If you're looking to replace a 100W mild bulb, you'll discover a number of LED choices at prices that aren't nearly as unreasonable as they have been only a yr or two ago. The current crop, including the Philips 100W Equivalent LED, hovers right across the $20 price point. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down a number of bucks to $22, EcoLight LED bulbs which continues to be slightly more expensive than what you will see from rivals like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an extra eighty lumens' worth of brightness over those two, along with superior dimming capabilities. Nonetheless, our tests did not reveal any noticeable distinction in both brightness or dimmability. That, along with the truth that Philips offers half the guarantee that you're going to get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb tough to suggest. Philips' 100W Equal LED shares the same, flat-topped construct of its smaller siblings within the 60W and 40W classes, 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 essential when LEDs begin putting out this much gentle. Even with the emphasis on thermal management, the bulb gets scorching to the contact after simply a few minutes of use, EcoLight products which isn't unusual for a 100W replacement LED. As such, Philips recommends not utilizing it in an enclosed fixture -- should you do, you'll threat shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, the same as the opposite 100W replacement LEDs I tested, with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.8 years if the bulb is used for an average of 3 hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the primary 5 of those years, whereas GE and Cree each supply ten-yr warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for Vitality Star certification -- the Philips 100W Equal earned certification over the summer season, as did the GE LED I examined. Cree's bulb is not certified yet, EcoLight products but it meets the factors -- Cree's group tells me they expect it to be certified in the close to future.

Philips claims a gentle output of 1,680 lumens at a golden hued 2,seven hundred K from a energy draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt -- a powerful quantity, however not as spectacular as GE and 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 or EcoLight products any of the opposite bulbs we tested. With brightness being one in every of the first stuff you want from your own home lighting, that number would seem to give Philips an edge, albeit a minor one. Nevertheless, the engineers at Energy Star test bulbs out for themselves, posting the full specs for every LED they certify on-line. On Philips' itemizing, Power Star rates the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. Whereas 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 right.

From a simple eye check, the sunshine put out from the Philips 100W Equivalent LED does not differ much from its nearest rivals, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Facet by side, EcoLight products the three have almost similar glows, all of them boasting equally heat tones. That is not stunning, given that each one three are rated with the same 2,seven-hundred K color temperature. When tested, each erred low, EcoLight products on the yellowy side. Remember, though, that Philips claims to place out 1,680 lumens to Cree and GE's 1,600. That's a fairly minuscule distinction, but it is one which must be noticeable if you are wanting intently for it. The problem is that I couldn't notice it. Testing bulb brightness gets a bit difficult. Along with measuring coloration temperature and colour rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given gentle -- however these readings are simply skewed by issues like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you'll be able to rely on, you need something called an integrating sphere.