof/led-lampen-und-roehren/led-reflektorlampen-ledspot/master-ledspot-gu10-expertcolor/929001347402_EU/product
Lol what are they doing
Yeah, usually they use a capacitor between the mains and a bridge rectifier, and then smooth that out with a capacitor (but sometimes they don’t and you have a 50 or 60 Hz flickering light…)
There’s also a current limiting resistor and a bleeder resistor for the smoothing capacitor in there.
Not really efficient in all…
The big companies have already light bulbs that are specified 40000h at 100°C housing temperature
of cource all the cheap chineese ripoff have rerally really bad AC/DC converters, worst with mains on the LED board in 50% of the cases on GU10 sockets
You get what you pay for. 
I paid $5.99 each for my last two four-packs of Feit Electric filament LED bulbs ($1.50 per bulb). I’m happy with the price, appearance, and fitment in standard lamps/sockets. This light is possibly a little warm for my taste.
you get filaments in
2000K vintage, relatively new
2700K
4000K
Here’s the circuit board and LED array for one of the cheap dollar store lights. I pulled this apart to show what makes the light work and why the A19 is the worst design for LED bulbs. This one has fifteen 2835 LEDs on the plate. They are the least efficient of the various LEDs (3528, 5050, 5630, 5730, 8520) used in strips. The AC/DC converter in the bulb consists of 4 diodes, two capacitors and two resistors (the load resistor is hidden on the bottom of the plate).
I wish Lexel good luck on lighting his garage with a single Philips 42W 5000 lumen bulb. I couldn’t read the Philips brochure written in German though a long time ago I could read German scientific articles. Forgot a lot over the years. This bulb is one of the kind a city uses to replace the sodium vapor lights used for street lights. https://www.assets.lighting.philips.com/is/content/PhilipsLighting/fp929001925002-pss-global It is a very concentrated source of light and might damage your vision if you look directly at it close up. The ones in my community are mounted the height of a two story house so you never look at them close up. I had similar thoughts a few years ago and installed a single $10 25W LED corn bulb in the middle of the garage ceiling. It is made from 102 SMD 5050 LEDs and is incredibly bright. It was not only that but annoyingly bright if you were to look up at it. Later I abandoned that idea and installed seven 20” rigid bar lights that light the garage evenly without being blinding if you look at them plus pretty economical.
I have 6 of these in various places in my home, 4 in 2700K, 2 in 3000K, 30 degree versions. The tint is about perfect and the beam really smooth.
I measured a 3000K one (center of the beam but there’s no visible tint gradient over the beam) and they are indeed 97CRI and perfect tint:
I also only use philips bulbs at home, but I use the bright white (4000k) ones instead.
Work very well, they look exactly like the original halogen pars that they are replacing.
I’d love some 4000K ones in a few corners of the house but my girlfriend refuses 4000K, makes her feel like she’s in hospital 
I would love 5000 lumen bulbs, we don’t have them in Canada yet.
As for CFLs they are dead, this is a 6 year old thread
Maybe I wrote it wrong the light bulb is for outside the garage, would never take such a bulb inside it
It should be noted though that these are the current, most high-end halogen replacement spots that Philips offers (“Master LED Expert Color”). I have some of these with 4000K. The biggest downside is that they don’t offer wider emition angles.
I have one of those Philips MR16 halogen replacement bulbs. They are quite expensive, and many transformers just won’t cope with the low current. In the end I found cheaper high CRI replacement LEDs that replace the entire recessed lighting can and transformer, and have magnetic bezels that are easily swapped out for decorative ones.
I got rid of all CFLs in my house when one shattered in 2012, releasing who knows how much mercury near my newborn girl. CFLs can’t be banned quickly enough as far as I am concerned.
The Philips halogen replacement shown above has a GU10 base. It runs directly on mains without a transformer.
Right now I can buy Philips LED bulb (60W equivalent) for about $2 in one of the local supermarkets. It’s a promo but it lasts for a few weeks now. Previously I bought the “100W” ones (1521lm) for $2,5 each. They have much better tint than noname bulbs and I’m pretty sure they will last much longer.
[quote=Lexel]
What I don’t like is that there’s no middle ground. You can buy either well priced and bright 80CRI bulbs (or sometimes much less than 80) or those very high CRI ones which are extremely rare, very expensive and noticeably less bright. There’s nothing in the middle.
Did you buy them online or locally?
