That Lifespan is Rated at 25
If you are looking to replace a 100W light bulb, you will discover several LED options at costs that are not almost as unreasonable as they were just a 12 months or two ago. The current crop, together with the Philips 100W Equivalent LED, hovers right across the $20 value level. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down a couple of bucks to $22, which continues to be slightly costlier than what you'll see from rivals like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an additional 80 lumens' value of brightness over these two, together with superior dimming capabilities. Nevertheless, our assessments did not reveal any noticeable difference in both brightness or dimmability. That, together with the truth that Philips provides half the guarantee that you're going to get with GE or EcoLight Cree, makes this bulb tough to advocate. Philips' 100W Equal LED shares the identical, flat-topped build of its smaller siblings within the 60W and 40W classes, however units 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, one thing that will get especially important when LEDs start placing out this a lot mild. Even with the emphasis on thermal administration, the bulb will get hot to the contact after simply a few minutes of use, energy-efficient bulbs which is not unusual for a 100W alternative LED. As such, Philips recommends not utilizing it in an enclosed fixture -- if you do, you may 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 a median of 3 hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the primary five of those years, while GE and Cree each supply ten-year warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for Vitality Star certification -- the Philips 100W Equal earned certification over the summer, as did the GE LED I tested. Cree's bulb isn't certified but, however it meets the standards -- Cree's team tells me they expect it to be certified in the near future.
Philips claims a light 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, but not as impressive as GE and Utilitech, which each handle to place out 100 lumens per watt. These 1680 lumens are a slight step up from what you'll get with GE, Cree, or any of the other energy-efficient bulbs we tested. With brightness being certainly one of the first belongings you want from your private home lighting, that quantity would appear to offer Philips an edge, EcoLight lighting albeit a minor EcoLight LED one. However, the engineers at Power Star take a look at bulbs out for themselves, posting the complete specs for each LED they certify online. On Philips' itemizing, Energy Star charges the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. Whereas an extra 80 lumens is just barely enough to make a noticeable difference, an extra 20 lumens is essentially insignificant. We wished to know which quantity had it proper.
From a simple eye take a look at, the light put out from the Philips 100W Equivalent LED does not differ much from its nearest competitors, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Facet by side, the three have practically an identical glows, all of them boasting similarly warm tones. That isn't surprising, given that all three are rated with the identical 2,700 Okay color EcoLight home lighting temperature. When tested, each erred low, on the yellowy aspect. Remember, though, that Philips claims to put out 1,680 lumens to Cree and GE's 1,600. That is a fairly minuscule difference, EcoLight outdoor but it's one which should be noticeable if you are trying intently for it. The issue is that I could not notice it. Testing bulb brightness will get a bit difficult. In addition to measuring color temperature and colour rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given light -- but these readings are simply skewed by things like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you may depend on, you want something called an integrating sphere.