

LED, CFL and Incandescent bulbs side by side - AndrewDucker
http://news.cnet.com/2300-11128_3-10008853-4.html?tag=untagged

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davidcann
Isn't the issue really more about the quality of the light, which can't be
captured in photos? CFLs give me headaches after a while, just like big
florescent office-style lights.

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bendotc
In my personal experience, the difference between a crappy CFL and a good CFL
is huge. Low-end CFLs are dim, flickery, have a large warm-up period and often
worse color. High-end CFLs, on the other hand, can have really nice quality
light, good color balance (though I used whiter "full-spectrum" incandescent
bulbs, so YMMV), and very little in the way of noticeable warm-up time.

You may still dislike CFLs and that's fine, but you may also have just been
exposed to crappy ones.

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DavidAdams
And it's important to mention that "high end" CFLs now cost about $1 each. You
can get bulbs at Home Depot for $4 for a pack of four that turn on
immediately, don't flicker, and are available in three color profiles
including a warm one that looks very much like an incandescent.

~~~
lucisferre
Where LED is valuable for me is in the dimmable category. I have "dimmable"
CFLs and they are terrible, they _barely_ dim and if you lower the dimmer too
far they either blink or go off entirely. CFLs are just not dimmable.

~~~
sixtofour
Where LED is valuable for me is the absence of mercury. I break an
incandescent bulb in my home at least twice a year.

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lucisferre
I could be wrong about this, but isn't it pointless to do side-by-side
comparisons using a device that requires specific white balancing. A camera is
not going to capture the same result your eyes will.

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ugh
You can capture the relative difference and if you keep the same white balance
setting (or, more likely, apply the same setting to the raw photograph in
post) it’s even possible to compare different photos.

What those photos likely can’t tell you is what you would see if you were in
the room. The brain does a lot of processing of its own.

~~~
lucisferre
I suppose it shows that the LED has similar color characteristics to
incandescent.

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ugh
Sure, the photo tells you that both would look very similar to your eye. It’s
certainly not an worthless exercise to compare with photos, I think everyone
knows what incandescent light bulbs look like.

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latch
Am I the only one who prefers the cool white/blue of CFLs?

~~~
Shenglong
I prefer white light over soft yellow light :)

I read something a while ago about different cultures, and their preferences
for different kinds of light. I believe North Americans tend to like the soft
yellow, while many Asian cultures are more comfortable with crisp white.
Although, I grew up here, so I'm not sure where my preference comes from.

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hartror
I prefer soft yellow in most of the house and crisp white in the bathrooms and
office. In bathrooms it allows you to see everything clearly (a good thing?)
and in the office I find it keeps me alert.

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briggsbio
My thoughts exactly. It depends on the room; yellow in living/dining, and
white in bathroom/office.

I have a white CFL desklamp in my home office, and by a chair in the corner I
have a yellow corner lamp (admittedly incandescent not LED).

I prefer to do casual reading/relaxing under yellow light ("mood lighting"),
and work/bathroom under white light.

This may seem like a binary issue, but really it comes down to setting and
personal preference for the light used therein.

"Find out what you want, and then learn to ask the right questions." - Tony
Shalhoub, psychiatrist in 'How Do You Know' (random but memorable quote from
the Paul Rudd romcom I relented to watch with my wife recently)

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monochromatic
This is a useless comparison. What matters is whether the spectrum is filled
out or not. It's easy to make an LED light with the same subjective color
temperature as an incandescent, but which is really only emitting three
wavelengths of light. This bulb will be missing most of the spectrum and it'll
make colored objects look wrong.

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nazgulnarsil
human skin looks better the more tinted toward orange/red you get. warm tones
also make rooms feel cozy.

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grannyg00se
Glad to see these are finally coming into mass retail. I think they may have
missed an opportunity to make the colour output somewhat customizable. They
could have included multiple plastic covers instead of only the yellow one.

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wlesieutre
That would probably add more expense than it's worth. The yellow part isn't
just a plastic color filter, the lights use what's called a "remote phosphor",
where it's internally using high powered blue LEDs, which is then absorbed and
reemitted in a wider spectrum at the yellow layer.

There are a number of reasons for doing this, but the biggest ones are that it
gives it a large and more diffuse emitting area, preventing the multiple
shadows from exposed LEDs, and (IIRC) that the phosphors tend to be more
stable when not integrated into the LED.

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illamint
$40, though, really?

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Shenglong
Worth it, stretched over like 7 years?

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bcl
The LED's should last alot longer than that. The problem is going to be the
switch-mode power supply. I'd hold off on these things until their price drops
a bit, and until we have an idea how long the PS will last. Has anyone done a
teardown on these yet?

The CFL's I've bought from Costco are lasting less than a year for me, so I'm
reluctant to start using them until they have the bugs worked out.

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pacemkr
Here you go:
[http://www.edn.com/blog/PowerSource/40512-Remote_Phosphors_P...](http://www.edn.com/blog/PowerSource/40512-Remote_Phosphors_Philips_LED_bulb_Tear_down_Part_II.php)

Doesn't look like a high quality circuit to me.

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bcl
Maybe it is the photo quality, but that main board looks almost hand-soldered
instead of reflowed. The blobs on the SMT parts aren't consistent, although
that may be because they have a mixture of through-hole parts so close.

~~~
pacemkr
My thoughts exactly. It looks like something that I would build by hand
(messy) as opposed to something that comes out of a factory. I guess it
doesn't necessarily mean that it will be unreliable, but I can't help but
think so.

All would be forgiven if it wasn't $40. I was going to get a bunch of these,
but at this price point it just doesn't make sense.

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sixtofour
"All would be forgiven if it wasn't $40."

Early days.

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ScottBurson
I see these have a yellow filter on the outside. That means they're throwing
away light to get the right color. I think that's nuts, considering how hard
it is to get that much light out of LEDs to begin with. I hope they make a
version without the filter.

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bradfa
My understanding is that it's not so much a filter as a retransmitter layer.
The LEDs give off a rather small spectrum of light that's quite harsh and the
yellow "filter" takes that energy in and fluoresces out of a wide variety of
wavelengths of light that are much more pleasant. There's most certainly a
loss of energy because of the conversion, but it's not filtering out
wavelengths like normal light filters do.

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nollidge
This is similar to what fluorescent lights do. If you've ever broken a
fluorescent bulb, you'll notice a powdery coating on the inside of the glass,
which is the phosphor coating that actually absorbs the violet/ultra-violet
light of the excited mercury vapor and then re-emits it as visible light.

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boneheadmed
Looking forward to the Switch company's LED bulbs.
<http://switchlightbulbs.com/>

This was mentioned on HN a few weeks ago.

