
Dump your fluorescents and incandescents for this amazing new LED bulb - robg
http://www.slate.com/id/2298444/pagenum/all
======
yaakov34
This kind of casual evaluation by a non-expert observer is incredibly
meaningless. LEDs have a radically different spectrum from "regular white
light". This shows up in weird looking colors when this light is used in real
settings; the fact that the light "looks white" through the lampshade doesn't
mean that it won't turn your off-white walls an ugly color, and your sofa, and
the skin of your family members.

Saying that you "can't tell the difference" when casually looking at the two
lamps, during the day in all likelihood, is something that's been done before
with a million CFL and LED lamps. It usually doesn't actually hold up. In this
case, there doesn't seem to be anything special about the actual LEDs - they
just put many of them into a screw-in enclosure, for which they need liquid
cooling to remove the heat.

If this was about actually saving electricity, and not about "environment
theater" and a windfall for a few companies, they'd pass a steep progressive
tax on residential electricity use, and let people figure out whether they
want to have more efficient bulbs or to turn down their air conditioner, or
perhaps just not build a McMansion which needs 1000 lamps to light it in the
first place.

~~~
anigbrowl
_LEDs have a radically different spectrum from "regular white light"_

So do incandescents. The good thing about LEDs is that they're easy to tune;
they're becoming very popular in the film world because you can make small
fixtures that run a long time and that allow a cinematographer to dial in the
desired color (via a multicolored array) instead of faffing around with sheets
of colored gel, and they are capable of _much_ better spectral power
distribution than CFLs. It's not just the tinting and tunability of the LEDs
themselves, but also the fact that they put out a steady light instead of
CFLs' high-frequency flicker. Even when the color is slightly off from the
ideal, the steady light source is much, much easier on the eyes.

I'm not ready to endorse these products yet, because their spec sheet just
gives a single figure for color temperature. But I'm going to pick one up soon
both because it looks cool and because the CFLs I have at home produce really
ugly light, so it can hardly be worse. The first thing I'll be doing after
ooh-ing and aah-ing over it's retro-modernist design is lining it up against
other bulbs and shooting it against calibrated gray cards; I have the gear and
skills to measure these things properly. If they're spectacularly good (or
bad) I'll write it up.

EDIT: BTW LEDs can flicker too. It's probably more accurate to say fluorescent
lights have a _low_ frequency flicker since it's often slow enough to be
easily seen by eye, especially if you use them with a dimmer switch - in which
case the flicker is slow enough to interfere with film shutter speeds, CRTs
and so on, giving rise to an unpleasant strobing look. I didn't mean to say
that LEDs are completely immune from this, but I have found them vastly easier
to work with than fluorescents in a wide variety of situations.

~~~
rektide
One of the main questions is how wide/broad spectrum a light source is. CFL's,
I believe, have strong & narrow emission bands[1]. LED's tend to be a bit
fatter (also shown in link[1]).

I adore NIST's "Spectrally tunable lighting facility"[2]: a room with a huge
variety of different narrow-ish-band LED's. You talked about a tuneable RGB
array for selecting color, this is the same idea but comprised of 22 different
colors, giving way better spectral control. Humans might not know the
difference when they're looking at grey cards, but when it comes to seeing how
different spectrums of light interact with real objects, I really like this
idea of a tunable light source.

[1] <http://web.ncf.ca/jim/misc/cfl/> [2]
<http://www.nist.gov/pml/div685/grp05/vision_lighting.cfm>

~~~
yaakov34
The picture at link [1] is correct, but it makes the LED look way, way better
than it is. It does show some light smeared through the spectrum, unlike with
the CFLs, but it's not actually even in intensity, and has some sharp peaks
(which you can't see in a test like this). Many people find LED light
annoying, even more so than CFLs, when it's the primary light source. Of
course, that's totally subjective, and some people even like the effect.

------
hapless
Guys, this article is _not_ about the existing LED light bulbs on the market
today. It's a fluff piece about a very promising _new bulb technology_. The
new bulb uses an unusual LED immersed in a "non-toxic" liquid. In theory it
should have vastly better color temperature / light quality than existing LED
bulbs.

I'd be happy to buy these things at $20 -- have my cake (carbon footprint) and
eat it (light quality, no mercury release on disposal) -- but they don't exist
yet. All the LED bulbs I can buy today are basically purple, like the early
CFLs. Maybe it's fine for lighting a closet, but they're not adequate to
night-time illumination of my home.

Call me when Switch bulbs are actually on the shelf!

~~~
yaakov34
The liquid cooling technology is what enables so many LEDs to be inside a
small enclosure. I don't see how that improves the spectrum. They company
doesn't even seem to make any claims along those lines (measurable claims that
is - they do say "everything will look great"), they just say they meet
certain color consistency standards for LEDs. As do the lamps you bought,
probably.

------
code_duck
I hope so, because compact fluorescents, at least the cheap Chinese ones we
get in the US, are awful.

I have no idea why I don't hear more about this, but I can smell a horrible
chlorine-plastic smell from them after they've been running for a couple of
hours. It is an acrid smell that makes my nose feel strange. I've tried many
different brands - Sylvania, GE, Feit electric, Great Value - which are all
rebranded Chinese manufacturer products, of course. I used to be able to find
some bulbs that did not do this, but not any longer.

I'm pretty sure these fumes are toxic from how they make me feel. If you've
never noticed it, go buy 4 Sylvania CFLs and run them in a closed room
overnight. The room will smell like chlorine in the morning.

------
sudont
Does anyone know how they hold up in uneven power situations? As far as I can
tell the electronic ballast is the number one reason CFLs fail so frequently,
and I've seen plain old incandescents outlast CFLs in many shop conditions.

If LED bulbs actually last the 30 years, they're worth the extra in
convenience.

~~~
libria
I'm seeing more LED's in automotive use like tail lights, so that's a good
sign. Seems like they've nailed down a stable driver that can handle voltage
fluctuations, like on starting.

~~~
jcoby
AFAIK, it only takes a zener diode and a resistor to drive LEDs in an
automotive application (or any automotive electronic device that runs on < 12V
DC). The power is already rectified by the time it leaves the alternator.
Worst case is that they're a bit dimmer than normal on startup.

Many car LED tail lights are actually refreshed at (I'm guessing) 30Hz or so
to keep from overloading the wire - They have a distinct look to them from the
low refresh rate.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
While it's certainly _possible_ to do so, I doubt any engineer worth his salt
would actually use a zener and resistor as a stable power supply for
automotive lighting. Voltage in cars varies from pretty low (sub-8 volts or
so) when the starter is cranking, to around 14-16 volts when alternator is
running against a fully charged battery, to the occasional high voltage peaks
of 40V+ when, e.g., the air conditioner clutch disengages.

That's a pretty large range to run a current-driven device (the LED) from a
fixed resistor. Most useful applications these days will use constant-current
supplies that feed the LED a fixed amount of current as the input voltage
changes all over the place.

------
e40
_They've got three main shortcomings_

Four. They can cause fires. Consumer Reports this month had a recall of two
brands that would catch fire. I have had several (not of the bad brands) do
weird things when they burn out. In each case, they "smoked". It was
unsettling, because I didn't know if the type of event could have led to a
fire. Now I know.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ive led bulbs fail almost immediately, by erratically going from too-bright to
barely-on, finally settling in barely-on. No idea what the deal was.

------
huhtenberg
Philips went a much simple way. They just painted the bulb enclosure yellow,
and it works really well. The color gets _very_ close to that of incandescent.
The only issue is its price. It is very hard to bring oneself to pay $49 for a
light bulb. Economics or not.

[http://www.homedepot.ca/wcsstore/HomeDepotCanada/images/cata...](http://www.homedepot.ca/wcsstore/HomeDepotCanada/images/catalog/15684.410316_4.jpg)

~~~
weeny
it's not exactly a yellow paint, it's a phosphor doping they embedded in the
plastic and it's the reason the bulb costs so much. Theirs is very high tech
but I don't think it can compete in the long run due to complexity and the
costs associated with it.

~~~
mahyarm
Why don't they just paint it then, or put in some simpler kind of yellow
plastic?

~~~
weeny
The idea is that the yellow phosphor converts a short wavelength blue light
from the LED into a longer wavelength yellowish light, called down-converting.

This is a special physical property of the phosphor material - not simply a
function of its color.

Normally this yellow phosphor material is applied directly to the LED die -
but they figured they would put it on a plastic shell outside the LEDs. It
doesn't actually make any kind of performance improvement except that the
light is more evenly distributed.

If you tried to paint the shell with the phosphor - you would most likely have
blue light shining through it - that's why they need so much technology to
accurately dope the plastic phosphor, so that the light output is an even and
consistent color.

------
ck2
I've been using a LED bulb for 2 years or so now (it's on 24/7).

It's currently half the brightness of when it was when new.

I am not impressed, unless they have fixed that.

Also, if LED is so efficient, why do they produce so much heat that they need
massive heatsinks or advanced cooling?

~~~
zafka
While they are more efficient, all the waste heat is produced in the die.
Incandescents on the other hand radiate infrared light.

------
kragen
The stuff about mercury in compact-fluorescent lightbulbs is basically
nonsense. A typical CFL might contain 5mg of mercury. You ought to open up the
windows for a few hours if you break one, but otherwise don't worry about it.

I do think that people ought to have the right to buy plain incandescent
lightbulbs if they want, though. Energy-efficiency is very important and will
remain important for a decade or more, but the contribution from involuntary
speculative energy futures investment in the form of compact-fluorescent
purchases is not significant; I think it's more important for people to be
able to build E-Z-Bake ovens, make heat-sensitive invisible ink visible, have
ready-made electric igniters, and be able to do their homework when they only
have 50 cents to spend on replacing the lightbulb before payday.

------
WalterBright
I've bought several LED bulbs to try them out. The number one problem is they
are about half as bright as necessary, so you need twice as many bulbs. But if
you've got existing fixtures, there aren't twice as many sockets for the
bulbs.

The second problem is you cannot install them in enclosed fixtures - because
they'll overheat and fail. They can only be installed in open air fixtures.

These two issues pretty severely limit where they can be used.

------
rjett
Since this _is_ hacker news, can someone in the know explain the
considerations that have to be heeded when developing LED technology for
lighting environments? I'm much more interested in hearing about the science
behind these bulbs and how it compares to fluorescents and incandescents than
hearing 50 different anecdotes about peoples' LED experiences.

~~~
weeny
So the basic operating principle behind lighting LEDs is the correlation
between light output and temperature. As the LED heats up, its light output
decreases. If you want a single LED to produce more light, you have to pump
more current through it - meaning more heat and a resulting higher
temperature, shorter lifespan and reduced efficiency. Thus, you have a
tradeoff between more LEDs and lower current (higher cost and more efficient)
and less LEDs and higher current (lower cost but less efficient).

Switch tries to give you the cake and feed it to you - they give you lots of
LEDs, running at high current, and they manage the heat by immersing the LEDs
in a liquid [liquid water has a conductivity and capacity for heat ~5x greater
than aluminum even with a lower density]. But this has its own problems that
you can probably imagine - not least of which is that the liquid probably
absorbs more light than it gives back by removing heat.

Based on my "in the know" status, I can tell that Switch will be losing big
bucks trying to sell those lights at $20 but they are working hard to cement
themselves in the market early. I'm very sceptical and look more towards
smaller innovators like LEDNovation and LED Integration Technology.

------
tomjen3
I brought an LED bulb since I found the idea interesting.

Holy fuck that bulb sucked though. Not only was the color so bad it made my
hand look like a body in a morgue but it wasn't powerful enough to light by
study table unless the sun was up.

I don't think I will try again. A standard bulb works just fine...

~~~
jws
Some of the LED bulb makers have taken deceptive packaging to an extreme. At
Home Depot the LED chandelier bulb I was looking at said " _Compare to 20 watt
incandescent bulb!_ ". So I did. It puts out 1/4 the light. I'm glad they
tipped me off that it was useless except as a marker bulb, but " _Comparable
to a dim incandescent nightlight bulb!_ " would have been more honest.

------
ams6110
I'm not convinced. Saving a few dollars a year on electricity is not worth any
compromise in the quality of lighting for me.

If we are concerned about electricity, maybe we should generate more. It's not
like we don't know how.

~~~
dangrossman
The concern isn't with a limited supply of electricity but with the
environmental costs of how it's generated...

------
pkteison
You know, I think I'd rather have an extra $19.50 right now than a light bulb
that maybe pays off 4 or 5 years from now.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But if you ran a stadium, or office building, or government installation, you
would definitely be looking at spreadsheets and total-lifecycle-cost. It
really only makes sense to do so when you have hundreds/thousands of bulbs to
maintain.

------
mgkimsal
I just replaced most of our bulbs with CFLs a couple years ago. I don't think
I'll be jumping to Switch lights (or any other LEDs) for a while. There
doesn't seem to be that much of lifetime savings between CFL and LED, but
maybe when the CFLs need replacing, LEDs will be more cost competitive.

------
richardw
I've just replaced 3 outdoor 50w halogens with 3w "warm white" bulbs and 6
indoor similar with 4.5w bulbs. Total cost was about $220. Definitely less
bright than the halogens, but these are areas that we leave on all night
outside or for about 6 hours inside. They're expensive, but I calculate that
the outside ones will pay themselves off in about 6 months and the inside
bulbs 20 months. This excludes replacing the halogens, which happened
relatively often. We still have many other down-lighters indoors, but they're
not on very often and need to be dimmed, so I'll wait until the cost drops.

------
dimitar
Well its practically an advertisement for Switch Lightning. (I sense PRs at
work). There are LED bulbs in the market already and they are not new, but the
legislation limiting incandescent lightning is new.

------
Turing_Machine
Yeah, they're still pricy. So far the only one I've replaced was one of the
bulbs in the kitchen fixture. It doesn't really produce great quality light
(although I guess some of them are pretty good). What it _has_ done is save me
having to get out the step stool and move the table to change a bulb on a
couple of dark, before-coffee mornings. In that respect it's been worth every
penny.

If I wind up in a house where I'm sure I'll be living the rest of my life, the
economic calculus will change a bit.

------
libria
If the LED driver handles dimming through PWM, no thanks. The flicker is very
noticeable. Also, the 20k hour figure for LED's doesn't factor in "lumen
maintenance": LED's can dim with use, especially high output use or possibly
poor ventilation. Lumens after 10k hours may not be the same as new. Last,
it's hard to find a good warm (2700k?) LED that is remotely efficient, though
the Cree XP-G's seem to be getting there.

~~~
calloc
The dimming is generally done on the AC side before it even reaches the bulb.
So it would be dimmed by either resistive (unlikely) or by cutting the AC
waveform by timing the zero crossing point.

For more information, and a look at the waveform that is produced see this
awesome page: <http://www.epanorama.net/documents/lights/lightdimmer.html>

------
KirinDave
I'm a little confused. Even Ikea sells rather good (albeit slightly expensive)
LED lighting, and I'm using some in my house right now. Heck, they're the
primary lighting in our kitchen.

Maybe the Bulb Form Factor is still a work in progress, but in terms of
actually lighting places up, I suspect a lot of people are already using LEDs.
So why is this a revolution?

~~~
bryanlarsen
You might not notice because you're used to them, but bring in a lamp with an
incandescent bulb and put it beside your IKEA lamps, and notice the vastly
different color temperature. Which you prefer is largely a matter of
preference, but most people grew up with incandescent bulbs, so prefer that
color temperature.

~~~
KirinDave
I have noticed the color temperature. As a photographer, I am somewhat
sensitive to the issue.

I'm saying, people are buying and using LED lighting all over the country and
presumably liking it. Ikea used to have problems stocking the item in demand
and only in the last 2 years have they really managed to consistently meet
demand. I wonder if maybe the idea that most people are holding off on a
bright LED light with a ruddy orange glow is really supported by data or if
it's just assumed.

------
weeny
Heh. I saw switch at LightFair - and I asked the guy whether the envelope was
made of glass, and what the liquid was made of. Both questions he skirted
around.

Me personally, I'd rather have broken glass and a microscopic amount of
mercury vapor, than broken glass and a huge "liquid" stain. Switch isn't over
the hump yet.

------
scromar
My concern is whether the bulbs flicker in the the same way that LED backlit
displays do when they are set at less than full brightness. I have found this
effect to be migraine inducing when the frequency is too low. Does anyone know
if this type of circuitry is employed in these bulbs?

~~~
calloc
You are talking about the PWM frequency. If you are having issues with that
make sure to look for a manufacturer that has theirs at 30 Hz or higher, when
I worked with LED's we tested that 50 Hz was enough to make sure that humans
were unable to see that the light was not constant on.

~~~
lgeek
I've built LED displays and the lowest frequency at which I wouldn't notice
flickering was 500 Hz. This was at 1/8 duty cycle though, so you might get
away with a lower frequency at a higher duty cycle.

I find your claim that 50Hz was enough rather strange. Even incandescent light
bulbs have noticeable flicker at below 50 Hz and those have considerable warm
up / cool down times, as opposed to the LEDs.

~~~
calloc
Hmmm, it is possible I am doing the math wrong based upon the timer/interrupt
on the micro controller and the rows we had...

------
smackfu
LED light bulbs have gotten bad reviews in the past, which is why they aren't
some magic alternative to CFLs. The author kind of glosses over that part.

For instance: <http://a.wholelottanothing.org/led-bulbs/>

~~~
cschneid
Your link specifically calls out LED bulbs as being too dim, and not listing
their incandescent equivalent wattage (ie, a 10 watt LED == a 60 watt
incandescent).

The article specifically lists a 60 watt replacement, and a 100 watt one soon.

~~~
smackfu
My point was more that the author seems to have just discovered that LED bulbs
existed, and that it is a new alternative to CFLs.

------
bhartzer
As long as it's a bulb that will put out enough light to light a room I'm all
for it.

------
wccrawford
Talk to me when it actually exists.

I get so sick of seeing these revolutionary new products that never make it to
market, have a much higher pricetag, or don't actually do what they claim.

~~~
dimitar
But they do exist. You can already buy them. They are not cheap but they are
getting cheaper.

LEDs are nothing new. And they have have replaced other types of indicator
lights decades ago (the lights on older computers had incandescent lamps, and
if you have seen those in practical use - you are getting old). Trafic lights
are already LED here in Bulgaria and I'm sure in other countries too.

~~~
spot
not really. this company's product is still in the pipeline: "Switch
Lightbulbs will be available fall 2011".

there are other LED lightbulbs available, but they are more expensive. and the
ones that I got all failed in less than a year.

------
mmagin
I would like it if "news" like this had a less biased title (or subtitle in
this case.)

------
protomyth
Anyone know how well LED bulbs handle cold (below water freezing)
temperatures?

~~~
weeny
The LEDs themselves work excellent at low temperature - but you may have
problems with your electronic driver's properties changing at lower
temperatures.

------
pitdesi
I will do that when the prices come down from the sky. This guy can
rationalize it all he wants at $20/bulb, but very few people will make the
change. Where it does make sense is places where the lights are on all the
time and places where the lightbulbs are hard to change (It's a huge pain to
replace a bulb in a hard to reach place so if you have one that lasts forever
it is extremely time-saving)

I think once you get below $5 you'll have takers, but we're probably a ways
off from that. I do like the fact that they are dimmable. I haven't found any
CFL's that work well with that aspect, and the ones that do are very
expensive.

~~~
anigbrowl
If it looks good, $20/bulb is cheap. A dimmable CFL costs about $13 and it
makes an irritating noise. Regular CFLs are still around $6-7 and nobody likes
the way they look. The electricity saving of LED/CFL isn't as great as over
incandescent, so that won't resonate with homeowners straight away, but for
businesses it's a no-brainer and that will create enough demand to bring the
price down.

~~~
pitdesi
I have never paid more than $1 for a standard CFL in the past 3 years... I've
gone to my local hardware store several times and replaced all of my bulbs,
but none of them cost more than $1. Here's a 2-pack at Lowes for $0.98:
[http://www.lowes.com/pd_20845-371-60038_0__?productId=123352...](http://www.lowes.com/pd_20845-371-60038_0__?productId=1233525&Ntt=cfl&pl=1&currentURL=%2Fpl__0__s%3FNtt%3Dcfl&facetInfo=)

Dimmable ones have cost me $5.

~~~
anigbrowl
You are right. I mixed up my memory of the prices from the last time I bought
specialist bulbs, because I was putting them in regular lamps.

~~~
anigbrowl
After stopping by a store yesterday and remembering I meant to get some
lightbulbs, it turns out I was right after all. Incandescent bulbs are <$1
each, but CFLs start around $5. (Walgreens) Also, your link to Loews shows two
CFL bulbs for $4.98, not $0.98. If that was a troll, then well-played;
otherwise, it's time to visit the optometrist.

