The Philips Dubai lamp

What’s up with these lamps?
Are they really that good? They say Dubai 3W shines like 60W Rest of the world

First of all, a 60W equivalent lamp should produce 800 lumens. I expected better from Philips than to advertise a 600 lumen lamp as 60W equivalent. The true equivalent would be a 4W lamp.

I’ve seen 7.5W, 800 lumen lamps in the US for a few years.

Philips claimed over 7 years ago they had achieved 200lm/W at the lamp level (what we would call “out the front”) and would have a product on the market by 2015.

Regardless, 200 lumens per Watt is possible with the best LED’s currently available, especially when underdriven, which means using more emitters per lamp. I don’t know Philips lineup, but Virence was recently raving about the efficiency of the Nichia N757h-F1, which he was offering in his store. The 80 CRI rank is rated at as high 242lm/W at the emitter level.

So this kind of efficiency is definitely possible if the market wants it. The tradeoffs are higher cost, higher CCT’s and lower to medium CRI if you want the best efficiency, and a need to use very high efficiency drivers that so far have poor power factors and no dimming.

The video explains it pretty well. These are better built versions of their globally available bulbs. They aren’t made to look better, just to last longer and be efficient. There are probably better CRI options you can buy for the same price as importing those. I like bigClives video. I think the Dubai project didn’t consider CRI, it would have been great if they did.

One takeaway, the company making the product looks to sales for profits. Here they limited the product to a government who paid for a product that wouldn’t need replacing as often and factored that into the price. The waste or landfill generation isn’t really factored into to how most manufacturers stay in business. Dubai could factor in the cost of its landfills, utility grid, and agreement with Philips.

Reviving this thread from last year, today I stumbled upon the same YouTube video as the OP.

Adding extra LEDs within each bulb means you don't have to drive the individual LEDs as hard to get the same amount of light. The result is higher efficiency, less heat and longer life. In addition—as h2o pointed out above—longer life means less waste in our landfills.

Unfortunately, CRI for the bulbs described in the video is around 80, with a CCT described as "cool daylight." I did find a page on Amazon for a "warm white" version, but the product is not currently available. One other potential drawback: the bulbs in the video are designed for 240-volt AC systems, so I think that precludes use the USA.

On the front end, each bulb costs more than regular Philips bulbs, but my guess is that total cost of ownership is less overall.

Are there any similar products made by other companies?