{"id":5007,"date":"2012-11-17T14:47:33","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T22:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/?p=5007"},"modified":"2012-12-13T13:02:10","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T21:02:10","slug":"2012-11-17-philips-led-light-bulb-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/?p=5007","title":{"rendered":"2012-11-17 Philips LED Light Bulb Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

CFL light bulbs have their disadvantages (see note below). \u00a0 Now that the LED light bulbs are becoming more available and cheaper, there is an alternative to the CFL problem.\u00a0 Yes, the LED lights are more expensive, but they save he buyer a lot in the long run.\u00a0 I watched this Youtube video<\/a> by a guy who bought one of the Philips Ambient LED light bulbs. \u00a0 I agree with him 100 percent.\u00a0 I have bought several Philips LED light bulbs and they all work like they are supposed to work, with excellent results.<\/p>\n

There has been a large percentage of the white LEDs that do not live up to the claims that they “last for 100 thousand hours”.\u00a0 I have done lifetime tests<\/strong><\/a> on the white LEDs I have purchased and I’ve found most of them die an early death.\u00a0 The Federal Trade Commission has taken a maker of LED light bulbs to court<\/strong><\/a> for falsely advertising the performance and lifetimes of their LED lights. \u00a0 I have been very concerned about the lifetime of these new LED light bulbs.\u00a0 I have had a Philips 2.5 watt candelabra light running 24\/7 for the almost two years and it has lost some of its brightness but is still very bright.\u00a0 This has given me confidence in Philips LED light bulbs so that I will recommend them to anyone who wants to save a lot on their electric bill.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>When the above video finished, I was given a choice to watch this Youtube video<\/strong><\/a> of the new Philips “L Prize” LED light bulb.\u00a0 This is the one that I bought for $24.99 at Home Depot a few weeks ago.\u00a0 I do not agree – now that their price has come down – with his claim that the earlier bulbs are a more cost effective purchase.\u00a0 In either case, older or newer, they will save much more<\/span> than their cost over their lifetime, and therefore are much more than worth the cost.\u00a0 Recently I saw they were selling for $33 on Amazon.\u00a0 If you’re lucky you might be able to find them at the Big Box stores for cheaper.<\/p>\n

I really liked his demo of the LEDs inside.\u00a0 I was surprised that there are red LEDs inside.\u00a0 He also used a term that I haven’t heard before: remote phosphor technology.\u00a0 Most white LEDs have the phosphor inside, but this one uses phosphor that it outside<\/span> of the LED itself.\u00a0 One other point he forgot to mention.\u00a0 The L Prize required that the LED light be made in America.\u00a0 The other Philips lights that I have are made in China, so if you’re an American, do your country a favor and choose them over the foreign made ones.<\/p>\n

Update Nov 18<\/strong> – I went to the big box store again to buy some more Philips L Prize lights.\u00a0 They still had a bunch, but they were still hidden way back in the back of the electrical dept.\u00a0 How do they think they are going to sell them if they are difficult to find?\u00a0 Not only were they still on sale, but they were now marked down to $20, so I bought a bunch more.\u00a0 I gave one to my friend, and hopefully it will work well with his new lighting system.\u00a0 I may go back and buy some more.\u00a0 I’ve included some pictures of the LEDs inside.\u00a0 I got the yellow plastic cover off by prying on the flat end closest to the scew base (it’s thin plastic so one has to be gentle).\u00a0 As the video showed, each of the three ‘lobes’ has three blue LEDs and three red LEDs.\u00a0 I can see the wires in the red LEDs, but I can’t see any wires inside the blue.\u00a0 Weird, huh?.\u00a0 I put the yellow cover over a 5mm blue LED and it changed the blue light into white light, like magic.\u00a0 Really quite a simple solution: put the phosphor outside of the LED.<\/p>\n

I put the LED light, minus the yellow cover, into a light socket and turned it on.\u00a0 The light is a very bright purple or violet light, due to the combination of the blue and red LEDs emitting simultaneously.\u00a0 If you want a crazily bright violet light, get one of these and remove one (or more if you dare) of the yellow covers, and turn it on.\u00a0 It’s hard to believe that those very bright red and blue LEDs are magically transformed into white light by some thin pieces of plastic.<\/p>\n

I thought that I will probably be told I was nuts for spending a couple hundred dollars on light bulbs.\u00a0 But the savings will start to accrue immediately.\u00a0 The first few months I might save five bucks, so after two years I’ll have saved a hundred dollars.\u00a0 Maybe four years later I’ll have paid for them, and any further savings will be money in my pocket.\u00a0 But the environmental savings will also be immediate.\u00a0 No more incandescents or CFLs to fail.<\/p>\n

One person at work told me that their cathedral ceiling was so high they couldn’t change the light bulbs when they burned out.\u00a0 Well , now they can get a tall ladder or someone to replace the lights up there with these LED lights one time<\/strong>, and they won’t have to change them for decades.\u00a0 Really!\u00a0 A few years ago I read some of Don Klipstein’s LED web pages<\/a>, where he was looking forward to when LEDs were as efficient as CFLs and were not too expensive.\u00a0 Now it looks like that time has finally arrived.<\/p>\n

Update Nov 19 – I bought a bunch more, and some socket extenders.\u00a0 I figure that if I put the LED lights into the recessed fixtures, they may get too hot.\u00a0 So if I extend the light out so that it has more air flow, it will stay cooler.\u00a0 And also more light will spread out across the room.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/h3>\n

Note<\/strong> – I have told my co-workers that they should get rid of the old incandescent light bulbs and replace them with CFLs, but they have complained that the CFLs don’t last very long before they burn out.\u00a0 I think\u00a0 the biggest factor in causing them to burn out is they are used with the globe or ‘spiral’ pointing down, so the heat rises and the circuit in the base overheats, shortening its life. Another reason is that they get the very cheap ones from bargain stores, and these are lower quality than the brand name ones.\u00a0 But where I live, Southern Calif. Edison gives a discount rebate to the seller, so the buyer pays a lot less for these. \u00a0 One has to remember that a typical incandescent light lasts only a little over a thousand hours, so even if the CFL burns out, it still saves the buyer a lot of money on his electric bill.<\/p>\n

Another important point about LED lights.\u00a0 The technology is new and the prices have not yet come down to near that of CFLs.\u00a0 People are very hesitant to spend what they think is too\u00a0 much money on what they see is “just another light bulb.”\u00a0 But they do not see the potential savings in their future electric bills the LED lights will give.\u00a0 This saving more than compensates for the higher cost – the consumer should not be hesitant to buy the LED lights because the sooner they buy them, the sooner they will start saving.<\/p>\n

The consumers don’t want to spend a lot on a light bulb (or should I say, don’t want to spend a lot more than they have been spending on a light bulb).\u00a0 The LED light makers know this so they make sacrifices in quality and construction to make the lights cheaper, and the consumer gets an inferior product at the cost he desires. \u00a0 But then there may be sacrifices in the lifetime and quality of the light from the LED light.\u00a0 I saw this same thing happening when the white LEDs first came out: they had a bluish ring in the light pattern – something we don’t see today.\u00a0 I had numerous experiences with LEDs that were low quality and\/or short lifetimes.\u00a0 I have not seen this low quality with Philips products that use LEDs.\u00a0 As a consumer these LED lights meet or exceed my expectations for quality and lifetime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CFL light bulbs have their disadvantages (see note below). \u00a0 Now that the LED light bulbs are becoming more available and cheaper, there is an alternative to the CFL problem.\u00a0 Yes, the LED lights are more expensive, but they save he buyer a lot in the long run.\u00a0 I watched this Youtube video by a <\/p>\n

(Read More…)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-led","category-lighting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5007"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5316,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007\/revisions\/5316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}