Frank wrote:

On 8/12/2014 7:19 AM, N8N wrote:
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


Energy savings of LED's over CFL's are not worth the extra cost. I'm
waiting for them to come down.

Spectral differences can be a PITA. I bought a couple of CFL's whose
white light made them annoying indoors and they now reside on the porch.

Also some of my CFL's are hummers and can be quite annoying. One in the
kitchen is so loud I can hear it in the den nearby. Wife says it goes
away with time. I've also heard of both type lights interfering with
the radio.

Looking forward to manufacturers removing this annoyance.

LEDs will give you a modest power savings over CFLs, but more
importantly they have a much longer service life and that is where more
significant savings come in with lower lamp cost over the service live
vs. CFL as well as less lamp replacement labor.

All of the lighting in a given room should be coordinated as to color
temp and CRI, this is nothing new, it applied just as well before LEDs
or even CFLs.

I've used both CFLs and LEDs for some time and have not run into noise
issues either acoustic or RFI. The one thing I have found in my various
tests is that *ALL* encapsulated CFLs suck. Open CFLs seem to have no
issues and I've not experiences short CFL life as some people report,
and that is with many brands of CFL and in several different physical
locations in different towns and states.