Well, IANA… whatever you’d call an expert in led bulbs… but the warranty sounds pretty lacking on these. I do however have the ability to use a calcumalater and this tells me that to be able to warranty out one of these bulbs, I’d have to keep it lit for the entire 3 years to know if it will fail before they stop caring. saying they last for 25000 hours must mean from the time you unbox it (aka just short of 3 yrs).
Think I’ll pass and keep overpaying for Phillips Hue bulbs… but then I love slowly changing colors in a room via my phone just to see who notices!!
I love LEDs, but holy crap they are expensive.
If this is where we’re going with the price of light bulbs, I want my incandescent back! When you add shipping and tax, many of us will be paying 11 bucks a bulb and that’s a lot of money. Sorry, Woot, this is far more than I want to spend for a light bulb.
I’m sure these are fine bulbs, but my favorite plain vanilla 60-watt equivalent LEDs are the Cree 2700k bulbs sold at Home Depot. They were on sale in the store for $7 ea a few months back, so I bought a half dozen to test out. I absolutely cannot tell the difference (other than heat) between them an incandescent 60 watt bulbs.
Pretty thorough technical review on YouTube: Enviro LED Teardown.
From reading the reviews on Amazon of this model, it says that the light coming directly off the top is dimmer compared to the sides–but that it is a good bulb when you are looking for consistent light from the sides only.
Also worth noting this is actually a decent price for LED bulbs by today’s standards.
This bulb uses 48W less electricity than the cheap incandescent it replaces. If it’s used 4 hours/day, it will save 70 KWh of electricity per year. If you pay 10 cents/KWh, it’ll pay for itself in a year and a half; after that, it’s all profit. If you pay 30 cents/KWh, it pays for itself in 6 months. Good economics for any light that’s heavily used; it doesn’t make sense for a light that’s only used occasionally or only for a few minutes per day.
These have gone down considerably in price in the last 2 years. It is like the HDTV prices over the last 5 years. You can find the dimmables for just under $7 at Home Depot for a 60 watt. I wanted to install LED’s in my enclosed fixtures, unfortunately they weren’t designed for this. Recently however, a new line of liquid cooled LED bulbs has come out, and it is far cheaper for me to replace the bulb than the fixture. The price of these have dropped by over 30 percent in the last 6 months. So hold on, the prices are dropping rapidly!
I don’t see why $11 per bulb is that bad. Think about how long LEDs last. Then think about how much cheaper they are to run power bill-wise. Yes there is an initial investment (though you can gradually swap them out). But that pays off rather quickly. I have swapped out all but a handful of bulbs and the difference in the price of my power bill is easily noticeable.
I just checked Amazon, and the six-pack there for those Cree bulbs is $45 with free Prime shipping.
I agree. Good reviews at Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Enviro-Bulb-Omni-Directional-Performance-Dimmable/dp/B00DPUO6XO/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400822135&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Enviro-Bulb+30724+A19 ) and about half the price here today on Woot!
That said, the Cree six pack on Amazon that Zloth just mentioned is a great deal at $45.
That’s actually a horrible price for the 2700K flavour of Cree’s 60W equivalents, close to double the going rate.
They’re currently $4 apiece in-store here in Honolulu; anyone interested in picking these up should probably check their local Home Depot first:
Otherwise, I can;t speak highly enough of Cree’s bulbs. They produce a really nice quality of light, and the 40W and 60W versions are cheap enough that equivalent CFLs aren’t worth considering any more.
Their only downside I’ve found is they’re hopeless for bare-bulb applications like a vanity. The way the LEDs are arranged internally results in a horrible dark halo at the top of the bulb. It’s nothing you’d notice in an uplighter or anything with a shade, but if you have to actually see the top of the bulb, you wouldn’t be happy with how they looked.
Better deal…get Christmas Candles AFTER Christmas!! Makes a nice glow…smells pretty…NO costly electricity!
Wait…I smell Something Burning!!!
^^X^^
Does anyone know if these ‘buzz’ when dimmed? Pretty much negates dimmability if they do.
Ive yet to have any other these next gen bulbs last the expected life span. i want my cheap incandescent back also.
Thank you for the info. Placed my order through Amazon Prime. Great price and decent reviews for the Cree.
I made the transition from incandescent to CFL a few years ago. That investment was well worth the price paid. So now the question for me is, “Does it make sense to switch from CFL to LED?”
When I switched from incandescent to CFL I saved a boatload of money and they easily paid for themselves, possibly in the first 6 months of use. The switch from CFL to LED would be less of a difference, other than the possibility of the LEDs lasting longer. But the price difference might negate any money saved.
With all that being said, I do have a few LEDs installed in places that use the most lights. They are lower in wattage than their CFL counterparts, but sacrifice brightness in exchange. When LEDs come down further in price, they will be more of a bargain, but for now they are still too expensive for what they offer (unless you’re switching from incandescent).
Home Depot appears to have better pricing in some areas than others.
Example: the Cree bulbs are $10 in South Carolina but if you change the store to Raleigh, NC the same bulb is $5. I think they might be subsidized by Duke Power but not sure.
Are these safe for use in outdoor fixtures?
They are not rated for outdoor use. But I have them in place in my always on outdoor fixtures and they work fine. Truth is over time the acrylic will take on a yellow tint but it will take years and you’re not likely to notice the shift in CCT.