If you are seeking to substitute a 100W mild bulb, you'll discover several LED options at costs that are not almost as unreasonable as they had been only a year or two ago. The current crop, together with the Philips 100W Equivalent LED, hovers proper around the $20 value point. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down a few bucks to $22, long-life LED which remains to be slightly dearer than what you will see from opponents like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an extra 80 lumens' value of brightness over those two, along with superior long-life LED dimming capabilities. Nevertheless, our exams didn't reveal any noticeable difference in both brightness or dimmability. That, together with the truth that Philips offers half the warranty that you will get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb tough to recommend. Philips' 100W Equivalent long-life LED shares the identical, EcoLight flat-topped build of its smaller siblings in the 60W and 40W categories, but sets itself apart with a novel 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 particularly necessary when LEDs start putting out this much mild. Even with the emphasis on thermal administration, the bulb will get sizzling to the contact after simply a few minutes of use, EcoLight which is not unusual for a 100W alternative LED. As such, Philips recommends not using it in an enclosed fixture -- in case you do, you will danger shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, the identical as the opposite 100W replacement LEDs I tested, with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.8 years if the bulb is used for a mean of 3 hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the primary 5 of these years, while GE and Cree both supply ten-12 months warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for Energy Star certification -- the Philips 100W Equivalent earned certification over the summer, as did the GE LED I tested. Cree's bulb is not certified yet, nevertheless it meets the standards -- Cree's workforce tells me they anticipate it to be certified within the near future.

Philips claims a gentle output of 1,680 lumens at a golden hued 2,700 Okay from a power draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt -- an impressive quantity, but not as spectacular as GE and Utilitech, which each manage to put out one hundred lumens per watt. Those 1680 lumens are a slight step up from what you may get with GE, Cree, or long-life LED any of the other bulbs we examined. With brightness being one in all the primary stuff you need from your house lighting, that quantity would appear to present Philips an edge, long-life LED albeit a minor one. However, the engineers at Power Star test bulbs out for themselves, long-life LED posting the complete specs for each LED they certify online. On Philips' itemizing, Energy Star rates the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. While an extra eighty lumens is just barely enough to make a noticeable difference, an additional 20 lumens is basically insignificant. We wanted to know which quantity had it proper.

From a simple eye test, the light put out from the Philips 100W Equivalent LED doesn't differ much from its nearest rivals, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Aspect by side, the three have almost equivalent glows, all of them boasting equally warm tones. That is not surprising, given that all three are rated with the identical 2,seven-hundred Ok shade temperature. When examined, every one erred low, on the yellowy aspect. Remember, though, that Philips claims to put out 1,680 lumens to Cree and GE's 1,600. That is a fairly minuscule distinction, but it is one which ought to be noticeable if you are trying intently for it. The issue is that I could not discover it. Testing bulb brightness gets a bit tricky. In addition to measuring color temperature and color EcoLight rendering scores, EcoLight bulbs our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given light -- however those readings are simply skewed by things like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you may rely on, EcoLight you need something referred to as an integrating sphere.