If you're looking to replace a 100W mild bulb, you will find several LED options at prices that aren't almost as unreasonable as they had been just a 12 months or two ago. The current crop, including the Philips 100W Equivalent LED, hovers right around the $20 value point. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down just a few bucks to $22, which continues to be barely dearer than what you may see from opponents like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an additional 80 lumens' price of brightness over those two, along with superior dimming capabilities. Nonetheless, our exams didn't reveal any noticeable distinction in both brightness or dimmability. That, together with the fact that Philips provides half the warranty that you're going to get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb tough to advocate. Philips' 100W Equal LED shares the same, EcoLight home lighting flat-topped construct of its smaller siblings in the 60W and 40W classes, however sets itself apart with a novel design that splits the bulb into three sections separated by deep channels.
external site This helps keep the heat buildup at bay, something that will get especially vital when LEDs begin placing out this a lot mild. Even with the emphasis on thermal administration, EcoLight bulbs the bulb gets hot to the contact after just a couple of minutes of use, which is not unusual for a 100W replacement LED. As such, Philips recommends not using it in an enclosed fixture – if you happen to do, you will danger shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, the identical as the other 100W replacement LEDs I examined, with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.Eight years if the bulb is used for an average of three hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the first five of those years, while GE and Cree each provide ten-year warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for EcoLight Vitality Star certification – the Philips 100W Equal earned certification over the summer season, as did the GE LED I examined. Cree's bulb isn't certified yet, nevertheless it meets the criteria – Cree's crew tells me they anticipate it to be certified within the close to future. external site
Philips claims a gentle output of 1,680 lumens at a golden hued 2,700 Okay from a energy draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt – a powerful number, however not as impressive as GE and EcoLight bulbs Utilitech, which each handle to put out a hundred lumens per watt. These 1680 lumens are a slight step up from what you may get with GE, EcoLight Cree, or any of the other EcoLight bulbs we tested. With brightness being one in all the primary belongings you want from your house lighting, that quantity would seem to present Philips an edge, albeit a minor one. Nevertheless, the engineers at Power Star test bulbs out for themselves, posting the full specs for each LED they certify online. On Philips' listing, Vitality Star charges the bulb at 1,620 lumens – not 1,680. While an additional 80 lumens is just barely sufficient to make a noticeable distinction, an additional 20 lumens is largely 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 does not differ a lot from its nearest opponents, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Side by aspect, the three have nearly equivalent glows, all of them boasting equally warm tones. That isn't stunning, given that all three are rated with the identical 2,700 Ok colour temperature. When tested, each erred low, on the yellowy side. Remember, though, that Philips claims to place out 1,680 lumens to Cree and GE's 1,600. That's a fairly minuscule difference, however it's one which ought to be noticeable if you're looking carefully for it. The problem is that I could not discover it. Testing bulb brightness will get a bit tricky. In addition to measuring shade temperature and coloration rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given light – but these readings are easily skewed by issues like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you'll be able to depend on, you need something called an integrating sphere.