I was on Amazon today and noticed that my favorite high-CRI Hyperikon Bulbs are on sale! It’s so hard to find high CRI bulbs at a good price. But these are not without a downside, like all mass-produced LED bulbs they suffer from small tint issues. This makes them appear a bit green or rosy, depending on their + or – offset from the Black Body Locus. But I can correct that. As I mentioned here about a year ago, I now make tint-correction paint and apply it to all my bulbs. I have been enjoying boxes and boxes of these Hyperikon in my house (most with tint correction) for quite a while, without issue. So I thought I would see if there is interest here on BLF for me to use my spectrometer/skills/coatings to buy/correct/deliver these to anyone interested.
For this 2700k, CRI93, Duv 0 (equivalent to a warm-white incandescent)
$14.36 (cost of 6-pack)
$12.00 ($2 per bulb to test/coat/verify)
$06.00 (USA Shipping)
$01.24 (Paypal fee)
=================
$33.60 ($5.60 per bulb)
For this 3000k, CRI93, Duv 0 (equivalent to a soft-white incandescent)
$15.00 (cost of 6-pack)
$12.00 ($2 per bulb to test/coat/verify)
$06.00 (USA Shipping)
$01.26 (Paypal fee)
=================
$34.26 ($5.71 per bulb)
Thoughts welcome. If you are interested, please tell how many and what colorTemp.
I kinda expected to be buying/painting some bulbs this week. I would have been all over this myself if it was an option to me a few years ago. If anyone knows of a cheaper way to get such a good spectrum, don’t be shy, post it here for me and others to learn about.
But the prices mentioned in the OP are expired whenever the Hyperikon prices on Amazon return to normal. That could happen at any moment for all I know. In their 2 YEARS on Amazon, the price has never been anywhere near this low according to keepa price tracking.
It’s surprising to me how little activity there is in this subforum. Are there any other communities on the web that focus on high quality LED home/commercial lighting sources (not just for growing weed)?
I think the issue is that getting a great LED bulb is so tricky that people just give up on LED and move to Halogen. Halogen is just incandescent with an efficiency enhancement. Nothing that puts it in the league of LED, but better than raw incandescent.
I choose Incandescent because I cant figure out which LED option to choose
for the most part I find LED house lighting makes for muddy colors
and I get lost reading ads, hunting for relevant specs
Im considering buying this,
90-CRI-Light-Bulb-2700k
do you know if it is going to give as good color as incandescent?
here is a
5000k 90CRI option
maybe good in a kitchen or workshop
I have not figured out how to find the duv (Tint) specs for those options
help welcome
Likely not. In my experience, CRI ratings of 90 or lower usually mean a jagged spectrum.
I thought, “Tint free” only applies to emitters on par with, or better than Nichia Optisolis 5000K/6500K (up to 4000K, they are inferior, because of fundamental differences – they have a noticeable light blue/cyan weakness (dip), which the higher CCT Optisolis don’t).
Even Luminus SST-20 and Nichia E21A at ~95-96 CRI exhibit some kind of tint.
No offense, but at only 93 CRI, I feel like I was being clickbaited
(Still, upgrading to lower 90-ish CRI still does worth from the so-called “standard” 80 CRI)
Edit: it seems, that I didn’t read all, which was written. So you apply correction painting manually. Ok, now I got it.
Tint free here means a DeltaUV (or Duv) of zero. Duv is the deviance from the Black Body Locus. It applies to all CCTs.
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 22×6=$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: https://www.amazon.com/Hyperikon-Dimmable-Equivalent-Qualified-UL-Listed...
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?
sigh. Mass/weight has nothing to do with sustained heat dissipation. Surface area is all that matters once it’s up to operating temp. It seems to me they are transferring the heat out the metal threads to the metal and ceramic socket the bulb is threaded into. That adds needed surface area, and it is totally designed to take the heat.
Personally I don’t care if you have some imagined beef with this brand. But I do mind that every time I recommend them, you pop in to say I am recommending shit. You have repeatedly claim their are loads of reviewers that say they melt, yet when asked for proof, you are like, oh, they must have manipulated ALL the reviews. Geez. You have never owned one! I have been using them for years.
I’ve never got my hands on one, so idk. The reviews look fine. But they don’t tell their CRI rating, so that’s not a good start. Maybe BurningPlayd0h can give a psychic review.
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