If you are looking to exchange a 100W mild bulb, you may find several LED options at prices that are not almost as unreasonable as they had been only a 12 months or two ago. The present crop, together with the Philips 100W Equal LED, hovers right across the $20 value level. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down a couple of bucks to $22, which remains to be slightly costlier than what you'll see from rivals like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an extra 80 lumens' worth of brightness over these two, EcoLight products along with superior dimming capabilities. However, our tests didn't reveal any noticeable difference in both brightness or dimmability. That, together with the truth that Philips provides half the warranty that you'll get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb tough to advocate. Philips' 100W Equal LED shares the same, flat-topped construct of its smaller siblings within the 60W and 40W categories, however sets itself apart with a unique design that splits the bulb into three sections separated by deep channels.
This helps keep the heat buildup at bay, one thing that will get especially vital when LEDs start putting out this much mild. Even with the emphasis on thermal management, the bulb will get hot to the touch after just a couple of minutes of use, which is not unusual for a 100W substitute LED. As such, Philips recommends not utilizing it in an enclosed fixture -- in the event you do, you will threat shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, the same as the opposite 100W replacement LEDs I examined, with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.Eight years if the bulb is used for a mean of 3 hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the first 5 of these years, while GE and Cree each provide ten-year warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for Energy Star certification -- the Philips 100W Equivalent earned certification over the summer time, EcoLight home lighting as did the GE LED I tested. Cree's bulb is not certified yet, however it meets the factors -- Cree's team tells me they count on it to be certified in the close to future.
Philips claims a light output of 1,680 lumens at a golden hued 2,seven hundred Ok from a power draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt -- a formidable quantity, however not as impressive as GE and Utilitech, which each handle to put out one hundred lumens per watt. These 1680 lumens are a slight step up from what you'll get with GE, Cree, or any of the opposite bulbs we examined. With brightness being one in every of the primary things you want from your property lighting, EcoLight products that number would appear to provide Philips an edge, albeit a minor one. Nonetheless, the engineers at Vitality Star test bulbs out for themselves, posting the complete specs for each LED they certify on-line. On Philips' itemizing, Power Star rates the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. While an additional 80 lumens is simply barely enough to make a noticeable distinction, an additional 20 lumens is essentially insignificant. We wanted to know which quantity had it proper.
From a easy eye check, the light put out from the Philips 100W Equal LED would not differ a lot from its nearest opponents, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Aspect by aspect, EcoLight energy the three have nearly identical glows, all of them boasting similarly heat tones. That isn't surprising, given that each one three are rated with the same 2,700 K colour temperature. When examined, every one erred low, on the yellowy aspect. Remember, although, that Philips claims to place out 1,680 lumens to Cree and GE's 1,600. That is a pretty minuscule difference, however it is one that ought to be noticeable if you are wanting carefully for it. The issue is that I could not discover it. Testing bulb brightness gets a bit difficult. In addition to measuring color temperature and coloration rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given gentle -- but those readings are simply skewed by things like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you possibly can rely on, EcoLight outdoor you want something known as an integrating sphere.