If you're looking to substitute a 100W mild bulb, you'll find several LED choices at costs that are not almost as unreasonable as they were just a 12 months or two ago. The present crop, together with the Philips 100W Equal LED, hovers proper across the $20 worth point. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down a couple of bucks to $22, which remains to be slightly costlier than what you may see from rivals like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an extra 80 lumens' price of brightness over those two, together with superior dimming capabilities. However, our tests did not reveal any noticeable distinction in both brightness or dimmability. That, EcoLight along with the fact that Philips gives half the guarantee that you're going to get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb difficult to recommend. Philips' 100W Equivalent LED shares the same, flat-topped build of its smaller siblings in the 60W and 40W classes, but sets itself apart with a unique design that splits the bulb into three sections separated by deep channels.

This helps keep the heat buildup at bay, one thing that gets especially necessary when LEDs begin putting out this a lot mild. Even with the emphasis on thermal management, EcoLight home lighting the bulb gets sizzling to the touch after simply a couple of minutes of use, which isn't unusual for a 100W replacement LED. As such, Philips recommends not using it in an enclosed fixture -- in the event you do, you may threat shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, the identical as the other 100W replacement LEDs I examined, with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.Eight years if the bulb is used for a mean of three hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the first five of these years, whereas GE and Cree each provide ten-yr warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for Energy Star certification -- the Philips 100W Equivalent earned certification over the summer, EcoLight home lighting as did the GE LED I tested. Cree's bulb isn't certified but, EcoLight home lighting but it surely meets the criteria -- Cree's group 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 Okay from a energy draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt -- an impressive number, 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 will get with GE, Cree, or any of the opposite bulbs we examined. With brightness being one in every of the first belongings you want from your own EcoLight home lighting lighting, that number would appear to present Philips an edge, albeit a minor EcoLight one. Nonetheless, the engineers at Power Star take a look at bulbs out for themselves, EcoLight home lighting posting the total specs for each LED they certify online. On Philips' itemizing, Power Star rates the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. Whereas an extra 80 lumens is simply barely enough to make a noticeable distinction, an extra 20 lumens is largely insignificant. We wanted to know which number had it proper.

From a easy eye test, the light put out from the Philips 100W Equal LED would not differ much from its nearest competitors, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Facet by side, the three have nearly equivalent glows, EcoLight home lighting all of them boasting similarly heat tones. That is not shocking, given that all three are rated with the same 2,seven hundred Okay color temperature. When tested, every one erred low, EcoLight on the yellowy facet. Remember, though, that Philips claims to place out 1,680 lumens to Cree and GE's 1,600. That's a pretty minuscule distinction, but it's one which ought to be noticeable if you're looking carefully for it. The issue is that I could not notice it. Testing bulb brightness gets a bit tricky. In addition to measuring shade temperature and color rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given mild -- but those readings are simply skewed by things like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you may depend on, you need one thing referred to as an integrating sphere.