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Old 01-15-2016, 01:29 PM   #940
glatt
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Arlington, VA
Posts: 27,717
Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt View Post
"Filament" LED light bulb are the future, but here today. The price just needs to come down a little bit. These things are freaking awesome!

I bought one of these LED filament bulbs to try it out. Not cheap. $15.50, but free shipping.

It came in a plain unmarked box in a padded envelope. The bulb was in a protective plastic clam shell. No brand name that I can see.

Attachment 50537

Comparing the LED filament bulb side by side with an incandescent bulb.
Attachment 50538


And here it is in the fixture, with the dimmer at 100%. On the left is a 40 watt incandescent. In the middle is a 4 watt Filament LED, and on the right is a 60 watt incandescent. To my eye, in person, it looks as bright as the 60 watt bulb.
Attachment 50539


Here's a very underexposed close up of the LED light. You can sort of see in individual LEDs under the filament's coating.
Attachment 50540


And I noticed with the lamp shades on that the LED's 4 filaments effectively eliminate the shadows caused by the lampshade wire clamps that grab the bulb. Those shadows are visible on the incandescent lamp shade.



And finally, I took a video of the dimming.



The LED bulb is listed as 2600K, but it seems just a little bit whiter than the incandescent bulbs at 100% power. And as you dim the lights, the incandescents go yellow, but the LED keeps its color.

I like this bulb. It's expensive, but I ordered 4 more. It will take the Dining Room light from 220 total watts (with a mixture of 40 and 60 watt bulbs) and reduce it to 20 total watts. I don't know how long it will take for these to pay for themselves. I suppose I should have calculated that before ordering 4 more, but that would have involved tracking down a power bill and doing the calculations.
It's not even a year later, and 2.5 of the 5 LED bulbs I bought have failed. The 0.5 failure is that 2 of the 4 filaments of one bulb have stopped lighting up. I think there is a poor electrical connection somewhere in the bulb and it gets strained somehow over time and breaks. The filaments flicker a bit and then stop working altogether.

I can't recommend these bulbs any longer. At $12 per bulb, the price is simply too high to be replacing them after 10 months. The claim was 15,000 hours of operation and the real world results are 500 hours or so. I'd be ok with them if they were $1.
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