On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 6:02:29 AM UTC-4, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
I've finally reached the end of my incandescent bulbs and CFL and am

starting to replace them with LED bulbs. I saw a 60W equivalent bulb

on sale for $5 made by Cree as part of some deal with the utility so I

picked one up. It is a warm light. It is OK, nothing to brag about.



Sunday, I wanted to replace two more bulbs so I picked up two more,

but these were Osram and were $10. I chose the daylight over the

warmer colors.



I put the two side by side in a vanity fixture.

Cree = kind of dingy

Osram = Wow, this is nice and bright



both are allegedly 800 lumens.

Unfortunately, the same thing is happening with LED "bulbs" as happened with CFLs... some are really good and some are not.

I'm guessing you didn't like the Cree because it was "warm white" not because it's bad though. They're usually pretty well regarded, even if the CRI is only about 80ish or so. If you live in CA you should be able to get a "true white" version with a 90+ CRI.

The nice thing about CFL and LED is that you can pick color temperature which you can't do with incandescent - regular incans are all "warm white" halogens maybe a little cooler but you'll never see an incan of any type significantly higher than 3000K. That's easily achievable with LED (in fact high color temp LEDs are more common than "warm white" ones.)

If you want to fall down a rabbit hole, do some reading over at candlepowerforums...

Finally the BEST LED "bulbs" I've tried are the Philips L-Prize bulbs, but they've been off the shelves for quite some time now. They are warm white but they are a truly good replacement for a 60W incan. ~900 lumens IIRC.

nate