Yea, Sunlike are good. And $22 per bulb.
A bargain considering the product
I felt the same about all the $20 Cree bulbs with 20-year warranties that I bought years ago. They only lasted 3-4 years, then most died. These days I feel Sunlike are better made than the Cree, but I’ve been wrong before, obviously.
These days I believe in good LEDs for the 2-dozen or so lights you run the most hours every day/night. And halogen everywhere else. It sounds like you don’t mind spending 22x6=$132 for one room. If that’s in your budget, I agree Sunlike is where you should invest.
It really isn’t possible to have a sufficient heatsink and reliable driver for less than that. I still use quite a few cheap Hyperikon bulbs but I’m replacing them as they die with Sunlike. One nice side effect of having beefy drivers is that the Sunlike bulbs don’t flicker when my car is charging which around a third of my hyperikon bulbs do.
Have a look at one of my Cree that died:
It had a huge aluminum heatsink, a 20 year warranty, and a $20 price tag to match. And it’s from my large box of matching dead bulbs. What kind of warranty do the Sunlike come with?? Does that warranty cover spectrum deterioration as the LED ages? That’s a real problem.
What does the driver look like? That’s the most likely reason for its premature death.
I agree the driver is probably to blame. But it’s under warranty, and I hope to mail a box of them in for my money back.
We just lost another Cree in the office today 
I just did a count, today’s dead bulb brings the total to 20. 20 bulbs x $20 each = $400 lost. I wanted to send them in and lay claim to that 20-year warranty they had, but the receipt paper has gone blank from 5 years worth of age as it always does. I’m probably screwed.
The old Cree bulbs have a CRI of 84 and a R9 of just 17. So the new Cree should be noticeably better since they are advertised with a CRI of 90. I stared into a Hyperikon to see if I could understand what you meant by the light not being smooth, but it looks like shear perfection on my bulbs. They are as evenly lit as the sun. You must have a different model.
Old style Cree bulb:
Have they even sold those bulbs for 20 years? You can probably make an argument based on this
That’s a great point, though I doubt their verdict will be up for debate. But the counter to that could be that I found them in a dumpster and don’t qualify. Who knows. I need start that horrible process of trying.
I warrantied my Cree TW bulb, called them, they sent me a new bulb. No receipt, they just use what’s printed on the bulb, super easy.
Oh, that’s great news. From what I read on the box a few years back, in sounded like I needed to mail them to the address on the box and hope for the best. Thanks for the info 
In many cases you get what you pay for. SunLike has great heatsinking, while I’ve heard many horror stories about Hyperikon and even widely known retail brands. Seems some of it has been sanitized or new versions have been listed, but I stopped counting how many pics there were of Hyperikon bulbs that had literally singed and/or melted their base on the Amazon product page when I first looked into them.
Tint/Duv is a completely independent factor from CRI/Ra. The former is how rosy or greenish the light is. Optisolis are actually a bit above the BBL in order to match natural sunlight as closely as possible, which is the goal of the product - this led to some disappointed buyers when Clemence sold the Optisolis Jet-u for example (because they didn’t fully understand the design/goal of the emitter, not that it was a bad product).
See post #14 and #18. Price, name recognition, and a 20 year warranty doesn’t guarantee anything.
Have you found any proof of your claims about review manipulation yet? Because as I recall the last few times you brought it up we just assumed they were offering a different high-power 100w replacement bulb that couldn’t take the heat, and therefore that model got discontinued. But there’s no evidence of this bulb ever having the issue you claim. Go have a look, because you can’t buy off all reviewers, and even trying takes time, so there should be proof. Show me proof.
You can’t have heatsinking without mass and/or surface area, and Hyperikon lists their bulbs at 41g each per the Amazon page. The Phillips, SunLike, Waveform and other brands I haven’t had any failures from (including in slightly enclosed fixtures) are significantly more massive than that, and often have extended bases.
First (only) two images on this listing: Amazon.com
That’s what I thought, you have never owned one and say they all melt but have zero proof of this. Seriously? I mean, didn’t you and me go over this at least twice in years past?
I’m… not going to buy a product with so many accounts of failure?
That actually wasn’t what I said. Insufficient thermal properties are leading to an excessive number of failures and reduced product life span for too many customers for me to have confidence in their reliability and longevity.
Please look at the link.
What you’re doing is a great idea, and I know this site is Budget Light Forum but frankly the base product is not something I have any confidence in and I think there’s ample evidence to support that compared to competing models. You should consider offering other brands bulbs that have been tested and vetted here with the coating IMHO. This brand is clearly saving on overhead big time somewhere and since I buy LED bulbs for longevity, it’s not worth the risk.
Maybe Hyperikon has improved newer models, but until I see evidence of that I will be suspicious of the specs (i.e. weight) and the numerous accounts of poor QC.
I’m using the GE reveal hd+ led in my house…do these suck or something?