If you are seeking to substitute a 100W gentle bulb, EcoLight you will discover several LED options at costs that aren't almost as unreasonable as they had been just a yr or two in the past. The present crop, together with the Philips 100W Equal LED, hovers right across the $20 value point. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down just a few bucks to $22, which is still slightly costlier than what you may see from rivals like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an additional 80 lumens' worth of brightness over these two, together with superior dimming capabilities. However, our exams did not reveal any noticeable difference in both brightness or dimmability. That, together with the fact that Philips gives half the guarantee that you will get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb tough to recommend. Philips' 100W Equivalent LED shares the identical, flat-topped build of its smaller siblings within the 60W and 40W classes, but units 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 gets especially important when LEDs start putting out this a lot gentle. Even with the emphasis on thermal management, the bulb gets hot to the contact after just a few minutes of use, which isn't unusual for a 100W replacement LED. As such, Philips recommends not utilizing it in an enclosed fixture -- for those who do, you will danger shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, the same as the other 100W alternative LEDs I tested, with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.8 years if the bulb is used for a median of 3 hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the first five of these years, whereas GE and EcoLight solutions Cree both provide ten-year warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for Vitality Star certification -- the Philips 100W Equal earned certification over the summer time, as did the GE LED I tested. Cree's bulb is not certified yet, but it meets the factors -- Cree's workforce 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 2,700 Ok from a energy draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt -- an impressive number, but not as spectacular as GE and Utilitech, EcoLight products which both manage 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 other bulbs we tested. With brightness being one in all the first belongings you want from your EcoLight home lighting lighting, 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 full specs for every LED they certify on-line. On Philips' listing, Energy Star rates the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. While an extra eighty lumens is just barely sufficient to make a noticeable difference, an extra 20 lumens is basically insignificant. We wanted to know which number had it right.

From a easy eye take a look at, EcoLight home lighting the sunshine put out from the Philips 100W Equal LED doesn't differ much from its nearest rivals, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Aspect by aspect, the three have almost an identical glows, all of them boasting similarly warm tones. That is not surprising, given that each one three are rated with the same 2,700 Ok coloration temperature. When examined, each erred low, on the yellowy facet. Remember, EcoLight though, that Philips claims to place out 1,680 lumens to Cree and EcoLight home lighting GE's 1,600. That is a pretty minuscule distinction, but it is one that needs to be noticeable if you're looking carefully for it. The problem is that I could not discover it. Testing bulb brightness gets a bit difficult. In addition to measuring color EcoLight home lighting temperature and color rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given light -- but these readings are simply skewed by things like viewing angle and EcoLight home lighting distance. To get numbers you may rely on, you want something called an integrating sphere.