People need to stop that needs to be cheap thinking
Those GU10 bulbs will outlast every cheap bulb by far as they use high temperature components in the converter, they are specced at 40000h and 100 degree celsius
You get on top a CRI that is awesome, no ugly tints like in many cheap bulbs, just aknowledge that a quality bulb costs money, sure as its Philips you pay more for the brands name, but still true you get what you pay for
And the chineese companies seem slowly to follow investing in development of better drivers and using high CRI, but those bulbs are also getting more expensive
I have replaced almost all lights with LEDs in the house except the bathroom. The exhaust fan doesn’t collect enough steam and i am worried the LED bulbs will short out.
For me personally i have bought Phillips, Osram, Mirabella (Australian brand), Aldi bulbs Aldi use different suppliers per country? (Australian company made in China for these Aldi bulbs) plus 2 other generic home brand bulb from a hardware store here.
So far for me the best bulbs have been Mirabella which are generic bulbs from what i can tell best performing bulb but not best CRI. The Phillips bulb under perform when they get hot bad design almost no heat sinking with a plastic case plus they are over rated output wise i done my own lux testing. Probably the biggest seller here are Phillips because they are stocked at a few places.
I have an Aldi bulb in my room that is 3000k 90+ Cri 1500 lumens. I also have a 1500 lumens Phillips bulb in the kitchen and the Aldi bulb performs much better the weight difference is so huge between both bulbs.
For us here CFL and LED bulbs are the same price so its a much smarter choice to chose LEDs. I got a bunch of Osram 1200 lumen bulbs for $2 each but they are cold white but its fine for outside.
Problem with Philips is that they have 3 totally different qualities
the cheap usual end customer quality
better for commercial lightning
and top performing ultra reliable commercial lightning also very high CRI
I would not recomment or buy the end customer quality any more,
as I have written above first in 2014 they came with full aluminum body later only plastic when I had to replace a defective bulb with the same type ordered in 2017
I have seen teardowns of Osram and Philips light bulbs in the cheap customer quality made 2012-2016 and they really do not look good at all on the electronics LEDs were good in CRI and tints, only better than ultra cheap China stuff which comes with dump PSU and tint lottery
It is pretty extreme, I found one in just two online stores for 10-14 euros shipped. Another bad thing is they’re GU10 only. E27/A60 are equally rare and even more expensive.
Not everyone lives in a country with one of the highest wages in the world that allow them not to cheap out on things. When a regular halogen bulb costs $0.5, 80CRI LED sells for $2 and 97 CRI is $10 while making much less lumens, it does make a lot of difference.
and it does not help complaining about a bulb which costs 10$ but will likely outlast 3-4 cheap China bulbs that dry out their input caps within a few thousand hours running as hot
^ Very true.
Also, because cheap LED lamps run too hot the LEDs wear down pretty fast too.
We have 3 E27 lights in our garden.
They are all 2 Watts.
I built 2 of them myself for 12 Volts AC from a transformer (ground leak problem with 240 V) using a rectifier and a 300mA buck driver, a heat sink and 4x 5730 in 2S4P configuration on a LED board.
The other one is a cheap stock E27 LED bulb with no cooling.
The stock bulb was never as bright as the self built ones, but after a year now, it’s considerably less bright.
And so cheap may turn out to be not so cheap…
The cost of led bulbs is far outwheighed by the electricity costs of normal incandescent bulbs.
The Philips Master spots cost around 7€ for Germans when bought online. Thats not cheap, but not too bad either. Good, bright light means higher quality of life.
I’m assuming the pro-CFL argument is dead at this point, given over 6 years later since OP. They suck. They get nasty hot and they do not last, in my experience. Plus they require special handling for disposal. Glad to see CFL starting to fade away.
Quality LED is the way to go. I’ve already lost $$ on cheaper LED’s that simply do not last. Cheap junk churned out in small fly-by-night Chinese factories. Even the Chinese are getting fed up by that crap.
CFLs have been dead for years. They were always a compromise.
Real fluorescent tubes are still good however. They are quite efficient (and cheap!) when used with electronic ballasts and are available with >=90CRI at various color temperatures.
Cross one border and you get the same taxes with 3-4 times lower wages.
With multiple promos 80 CRI bulbs from Philips can cost pretty much as little as Chinese bulbs and they’ll last much longer. What I’m on about is that going from 80 to 90CRI increases the price multiple times, limited avability means no promos for 90CRI bulbs. They’re nowhere to be found except a couple of specialised online retailers (literally - a couple).
We are on Budget light forum that’s our job! I bought all my LEDs when they where special buys at Aldi i even waited for some to go on clearance lol. I think Lidel has the same sort of thing weekly special buys? The rest i found on sale or clearance by looking around.
The Phillips bulbs where $15 each for the 1500 lumen model i waited till they where on sale for 50% of , so $7.50 per bulb is not bad for 1500 lumens. Consider here a halogen will cost maybe $4?
I scored twin packs of my dinning room lights in LEDs they are only like 480 lumens each i got them for $2 for a pack of two, shelf price was like $12 i think. These bulbs are the smaller bayonet bulbs not the standard size ones.
I scored some HPM (Aussie brand) R80 replacement LEDs for my partners parents they have like 12 80w halogens between the kitchen and lounge room. That is a whole heap of power per hour like a kw/hour just to run those lights. I found some for $2 each they are 12w i think so i replaced like 8 going from 80w each to 12w each for like $16 total. That is a huge energy saving! I wanted to buy more buy no stock in Sydney and the shop won’t price with another store of the same company.
That was a really good score lol you probably can’t always find great deals but if you see some thing cheap grab it while you can. just don’t turn into a hoarder!
Amazon Australia frequently put the Phillips LEDs for half price to match the local retailers that may be worth a look for internationals they may ship to you.
You forget that those CRI97 are mainly produced for commercial lighning like supermarkets above food lighning art ect.
they got also higher specced case temperature and 15000h more runtime, so the current per LED likely reduced or bigger rated LED COB used
and simply the AC-DC converter components will be far more suited for high temperatures
I agree that the pricing is not linear to the production cost, but on the other hand in the professional lightning products
- a lot engeneering work gets done
they do not get the same sales numbers like end customer light market has
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that the heat rejected by lighting offers a big savings on your heating bill if you heat with natural gas. I looked at both my recent electric bill and gas bill. Even a couple of decades ago when I bought my current home, any builder who offered an all electric home was immediately off my list of places to visit. The electric company offered a kickback to the builder but the real cost came to the homeowner who got a home with expensive winter heating costs even in my moderate winter climate. It is also there to be dealt with if you have summer AC where it adds to the cooling cost.
Here’s the comparison for my area.
One Kw-hr = 3412 BTU converting electricity to heat at 100% efficiency
One Therm of natural gas is defined as 100,000 BTUs. and is the unit sold by my gas company
So, it takes 29.3 Kw-hr to equal one therm of natural gas. A standard furnace (not high efficiency) is about 80% efficient and if you compare them with the ordinary furnace, natural gas is still way ahead. It is interesting to note that the cost per therm is about half of what it was a decade ago.
My gas company charges $10.80 for the service charge plus 63 cents per therm including all the nuisance fees. Local/state taxes 5%
The electric company charges $12.50 service charges plus 10.99 cents per Kw-hr Local/state taxes 5% of the total bill The price of electricity is also down but by a much smaller percentage.
No matter how you figure it, heat sourced from electricity is expensive.
That’s a good point. Here in Germany most people don’t have AC. We only need it for around one month year. Heating on the other hand for a few months.
Using light bulbs for heating still doesn’t make sense though. They are too weak to be effektive and they would also heat your home when you don’t actually want heating.
My stupid neighbors replaced all their outdoor lights with cheap ultra turbo bright 8000k LED lighting. They are an irritating eyesore in the neighborhood
