Phillips Dimmable LED

I saw the Philips Dimmable LED bulb, Philips EnduraLED A19 Dimmable LED Lamp, at a trade show last week and I was very impressed. Philips highlights the features of this bulb on their website:

Smooth dimming to 10% of full light levels
Instant-on light
Emits virtually no UV/IR light in the beam
Available in 2700K color temperature
25,000 hour rated average life
Mimic light profile of a standard incandescent A19 lamp
Will not fade colors, avoids inventory spoilage
Contains no mercury
3-Year warranty period

At the show there was another lighting rep selling lighting controls, and they used a wireless dimmer to dim the Philips LED bulb and it looked great. I spoke to the Philips rep and he said the price range should be between $30-$40 a bulb. This fact was backed up by Light Bulbs USA, which is selling the bulb for $34.00.

In my Lighting Cost Comparison post I compared an incandescent, CFL, and LED and showed how much each type of light bulb would cost initially and to operate over a ten-year lifetime. I've adjusted those calculations taking into account the new Philips bulb and you can see the results below. With this lighting calculator you can adjust some of the values (cells in yellow) yourself and even save it as an excel spreadsheet.

The winner over a ten-year lifetime and an on-time of 4 hours per day is the CFL. But many people are opposed to the mercury and lighting characteristics of the CFL. I've heard many complaints about light quality and the time it takes CFLs to come up to full light output. With that said, I've been very happy with the CFLs that I use from Home Depot. But here's the great news if you don't want to use CFLs: LEDs are coming down in price and are much better than incandescents!

Inserting the Philips LED in the cost calculator and taking into account my assumptions, using an incandescent bulb would cost over $90 (for the cost of the bulbs and electricity over 10 years at 4 hours of on-time a day). The LED would cost just $44! You would need 10 incandescent bulbs over those ten years, but you would only need 1 LED! The payback of an LED in this situation is a little over 4 years. If you leave the light in comparison on for longer than 4 hours a day your payback is going to be that much better.

Let's face it: You are running out of excuses as to why you are still using incandescent bulb technology developed around the turn of last century!

Get off your butt and go buy some new energy saving lights!

Tags:

EnduraLED

LED comparison

lighting comparison

philips dimmable led

Comments

Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/01/2011 - 04:54

Tony, "TRIAC dimming systems" is a kind of theory that deals with the dimming performance of the LED lights."Leading Edge" is a kind of technology. I don't know the exact meaning, but later i will ask our engineer.Below here is our company's adress: www.wjgood.com. All of our products are dimmable and use the same solution of dealing with the thermal management as Philip's. Some of our products are even better than Philip's .You can have a look of our items.

Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/16/2010 - 21:25

TRIACs are the electronic component used in most newer dimmers. I just got a 40Watt equivalent LED lamp that looks identical to the one in your image from Home Depot on-line for $19.97: EcoSmart LED A19 40 Watt Equivalent Light Bulb Model # ECS 19 WW 120 Internet # 202188260 It draws 9 Watts. It works great in the basement stairway location where we need to leave it on a lot.

ckmapawatt Wed, 06/16/2010 - 22:55

Guy, Thanks for the heads up! I use the CFLs from Home Depot. They were n:vision brand but n:vision has now changed to the EcoSmart brand name. I wasn't aware that the EcoSmart brand (which I think is only for Home Depot) also offered LEDs! I might have to go get one this weekend and try it out. Great comment!

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/15/2010 - 11:14

Hi -- this lamp bulb is clearly a step in the right direction in price, function, form factor and all. But it produces 325 lumens, which is the amount of light produced by something like a 30W or 40W incandescent bulb. A 75W incandescent A19 bulb typically produces 1200 lumens. It's true that lumens isn't the <em>only</em> factor affecting the ability of a light to accomplish it's function -- light spread, flux and several other factors allow a lamp to use its lumens to light what's needed and not what's not needed. But in this case, an A19 bulb is often used in a standing or table lamp, or a hallway fixture. I can argue that I would like people to adopt vastly more efficient light bulbs as much as anyone. I don't want to be a wet blanket. But after watching the downright terrible job makers of CFLs did as their product matured, I fear there's a chance the LED makers are going to fall into the same trap. With CFL, issues like poor construction, bad color temperature, promotion of lower-lumen (in their case 60-W equivalent), not to mention higher price ... and then the (highly overblown) mercury issue caused people to try, then be greatly disappointed in CFLs. CFLs are widely despised, and people refuse to use them, even though, over five years, they began to resolve most of the issues and now they are truly viable replacements for many cases. I think it's important to make sure that people understand LED is definitely making progress, and your calculations are good, but only mention lumens in passing. We're making progress, but we're not there ... quite yet. Tom

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/15/2010 - 13:51

Excellent points Tom. I need to figure out how you can express Lumens in a way that a person who doesnt have a light in front of them can understand. For instance, I have a lamp by my bed that has a CFL that actually puts out too much light, so I dont care that an LED has less Lumens because I only use it for reading/mood lighting. You are exactly right that the CFL makers screwed up so much that many people wont go back to them. I love my CFLs, but I've seen many bad ones too!

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/15/2010 - 12:23

Tom, You are correct in this is an equivalent to a 40watt bulb, however the big buzz is that several large name brands releasing a true 60watt equivalent bulbs this fall. Philips "EnduraLED" claims 806 lumens, using only 12 watts. That's impressive.

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/15/2010 - 13:44

What does 'Designed for “Leading Edge” TRIAC dimming systems.' on the Philips web page mean? Do I have to swap out my existing dimmer switch for something new? How much does that cost? Need to add that to the upfront cost in your spread sheet. I also agree with Tom's comments above about about light output. The Philips page you linked to only has this to say about light output "Mimic light profile of a standard incandescent A19 lamp" which is pretty close to meaningless.

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/15/2010 - 13:47

Tony, I have no clue what TRIAC means. In regards to cost, I have that in the article in two places. In the body and in the spreadsheet. I have it at $34/bulb.

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