I'm thinking of gradually replacing my halogen and CFL bulbs with LED as and when they die (halogen) or get too dim (CFL).
Looking around the sheds, as you do, they stock brands like Diall (B&Q) and LAP (screwfix) at fairly reasonable prices. But when I look at LED lamp reviews, I see Osram, Phillips and Cree which are either more expensive or just not available.
So are these LAP & Diall brands OK, or are they inferior quality in some way?
They aren't as well known (TCP is another - Homebase and others stock, and Kosnic has recently cropped up in various places).
Osram, Philips, Verbatim tend to be more at the bleeding end, and if you are after the highest efficiency products, you'll probably find they have it (Verbatim had the highest efficiency and highest output GU10 at LuxLive last year).
The others often have significantly cheaper products, but probably fine for most purposes.
There are wide varieties of parameters, such as light output, colour temperature, beam angles, efficiency, lamp formats, etc, and no one supplier comes close to doing all the combinations which are available, so when you've decided what you want, that may limit you to just a couple of choices.
Might be worth looking in Tesco. They have an offer on ATM £6.50 for
810 lm warm white (2700 K) 10 W input "20,000 hr" life LED Osram GLS style bulbs.
Those have good efficiency of around 80 w/lm, and are reasonably priced.
It's good to see 800lm being classed as "60w equavalent". UK 60w incandescents were more like 700lm, so it looks like LED bulb outputs are not being over-hyped like the CFLs were.
Diall is B&Q own-brand.
Offer price, normally a tenner. The in-laws were complaining about having to replace bulbs, they are still on incandescants... about 8 x
60 watters (I think they might 100's) in the lounge that are probably on for 18 hours/day. £6.50 is still too much for us as we are already almost totally CFL, the payback time approaches expected lifetime. But for the in-laws they would notice the drop in the electricity bill, going from 480 to 80 W. For 18 hours that's 7.2 units/day, call it 75p/day or at least £65/quarter. 8 x £6.50 is only £52, payback inside the first quart er, F.me!!!I think the industry has be stomped on, you hardly ever saw the lm or colour temperature on the packaging a couple of years ago. You do now and in a standardised format.
I'm going to have to do a bit of work on the in-laws I think. I can feel the resistance already and I haven't started... The light level and CT will be critical in getting acceptance, if they aren't right the dangers of 80/90 year olds standing on chairs or steps about twice a month to change a bulb would not enter into it.
I've most recently purchased "Luminus" brand from Costco:
Just under £15 for 2. Would buy again. Also very happy with their smaller Golf Ball LEDs. Nice and compact.
I've seen a few LED bulbs with that design: shaped like a normal GLS bulb, but with the lower half opaque plastic, presumably containing the electronics.
I guess they're OK for use in a normal pendant or batten fitting on the ceiling, but I think that the unequal light distribution might be a problem for some uses.
Still, 1600 lumens is nice and bright. and the efficiency is over 100 lm/w which is the highest I've seen.
I had to confiscate my (at the time) 92 y/o M-I-L's stepladder to stop her changing bulbs and the like. In an Edwardian house with 12ft high ceilings. Even I didn't like doing them.
Curiously the above link
These are the "Luminus" lamps I was referring to earlier:
Frustratingly in Costco this morning. Would have purchased a couple of these Feit lamps had I been aware.
D
Well the similar one I have manages quite an even light distribution. TBH I was rather surprised.
1600 lm, too much for me I think. If the label on the lidaldi LED I have is to believed the 700 lm for a 60 W incandescent is way off the mark. The label on the LED one says says 470 lm but it's very close, if not marginally brighter, than that rough service 60 W incandescent. I might have a play later.CFL Philips 9 W 400 lm 6-9 lux LED Muller 7 W 470 lm 18-20 lux TUN RoughS. 60 W 17-18 lux TUN Ring 60 W 23-24 lux TUN Cromptn 60 W 21-23 lux TUN Ring 60 W 30-32 lux
All bulbs in same pendant holder, without shade, white painted ceiling. "lux" reading taken by a tablet on the floor about 8' directly below the fitting. All TUNgsten are perl.
The last TUN was noticeaby brighter than all the others and the CFL noticeably dimmer, though I don't think the lux reading for it is reliable. The reading would bounce around from 0 to 9, I suspect the flicker beating with with the tablets light sensor sampling rate or something. Yes, it was hot, been on for about an hour before testing, off for just a minute or two to place in the test fitting.
Rough service bulbs are less efficient than normal incandescents.
470lm is much lower than a standard 60wbulb would give; id' expect closer to 700 lm.US bulbs, which run at a lower line voltage, are more efficient than their UK equivalents. So a US 60w is probably around 800lm or thereabouts. Given the figures, I think it's the US wattage equivanlents that the current LED bulbs are using, as opposed to the UK "soft-tone" b ulbs that the CFLs used for their equavalance rating.
At least it's a bit more than a hemisphere, so better than most. If possible, I get the COB candle type as the distribution is better:
Not too bad in a standard lamp as the light is reflected from the ceiling.
100 lm/W is now my benchmark. The lamps in the link I've put above are good. Until a couple of days ago there was postage of £2.99 which rather killed the deal. These, even better output at 600lm for 5W, still are - they're bigger, so cost more to send. I'd love to get them in candle-format.BTW, in Ikea a few days ago there was a 10W LED labelled "new" with a warning about it being hot - it was! A quick touch was enough. ICR the exact output, but it was around 600lm which, for a new lamp, is disgusting. Ah, this sort of thing:
IKEA have a nice 16.5W LED globe at the moment - had a couple installed for a few months now. The IKEA LEDs are only available in ES though, which severely limits their usefulness to me.
I saw those in Costco a few months back, except they only had ES. BC ones would be very useful.
I have had very good experience with Feit CFL's - they were the only ones I found where the tungsten equivalent was correct - their 23W CFLs really were 100W equivalents. (Don't think Costco do them anymore).
ES and GLS envelopes are becoming a nuisance. Even E14 is bigger OD than B22 and GLS-style is no good for a lot of shades on multi-arm fittings.
With e.g. 3W candle-lamps giving >300lm now, the multi-arm fitting is a good compromise between a single lamp with its attendant problems re. shadows and full, distributed sources. Most of such fittings are E14 or G9; of the two, I prefer E14 as it's firmer in the socket for bigger lamps.
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