I have been watching this thread and the LED trend since the start. I have mostly recessed PAR30 lamps throughout the house. For many years I have used a roughly 900 lumen daylight (roughly 5000k) flood. Rooms (usually in banks of 6) would be set to come on at either 35% or 50% and we would ramp up if needed for tasks. I skipped the whole CFL generation for several reasons. After losing 3 bulbs in our most heavily used room I figured it may be time to at least look into LED's since after all the Halogens are not really cheap at $10 each either. We have different trims (mostly nickel) so as much as I liked the apparent Cree quality, etc, the huge white brim was a turnoff (our brims are very small). So, after looking at specs and reviews ad nauseum without any clear favorites I just decide to try at least one of every PAR30 LED bulb sold by HD or Lowes. The criteria were first and foremost WAF, then look/feeling and brightness/dimming. Almost all of the bulbs where you can see the LEDs were eliminated from WAF as I was told they were too weird and looked like spaceships, lol. So it came down to the more traditional reflector looking bulbs. We were used to the daylight bulbs but for some reason the LED ones looked very harsh so WAF pointed to the 2.7-3k ones. I was very concerned about brightness and dimming as we had the capability of around 900-1000 lumens per bulb and now we were maxing out at 650 or so. But since we typically only had Halos set to 50%, LEDs full bright were more than sufficient. So after the whole analysis and testing we had a winner. It was the
Philips 12W Vision LED from Home Depot. I was (and still am) a bit hesitant as it appears the Vision LED may be a Home Depot exclusive product. Philips makes a very similar 13W bulb under their Ambient LED label. Ambient is easily found on Philips website and other retailers whereas VisionLED is only found at HD. But, the VisionLED comes in at $26.97 vs $39.97 for the similar AmbientLED.
What we like about this bulb (and LED) was:
1. The look (WAF dictated this more traditional reflector look)
2. Color was good and brightness acceptable.
3. Start up time was middle of the pack, slower than one but faster than others.
4. Pattern. We found these bulbs were a very dispersed and soft pattern with no hot spots. Other LED's were a very distinct cone pattern very similar to the Halos. These were a very pleasant even light, perhaps not as bright at certain points, but still very usable.
5. Dimming. The cool thing is the bulb dimmed nicely all the way from 2%-100%. The real nice thing is the color stays exactly the same throughout the entire dim range unlike the Halos which were bright daylight at 100% but turned into an orange glow at low dim ranges.
6. Heat. Heat may wind up being just as large a saving as wattage. Halos you could put your hand a foot away and feel the heat coming off it. And if you touch it, well, that would be pretty stupid as you would get yourself a nice burn as they would be hot enough to fry eggs on. The LEDs even at full bright I could actually wrap my hand around with no sensation of any heat whatsoever (maybe some great heatsinks?) While touching bulbs is not a common issue to consider, it should certainly affect the temp of the room and A/C runtime.
So what turned out to be an experiment wound up with me buying 17 of these bulbs. It started as one bank of 6 then quickly turned into 5 more for my office as with all equipment, etc it usually on the warmer side and the Halos would just be brutal so I hardly used them. Now I can have full bright in office with no extra heat! Then wifey wanted 6 more for room adjacent to original 6. I didn't get too wrapped up in energy saving as calcs look like a 7-8 year payback. Came in around a $22 yr savings but they may depend a bit on how dim we can make them to make up for less lumen output as well as how well dim matches energy - like will 50% dim equal 6w vs 12w.
I thought they were a good choice, but when wifey came to me the other day and said 'I really love these bulbs' I knew I made the right choice!
I know lighting is a very subjective thing and everyone should do their own testing to see what works for them but so far I feel like I can highly recommend these bulbs at only $27 plus often available coupons. I did not have any DOAs or anything, now hopefully they last the 25k hours, only time will tell. The only thing I hated about about these bulbs were the packaging as you had to cut through the plastic inner wrap and that got tiring after a few bulbs.
I guess I need to look at the inrush and spike current issues although I have not noticed anything in the bulbs themselves or the switch getting warn - further testing needed...
