New Philips LED light bulb

So someone did reinvent the light bulb. :smiley:

Is that production?

Not production. You still get the ugly ribbed thing.
The concept looks good, but these should look BETTER than the original, and I haven’t seen one yet that does. They need to be just as pure.
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The light bulb in my original post is the production model which will come out this Sunday (to coincide with Earth Day). The “ribbed” one has been around since 2010 and is not as efficient as the new one (12.5W vs. 10W).

I feel like an idiot, I just bought one of those first-generation bulbs last week and then learned this week Philips is coming out with a better one that will last longer (25 vs. 17 years). At least it only cost me $17, the new ones will start at around $50. But I’m sure that price will come down too when I need to replace my new bulb … in 17 years! :laughing:

An interesting side note, the Philips bulb was the winner of the L Prize sponsored by the government’s Department of Energy (Philips was also the only company who submitted an entry :laughing: ) and as a condition for winning the $10 million cash it has to be manufactured in the U.S. The first-generation bulbs were made in China, the new ones are made in Wisconsin.

I like that LED enables new bulb shapes, but… why yellow?

Quite a lot of fixtures in homes show the light source, and when you have something yellow poking out, it risks clashing horribly with the colors in rest of the room. Wasn’t a nice, neutral white good enough?

I know that the lamp changes to white when you power it on, so perhaps the yellow is a necessary filter.

At least the new version has a slightly more appearling lime-yellow, insted of the old “dried piss-yellow”…

The yellow colour of the bulb is because the light produced by LEDs tends to be towards the blue end of the spectrum, creating a cold sterile light. Not the sort of thing you would want in your home. The yellow filter will correct this and give the bulb a better colour rendering more akin to natural light. Hence why it says on the packaging ‘white when lit’. I admit it would be preferable if the colour rendering was taken care of in a less obvious way so that you didn’t have a big yellow thing hanging from your ceiling, especially as it will always be visible when yellow i.e. when it’s not dark so doesn’t need to be on.

I’ve been working on a project that uses LEDs at school. The LEDs are actually typically pure blue and the covering is treated with a yellow phosphor that glows when excited by light similar to glow in the dark material. This combines with the blue LEDs to make white light. Fine tuning the phosphors allows you to get different white balances as well.

Now that I think about it, I probably would’ve felt like an idiot too even if I had waited for this new light bulb to come out, paying $50 for one! :laughing:

NO bulb that I have EVER purchased has lasted the advertised “life span”*, but I’ve never paid more than $10 for a particular bulb either.

$50 for a light bulb that couldn’t possibly cost more than $2?!!

Is a life time supply of Kool-Aid included? :smiley: No?

  • I can say this because I use a Sharpie to write the date of installation on the base of bulbs when I install them (one of the quirkier habits I apparently inherited from my frugal Irish mum …)

So in this case, made in the USA adds around $30 retail?

I thought this new LED bulb was going to match 100watt incandescent output, but looks to only match 75watt equivalent. Also, I wonder why the lighting industry doesn’t work toward standardizing some sort of new LED socket, which I think could offer some benefit to both lamp (bulb) and fixture manufacturers and designers.

I wonder of Switch is releasing their 100watt equivalent soon as well:

These people (Zhaga) are trying to standardise LEDs, so that light engines from different manufacturers are interchangable. Also this would help to future proof LED products as currently light engines tend not to be interchangable and as the technology develops manufactures change their units, meaning when the LED goes the product is redundant. I’m unsure if they are looking at any sort of adapter to fit current domestic sockets though.

It doesn’t matter what this thing looks like unless Philips improves the light quality. I’ve used previous generation LEDs and tried very very hard to like them. But similar to CFLs, I would rather illuminate my home with burning $20 bills than suffer the hotel room ambiance of non-incandescent bulbs. Even halogens fail to satisfy.

Care to guess what kind of light this room was illuminated with?

Well, halogens are incandescent lamps, but I know you’re referring to color temperature. You can get a broad range of “moods” with a halogen on a dimmer.

I was at Home Depot yesterday and they had a side by side comparison of this new Philips LED and a standard 60 watt frosted edison bulb. The color temperature of the Philips LED is actually pretty close to the incandescent bulb. Light output of the LED appeared just a tad more than the incandescent as well. It would have been nice if the Philips LED was set on a dimmer to see what happens with the color - maybe I’ll try sneak my own inline dimmer for my next visit.

@rukka Thanks for the zhaga link. Very interested in checking that out later on.

They have color LEDs, right? What’s stopping them from just using LED lights that already have a slight yellow tint instead of making an ugly yellow bulb?

Just checked Home Depot. 6 x 60W incandescent is $3.97 ($.66/bulb), 4 x 13W fluorescent is $6.97 ($1.74/bulb) and a new Philips LED 8.5W is $50. I don’t care how long it lasts, it’s not paying back in our lifetimes and it’s probably crap (don’t trust a crappy POP display).

White LEDs don’t exist. Similar to fluo., they require a excited layer around the bulb to emit white light. They are actually blue LED with a phosphorous coating. The coating process is very inconsistent, so light quality is variable, even within the same brand.

Right now, fluo. in an indirect or indirect/direct fixture is tops. Supplement that with a few halogen spots and you have a winning setup. In commercial, the shake-out hasn’t happened yet, so you can spend $300/ft. for crap or $300/ft. for quality and you won’t know the difference until everything is installed and wired. That’s why a mix of incandescent, fluo and high intensity discharge will still be a winning formula for the next 10+ years.

Not an attack, but in my opinion, your thoughts here exemplify a significant hurdle that the industry faces in terms of informing the consumer about LED’s in general - the industry has certainly done a poor job so far here. When you say “not paying back in our lifetimes”, are you referring to more than just a dollar ($) amount? My math tells me that I personally would recoup the extra cost one of these Philips LED’s between 3.5 to 4 years of 4hr per day use. My local $/Kwh charge is also just slightly higher than what Philips uses as a baseline for their calculations. But even knowing this, I couldn’t get myself to buy one of these Philips LED’s even as the light output and color temperature was acceptable to me.

I agree though, that the best lighting solution for built environments involves a combined approach of the various sources available, especially as our individual perception plays a very big role in how we respond to light. The lighting industry is certainly going through some changes because of new technologies and regulations on energy consumption, but these changes increase opportunities and make for an exciting (and sometimes frustrating) industry to be in. Personally, I’m not a big fan of banning higher wattage incandescent. I say let the consumer decide whatever they want to use, but it may not be as simple as that. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how any changes in local building codes will affect what can and cannot be used.

All-natural?!

Nope.

My point is this: the technology is out there to make beautiful white light from LEDs, and Philips has it. It’s only a matter of time before it trickles down to the consumer market. That lighting installation was likely 10’s of thousands of dollars.