I stopped by home depot last night. They didn't have the Cree branded LED bulbs, but did have two other brands.
Only 40W and cool white though... for $9.97 a piece.
I really can't see these appealing to people at that price, when at a glance they look like the cheap $.99 incandescent bulbs used to look.
XB-D die looks just like the XT-E, only smaller. Still a little expensive and the CRI is a little low, but I’m glad to see Cree jump in under their own brand.
a worldwide apple pie contest ! 
I love apple pie, I'm in!
Good lookin bit o pie ya got there, I see you’ve gotten your slice, is that next piece for me? (yeah, we do things big in Texas!)
That sure does look good though, for sure. Some vanilla bean ice cream on the side, oh yeah baby!
Our friend that has a Mexican food restaurant makes his own version, apple pie flautas, rolled in a batter and deep fried, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and assisted with Blue Bell Vanilla Bean Ice Cream, man it’s to die for! Especially after some sizzling hot mexican food with habanero pepper. Too dang close to supper to be talking about this stuff……
A considerably larger picture, lit of course with a Cree household led lamp, to stay consistent with this thread. 
These bulbs finally showed up at the local Home Depots this week. I bought a couple of the 9.5W ones to play with… now wish that I did not.
The cool white is 4800K. The warm white is 2800K. Tint is nice.
The bulb envelopes are coated with a sticky silicone condom. I put one down on the floor and it is like one of those lint rollers. It came up looking like a furball. I think that these things are going to become coated in airborne dust and fluff in no time.
They start out at their published light output of 800 lumens, bit quickly fall to 650 lumens, a 20% drop. All of my other LED bulbs drop less than 10%. Why such a big drop you ask? Well, the heatsink temperature was OVER 100 degrees C!!! I wonder what the LED junction/driver temperature is? The rubber band that I was using to hold the thermocouple to the heat sink melted. I don’t know what the driver in the bulbs is like, but I suspect CREE might be busy with their 10 year warranty…
Those wobbles in the light output at the beginning of the plot were caused by the light sensor being in low sensitivity mode. This makes it sensitive to ripples in the light output due to things like modulation in the light intensity due to 60Hz power getting through the driver to the LED. They are not noticeable in real life. After a couple of minutes I switched the sensor to normal sensitivity mode.
Obviously CREE is quite sure that led’s can handle that kind of heat long term, but I’m not completely convinced that driver can withstand it. Especially as some of it’s essential components are (nichicon pw series filter capacitor) rated for 5000-8000 h @105°C Temperature of capacitor should not exceed 85-90°C in order to survive 25000h life time period…
thanks for the review pyro, that is nuts, people also expect LEDs to run cooler then incandescents, someone’s young kids could find out the hard way this thing its burning hot
Very different results than were gotten here which showed >900 lumens instant one and >800 lumens and ~8 watts at steady state.
Hi,
So who’s going to be the first to get one of these, extract the LEDs, and then use them as emitter(s) for a flashlight :)??
Jim
Part of the difference could be because I have to stick the whole bulb into the sphere. All my calibration sources emit in only one direction and are placed at the plane of the inner wall of the sphere.
I picked up my first one last weekend, and I'm impressed so far. I'll try it out for a few more months to see how it goes. More will be purchased if it goes well, and a few lights will be put on dimmers so they can double as nightlights.
I bought two about a month ago. They’re in a 4-bulb dining room fixture, along with two 100 W incan bulbs. The Cree bulbs work very well. Even though they’re 60 W, it doesn’t appear to me that one-half of the fixture is dimmer than the other half, but there is a big diffuser around the fixture.
Colour-temperature-wise, they’re a perfect match with the incans.
Dimming: when I dim the fixture, the incans will dim gradually all the way to almost zero. The Cree bulbs dim gradually til about 5, at the bottom of my dimmer’s travel, and then shut off when I push the slider to Off. For a dining room, this is a non-issue, but maybe in a room where you want 1 output, it might be important.
I’m definitely going to buy a bunch more of these. Just waiting for them to go on sale.
These Cree bulbs, along with the Cree CR6 recessed downlights in the living room (for 6 months or so), are all working great. People who visit have no idea that most of the lighting is LED.
All my bulbs at home are LEDs either from Philips or from Toshiba and I have been using them for 18 months now. Perfect tint, really cool to the touch (alu heatsinks) and none seems to even notice whether they are LED or not. Well they work perfectly.
I have 10 LED MR spots in the kitchen (Philips) that have been abused so much (on-off + hours) and still going. They were not cheap though. The spots were 20 Euros each when I first got them.
Right now I have order several bulbs from Fasttech and I will report back when here. If they are anywhere near the quality of Philips or Toshiba I am sold since their prices are really good.
They won’t be… I’ve tested a LOT of MR16 bulbs and the only ones I’ve found that can match the 50 watt halogens were the 10 watt/490 lumen Philips bulbs with the built in tiny fan (around $25 each, and I have 40 of them). The halogens were supposedly 900 lumens, but the Philips bulbs delivered more light. Also, the halogens spew quite a bit of UV light (even with the filters installed)… not good when they are all shining on artwork.
All the generic Chinese bulbs that I tested were crap… most put out less than 100 lumens of butt-ugly photons.
LOL! I guessed so but but I if not good I will move them to the storage room and continue buying Philips. It was that some of them had some good ratings that urged me to try. Two other Chinese MR16s that I have, although adequate lumen wise, the tint is nowhere near the color of the Philips.
These: http://dx.com/p/gu10-3000k-4w-360-lumen-cree-xpe-q2-4-led-warm-white-light-bulb-85-265v-72257 are by far the best LED light bulb that I’ve tried in terms of both tint and output. Of course they far outclass any of the cheap generic LED ones, but they also beat any Philips I’ve tested, at a cheaper price as well.
Thanks for the tip! I will give them a shot next time i order from DX. At the moment I need E27, E14 and some E27 for outdoors use around the house.
4 watts for 4 XPE’s… 1 watt per XPE Q2 -> 90 emitter lumens. Allowing for driver and optic efficiency you get no more than 243 lumens out.
CRI 80, no thank you.