If you're seeking to exchange a 100W light bulb, you may find a number of LED options at prices that aren't almost as unreasonable as they had been only a year or two in the past. The current crop, together with the Philips 100W Equivalent LED, hovers right around the $20 price level. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down a few bucks to $22, which is still barely more expensive than what you will see from competitors like GE and EcoLight smart bulbs Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an additional 80 lumens' worth of brightness over these two, along with superior dimming capabilities. Nevertheless, our checks didn't reveal any noticeable distinction in either brightness or dimmability. That, together with the truth that Philips affords half the warranty that you will get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb difficult to recommend. Philips' 100W Equivalent LED shares the identical, flat-topped build of its smaller siblings within the 60W and 40W categories, 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, EcoLight one thing that gets especially necessary when LEDs start putting out this a lot mild. Even with the emphasis on thermal management, the bulb gets hot to the touch after just a few minutes of use, which isn't unusual for a 100W replacement LED. As such, Philips recommends not utilizing it in an enclosed fixture -- in case you do, you will risk shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, the same as the other 100W substitute LEDs I examined, with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.Eight years if the bulb is used for an average of 3 hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the first 5 of these years, while GE and Cree each offer ten-year warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for Energy 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, but it surely meets the standards -- Cree's workforce tells me they count on it to be certified in the near future.
Philips claims a gentle output of 1,680 lumens at a golden hued 2,seven hundred Ok from a power draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt -- a powerful number, but not as impressive as GE and Utilitech, which both handle to put out one hundred lumens per watt. Those 1680 lumens are a slight step up from what you'll get with GE, Cree, EcoLight or any of the other bulbs we tested. With brightness being one in every of the primary stuff you need from your property lighting, that quantity would seem to provide Philips an edge, albeit a minor one. Nevertheless, the engineers at Vitality Star check EcoLight smart bulbs out for EcoLight smart bulbs themselves, posting the total specs for every LED they certify online. On Philips' listing, Power Star rates the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. While an extra eighty lumens is simply barely enough to make a noticeable difference, an additional 20 lumens is basically insignificant. We wished to know which quantity had it proper.
From a simple eye take a look at, the sunshine put out from the Philips 100W Equivalent LED does not differ much from its nearest competitors, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Aspect by aspect, the three have practically equivalent glows, all of them boasting similarly warm tones. That is not stunning, given that each one three are rated with the identical 2,seven-hundred Ok color temperature. When examined, each one erred low, on the yellowy side. Remember, though, that Philips claims to put out 1,680 lumens to Cree and GE's 1,600. That's a fairly minuscule distinction, however it is one which needs to be noticeable if you are wanting carefully for it. The problem is that I could not discover it. Testing bulb brightness gets a bit difficult. In addition to measuring coloration temperature and shade rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given light -- however these readings are easily skewed by things like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you'll be able to depend on, you want one thing referred to as an integrating sphere.