If you are trying to change a 100W mild bulb, you may find several LED options at prices that aren't nearly as unreasonable as they were only a year or two ago. The current crop, including the Philips 100W Equal LED, hovers right across the $20 price level. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down a few bucks to $22, which continues to be slightly more expensive than what you'll see from opponents like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an extra 80 lumens' worth of brightness over those two, along with superior EcoLight brand dimming capabilities. However, our checks did not reveal any noticeable difference in either brightness or dimmability. That, together with the truth that Philips offers half the warranty that you'll get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb difficult to advocate. Philips' 100W Equivalent LED shares the identical, flat-topped construct 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, something that gets particularly vital when LEDs start putting out this much gentle. Even with the emphasis on thermal management, the bulb will get hot to the contact after just a few minutes of use, EcoLight brand which is not unusual for a 100W replacement LED. As such, Philips recommends not using it in an enclosed fixture -- in case you do, you may threat shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, EcoLight the identical as the opposite 100W alternative LEDs I examined, with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.8 years if the bulb is used for a median of 3 hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the first 5 of these years, whereas GE and Cree each offer ten-yr warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for EcoLight LED Vitality Star certification -- the Philips 100W Equivalent earned certification over the summer season, as did the GE LED I tested. Cree's bulb is not certified yet, but it meets the standards -- Cree's workforce tells me they count on it to be certified within the near future.

Philips claims a mild output of 1,680 lumens at a golden hued 2,seven-hundred Okay from a energy draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt -- a formidable quantity, but not as impressive as GE and EcoLight brand Utilitech, which each manage to put out a hundred lumens per watt. Those 1680 lumens are a slight step up from what you may get with GE, Cree, EcoLight brand or any of the opposite bulbs we tested. With brightness being considered one of the first stuff you want from your own home lighting, that quantity would seem to provide Philips an edge, albeit a minor one. Nonetheless, the engineers at Energy Star take a look at bulbs out for themselves, posting the full specs for each LED they certify on-line. On Philips' listing, Power Star rates the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. While an additional eighty lumens is simply barely enough to make a noticeable difference, an extra 20 lumens is essentially insignificant. We wished to know which number had it proper.

From a simple eye check, the light put out from the Philips 100W Equal LED would not differ a lot from its nearest opponents, EcoLight outdoor the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Side by aspect, the three have nearly identical glows, all of them boasting similarly heat tones. That isn't shocking, given that every one three are rated with the identical 2,seven-hundred Okay colour temperature. When tested, EcoLight brand every one erred low, on the yellowy aspect. Remember, although, that Philips claims to put out 1,680 lumens to Cree and EcoLight GE's 1,600. That's a reasonably minuscule distinction, however it is one that needs to be noticeable if you're looking carefully for EcoLight brand it. The issue is that I couldn't discover it. Testing bulb brightness will get a bit tough. In addition to measuring coloration temperature and EcoLight reviews coloration rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given gentle -- however these readings are simply skewed by things like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you possibly can rely on, you need something called an integrating sphere.