Philips wins $10M L Prize for LED-based 60W replacement bulb | Hacker News Reader

Philips wins $10M L Prize for LED-based 60W replacement bulb

edn.com

57 pointslwhi26 comments

I am most impressed by the 900 lumens. This is a true 60 watt replacement, unlike the LEDs that claim to be 60 watt replacements, but actually output far less lumens, and claim "it's OK, the light is directional, so it counts for more".

And the 10 watt is impressive too - that's better than CFLs (13 watt), which is not something I've seen before in an LED.

Most commercial LEDs in the market today (and by market I mean physical stores, not specialty online places) are worse than CFLs in a lumens/watt measure. (And they rarely actually tell you the true lumens.)

I'm not personally willing to pay more than about $5 for such a bulb, but the price will come down. (Since I can get 10,000 hour CFLs for $2.)

Edit: Maybe I will pay more - those 3 watts in savings add up to about $11 over the 25,000 hour life of the bulb.

You can definitely find smaller CFLs. My house is old and has a lot of places where there used to be gas lamps and instead tiny electric lamps have been put in, so I have several 8, 10, and 13 watt CFLs in my house. I think I got almost all of them at either Lowes or Costco.

Here is a GE one: http://www.amazon.com/Lighting-Compfluo-85382-Compact-Fluore...

Though of all the ones I tested the Sylvania seem to have the most pleasant color temperature, and online I can only find their 13W ones.

I think the impressive in "And the 10 watt is impressive too - that's better than CFLs (13 watt)" is in reference to the lumen/Watt measure of the lightbulb, not to its wattage alone.

The question is how much and how long will it last in reality.

My last "forever" led bulb just died, it lasted 3 years.

I'm not buying a $40 bulb, even from Philips, unless it has a 20 year warranty.

I think I am going to try this one next, $15 but available in soft-while intead of just pure white and it's assembled in the USA supposedly: http://www.goldengadgets.com/gt-7d-7-watt-led-globe-light-bu...

Note the helpful chart on that page halfway to the bottom (should be near the top!)

What brand did you buy, out of interest?

It's not printed on the bulb unfortunately but it was like $7-$8 at walmart. I suspect it's not the leds that failed but the regulating electronics - I'm saving it to try to re-use the leds someday, maybe for direct-drive off a battery.

The $15 one above looks like much better quality and 1/3rd the price of the philips. I'm not dropping $40 ever on a led bulb.

> The question is how much and how long will it last in reality.

Same goes for the CFL bulbs. For me the failure rate was so high that I started writing the date on the base of the CFL every time I install a new one(1). Average lifetime of a CFL bulb so far: 9 months. A very far cry from the promised lifetime.

(1) I don't buy the cheap knock-offs at the local Big Box Store. I get top-of-the-line Sylvanias and Phillips CFL's. No difference -- they die just as fast as the cheap ones do.

That would make me start to wonder about the quality of the power in my house. I've seen the power here at my house in the Atlanta area actually drop below 100V for extended periods of time and I could see that causing stress on the ballasts in our CFLs. Our bulbs that have gone out always seem to be shortly after one of those events. (This is incidentally why we also have UPSs all over the house on anything even mildly sensitive)

After more than a year's use I've only had one failure of cheap CFL I bought in a package of 6 or so (for only about $60US at Wallys/Sams or some such). I wouldn't have paid $4/ea, but at <$2/ea they were hardly more expensive than tungsten.

This is about the same rate I'm getting on the CFL packs I'm getting from BJs. I'm wondering if there's a particular manufacturer or factory that is skimping on components. I have a couple CFLs that are used daily that have lasted 8 years and still going. They are in non-enclosed fixtures though.

> I'm not buying a $40 bulb, even from Philips, unless it has a 20 year warranty.

Even if it has a 20 year warranty, that's not much good because the cost of using the warranty exceeds the value of product replacement. (Do you keep receipts and product packages long enough? Then there's the hassle of doing the return.)

I have two LED bulbs like this by Philips. The 12.5w (60w replacement) and the 17w (75w replacement). I like them both a lot, and think both brightness and light quality are good enough for everyday use. Bonus: They apparently don't attract bugs because they produce less UV light than incandescents.

See here:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/03/philips-ambientled-l...

This seems to be an iteration on an 800lm/12.5W version which they examined in [detail][]. There is an incredible amount of electronics packed into these things but they seem to do a better job than CFLs of replacing ye olde tungsten-filament-in-argon-filled-flask.

[detail]: http://www.edn.com/blog/PowerSource/40511-Philips_LED_bulb_T...

  The yellow plastic of the Philips bulb not just a bulb-like cover 
  over the LEDs, but the phosphor itself. ... The bulb is able to 
  make use of the remote phosphor’s characteristic of emitting light 
  omni-directionally and uniformly, rather than as a point source 
  such as in a standard white LED.

Do this bulb flicker at [50/60hz] like (consumer grade) LED Christmas tree lights?

I don't actually own one, but the datasheet[1] for the dimming circuit uses a 120 kilohertz flyback transformer.

1: http://www.cypress.com/?docID=25961

I own a similar model that looks the same with a little less lumen output (860 I believe). I don't notice flickering.

Analysis of presumably an earlier model http://sevengens.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ind...

Good for them! I have one of these at home, and of the various LED bulbs I've tried this is the only one that worked well enough to be a true incandescent replacement.

How do you have one of these at home? I was under the impression that they haven't even started production yet.

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-Ambient-Dimmable-Replacement-L...

Wow. Thanks!

*edit - this is NOT the same product. The one for sale has a CRI of 80, and looks different too.

This one has 800 lumens instead of 900, and uses 12.5watts instead of 10.

Technically, this is a slightly newer version of a very similar bulb Phillips has been selling for a while now. You can usually find the original model at Home Depot for around $50.

They're the only company to even submit an entry :)

I'm using their 860 lumens version which looks very similar. It works great

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