But if you don't want to buy their lightbulbs, I would advise to use those of the other two of the "Big Three" (those are Sylvania and Philips). And for 40-100 watt A19 ones, store brand ones having same hour life expectancy figures and same lumen light output figures as "Big 3" ones actually are "The Real Thing". Non-Big3-ones in my experience tend to produce less light, have a higher rate of falling short of claimed light output, and have a higher rate of falling short of claimed life expectancy.
But among the "Big 3", I have been disappointed by GE more than others.
Example 1: 2006 was the first year that I saw an A19 with a coiled-coil filament (as opposed to singly coiled) about 2-2.5 cm (.8-1 inch long), typical of the A19's with higher light output than other 19's, made in China. Before now, such lightbulbs sold in USA that I saw were made in North America - mainly USA and Canada, as best as I can tell. The made-in-China A19 with a coiled-coil filament was a GE.
Example 2: Spiral compact fluorescents, nominal wattage 25 watts, purchased in 2001: (First, I have yet to hear of an easily available spiral compact fluorescent no matter how bad or how good made anywhere except China.) I got these, both of GE and Lights of America brand, one of them LOA and two of them GE. All failed in only a few hundred operating hours. The GE one was the only compact fluorescent that I ever got more than one of and where I experienced a 100% early failure rate. All other early failures that I ever had were non-Big3, mainly "dollar store brands" and LOA.
Example 3: Well, that was back in 1992. Maybe it's not really fair to hold that one against them much now. It was a compact fluorescent known as the FLB15. It fell short of claimed light output more than I ever saw in any other "Big 3" compact fluorescent, both in my experience and in an article in a well-known magazine. It fell short worse than usual of "Non big-3" ones other than the even-worse dollar store ones. (However, I still find GE's average in CFLs record of meeting claimed light output better than that of average of non-Big3 even of non-dollar-store brands.)
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)