I just started buying the led bulbs because you can get them for $10-15 each. I have never liked the CFLs and will be glad when LEDs are the standard. That being said, I don’t think the LEDs I have been buying are anything special.
I think I will go back to CFLs until the price/performance improves to the point where they are worth the investment.
Right on dchomak. It makes no business sense at all to buy led bulbs yet. Give it a few years though and things will probably change for the better.
Currently it’s hard to argue for LED over CFL. Even if you’re buying them at Costco here in Montana without any kind of store discount you’re paying less than $1 per bulb (again, taxes at work).
BUT… they’re annoying. They often flicker and they have to warm up. If you’re not so much going for cost savings as opposed to convenience and energy savings, then LED is still the better option. However, if cost is a major factor then you’re stuck with CFL’s for a few more years. I can hardly wait to ditch my CFL’s in the kitchen and living room because of the two disadvantages I listed. It would probably be about a $100 investment. I should probably just pull the trigger.
LED bulbs are mostly profit, but not for the retailer, a $20 LED costs the store maybe $18.
I agree that right now they are very overpriced, in time with more competition the profit margins will fall as well as prices, and hopefully in a generation or two the led chips will be 100lm/watt at 15 watts, when i can replace a 100W bulb with an led for under $10 (preferably closer to $5), then the full scale LED revolution will happen!
CFLs are ok, the made in china bottom of the barrel garbage that dies in 6 months has been mostly weeded out, but gave the technology a bad name, and the mercury in them is arguably less then what is emitted into the atmosphere from a coal burning plant.
Ah yes, the wonderful GREEN scam movement! Don’t we all just absolutely adore totalitarian ideas and ideals of all kind?
Last week, they had a radio play for children on the radio. Guess what they told the little listeners? Not using any electricity or cars or modern technology at all would be the answer. Yus, what a marvellously irresponsible way to teach children a false idea about how the world is NOT working. Ill propaganda at its best.
As far as CFLs are concerned, can’t say that I like them much. I can’t operate my scroll saw properly, the oscillating blade gets all blurry in my vision and I can’t see where I am cutting. They are good for lighting up my brother’s garage, though.
Do CFL and LED luminaire manufacturers measure output in-house? Does ANSI regulate testing for home illumination products, or what…?
Flashlights have FL-1, so you’d think home illumination would be under greater scrutiny due to the huge market, energy impact, and so on.
In my books going GREEN => Do nothing LOL.
The best part of home LED unlike CFL is, easy to DIY.
CFL and LED efficiencies are equivalent or near today,
but in future, LED will be more efficient. Then paying extra for it may be reasonable.
They both include a circuit, and one of my LED bulb just failed because of the circuit malfunction.
I have retrieved 6x1W leds from it. They work ok with a 24V supply.
One of my CFL bulb was exploded in a closed fixture, the CFL part was broken because of a capacitor on the circuit that has exploded.
So their life do not depend on it’s technology but the quality of the complete product.
The CFL’s we get here now are instant on no flicker (this coming from a brit, we don’t seem to notice pwm either), I can cope with them but miss in-cans tbh.
I didn’t realize there was such a thing as instant on CFL. I guess I’ll have to look around.
As for flicker, I’m not sure if it’s the individual bulb or the amount of voltage going to that bulb. Currently I only have flicker issues in the living room.
CFL are pretty good compared to incan. That 4mg of mercury ain’t so bad considering the pollution companies do illegally.
AFAIK at least in tubes, the “old” thumb sized strikes / ignitors are pretty slow but newer electronic ones are the way to go.
They light up faster and last longer.
What I understand in CFL-tubes vs. LED is:
You can dim LED.
There was some recent tests of CFL bulbs that showed that they can emit a rather high level of UV radiation. Plus they contain all that yummy mercury. Also, the lm/watt of CFL bulbs drop much faster than LED bulbs. They may say that they have a couple more lumens/watt than LEDs. but that doesn’t last very long.
My whole house is now lit by LEDs… all 300+ bulbs! CFLs were considered… for about 10 milliseconds… My adventures in LED home lighting
after years of replacing my incans with cfl i am just disgusted with cfl’s! lousy light, longevity is a joke, messy or difficult to dispose of properly. i agree that in the past led bulbs were pricey with unpleasant light temp however my wife decorates with strings of xmas tree string lights, i was going broke, now she has switched to led strings and i could care less how many she uses. i put in some of the older 3 watt versions of the cree bulbs that are high temp and really not usuable for interior lighting but only cost $3 from china. now have them in several outdoor and inaccessible locations some running 24x7. lets see, 3watts divivded into 1000 multiplied by 24h by what? 15 cents a kwhh? pretty cheap. meanwhile for interior use phillips has now introduced a new application which addresses many concerns, warm color temp, dimmable, reasonable light distribution. see here:
these prices are really coming down, i am now going to replace those hard to access lights in my ceiling fan (20 feet up) and remove the cfls (2 of 4 which are still functional plus the dead one and the one that flickers constantly). government subsidies? please! the feds subsidize, farms, crops, foreign nations, dictators, why not promote technology that will ultimately overtake all the incans and cfls and provide us poor slobs that are not rich with a way to light our houses and environs with leds? i dont hear anyone bitching about the government subsidizing 123!
sorry for the rant but i just had to replace another 4 cfls in my kitchen. enviro-nazi? ahh geez, c’mon guys, take a walk and get out some. 
btw: some day i am going to compute how many lights i need to replace with leds to balance of the kwh’s i use for my hot tub! right now i realize it is perhaps not cost efficient but i like leds and spend my money on lots of things that do not rise to the level of providing my home with essential lighting for instance my growing collection of led flashlights.
ken
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I was replacing at least one or two bulbs a week. Since switching to LEDs, I have not replaced a single bulb in over two years. With modern, quaility LED bulbs, color temp and tint is not an issue. The ones in my office and kitchen are Sylvania UltraLED 3000K, 95 CRI.
The problem with both CFLs and LEDs is that neither one will work in my daughters’ easy-bake oven! 
Seriously though, I’ve always disliked CFLs and I can’t wait until LEDs come down in price. We just redid our bathroom and I installed 5 LED pot lights (HALO brand?). Couldn’t be happier other than the $.
You can also dim CFL, as well as halogen
CFL = mature technology. Is it any wonder they’re so cheap?
LED = new technology. This means higher prices and lower performance right now.
Will CFLs offer higher lumens per watt in the future? Not very likely. Will LEDs offer higher lumens per watt in the future? Absolutely!
One thing that has been touched upon: CFLs, in my experience, don’t last. They’re cheaper to buy, but, you will be replacing them about as often as replacing incandescent bulbs. I’ve never bought an LED light bulb replacement so I can’t speak to its longevity, but, I’m guessing that they will last longer per bulb than CFLs. This should offset the higher price of them.
… and open my stupid mouth and get banned:
here goes…
I accept as axiomatic that not one soul on this forum is a shill for the political parties. Therefore it’s doubly disturbing to see the customary misinformation being rolled out here. Please excuse me if I seem to single out any individual, because I only take issue with the misinformation, not the person repeating it. I believe the OP, dchomak, is onto a very good point.
I understand how people were led to be afraid of Fluorescent lighting (WAY before pigtails were out, or did you forget), but the reality of the things doesn’t warrant such shrill hype. Yes, the PCBs in the ballasts could be an environmental disaster, in huge quantities; but in the fixture in your ceiling, not so much. The government failed to keep it out of the water and off the dirt roads of America. The mercury used to create the plasma is less than the amount we used to put in our mouths (and other orifices) to measure our temperature. (It’s true, we didn’t have ‘thermocouples for the Common Man’ a few years ago!!); AND, mercury isn’t all that bad for you, in the grand scheme of things!! In decades past, painting mercury on your body was a legitimate, medical treatment! The fact that it didn’t work doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t kill anybody either. Mercury-Terror, OTOH, has led otherwise brilliant people to say some of the strangest things… Likewise for the phosphors coating the inside of the tube! No, you don’t want to eat it, but who eats light bulbs anyway???
Can’t recycle the pigtails?? Why NOT? I’m still waiting on one of mine to die, but when it does, I expect (based on commonly reported failure modes) the failure to be in the electronics. Google “Joule Thief” if you want to see what to do with the tube, after the electronics have died. Yes, you will learn how to light your pigtail with a AA battery. How is THAT for recycling? How is that hard? And if the tube fails, the electronics donate pieces for those Joule Thief tricks!!! Does anyone ever look at the facts of these allegations?? (Sorry, I was raised by lawyers so it’s difficult for me NOT to think this way) Looks to me like recycling pigtails, circlites and tubes is a lot easier than the disinterested third parties would have us believe… And logic won’t let you slide unless you also show us “recycle the incans” and “recycle the LEDs” to compare.
Startups, an Anecdote: My wife likes the 4-lamp fixture over the bathroom mirror. I like ~sunlight-colored light, meaning if incandescent, I’m burning 100W each. OTOH, I can put 4 100W-equivalent CFLs in there, and tailor the color( s ) to suit whatever whim strikes her fancy, for a lot less Real-World wattage. But nevermind one microgram of that!!! What makes all this worthwhile is this: When either of us walks into the incandescent-lighted bathroom at 02:35, the 500+Watt light-smack is a tangible, painful experience (hence “the Blinky”…). OTOH, the cool (temp, not color - they’re 5000K) CFLs take a few moments to come up to full brightness, which seems more friendly. Yes, I do ‘get’ that some people prefer instant-on. When it comes to Brake Lights or emergency lighting, I’m all for that, but not in the WC…
I would like to know how LED lights are “mostly profit”!!! When I try to design them for my own home, even at 10,000-unit Alibaba order quantities, with me building the circuits, I would starve if I got the whole Retail price myself, assuming they all sell!! (That’s extreme if you do the math, but not as hyperbolic as it sounds.) And that doesn’t pay the draymen who carry it to you, nor the store clerks who keep it safe until you buy it. I’d be happy with ‘cost coverage’!! Just to move the market forward! Maybe I’m shopping with the wrong suppliers… Pigtails, OTOH, have a few decades of manufacturing experience (and built-and-paid-for equipment) to draw upon.
Another nifty thing about fluorescents is they don’t have to have “that” shape or size!! I thought the pigtails would show everyone (who all seem to have forgotten NEON!!) that, but I’ve been proved wrong before… If I want to wash a wall with light of a specific color, and have only LED or fluorescent technology to use, my LED flashlight will be the only LED on the project! Some clever Chinese artist made a palm tree CFL out of colorful tubing & lit it. A friend owns one and I lust after it mightily. Is there any possible hope for LEDs becoming … ‘shapely’ … ??? Maybe — there’s certainly nothing stopping, say, Cree, from growing a wall-sized LED and pushing If through it, except that “pay for it” part, which is only possible in the extreme cases if some brutish thug forces a lot of us to do so.
dchomak, after reading this:
… my instant, immediate, urgent reply to you is, you NEED to write more!! Actually, WE (“the People”) need for you to write more, because this level of wisdom and insight has almost been extirpated in the general population, and We Will Miss It!!! You are equally correct about any “disinterested third party” (call it “government”, “religion”, “unions”, “guilds”, even fori like this one to some extent), and the manipulation of market reality over the bespoke issue is one proof of that.
I guess this is a long way of saying “thank you” for pointing that out!
I’m sorry to put (so soon) a proverbial cattle prod to any sacred cows, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate for me to know better and not do something about it. I promise not to let it become a problem… I’m just here for the DIY flashlight stuff, so I’ll go back to that & mind my manners now.
Now I await the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…