5 ms·

I'd recommend you look for high-CRI LED bulbs – I've had similar reactions to yours but I'm satisfied with some of the better/higher CRI bulbs(color rendering i

I'd recommend you look for high-CRI LED bulbs – I've had similar reactions to yours but I'm satisfied with some of the better/higher CRI bulbs(color rendering index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index). They tend to be harder to find, but they're out there. GE Reveal bulbs are higher CRI, for example and I've found other brands through some specialty LED dealers that almost match halogen bulbs.

ashmud 10y ago
LEDBenchmark [1] does a good job with their own spectrum and flicker graphs. So far, the LED bulbs I have gotten based on their results have been good. [1] http://www.ledbenchmark.com/ http://www.ledbenchmark.com/
mark-r 10y ago
The cheap bulbs I found at Costco are high CRI. I think it was these in a smaller package: http://www.costco.com/Feit-LED-A-Lamp-60W-Replacement-Soft-White-12-Pack-.product.100308157.html http://www.costco.com/Feit-LED-A-Lamp-60W-Replacement-Soft-W...
- incongruity 10y ago
  That's a great price point for high CRI bulbs – but the reviews on the page you linked to make them sound massively unreliable!
  - mark-r 10y ago
    They might be unreliable, I've had some bad luck with Feit bulbs myself in the past. But if the price is right it might be worth the gamble, it was in my case. My bigger fear is that they're stretching the truth with their CRI number, I don't think there's any independent verification of their claims. There might also be some degradation over time as the phosphors wear out.
amluto 10y ago
Be careful, though. Soraa, for example, makes fancy LEDs with CRI 95, and they use violet LEDs behind the phosphor. The problem is that the phosphor lets a decent fraction of the source light through. Soraa even has a nice graph on their spec sheet, and it has a violet peak. Also, a neat fact: all CEC qualified LEDs are high CRI. (P.S. I bought a GE Reveal once and it had the worst color fidelity I've ever seen. Some normally bluish surfaces were distinctly green. I don't understand how it has a high CRI.)
- lightedman 10y ago
  GE has been busted by myself falsely advertising their UV LED bulbs. In fact, I'm currently looking for more people that bought these A19-style UV Black Light bulbs from GE so we can start a class-action suit for false advertising and unfair competition. In short, I wouldn't trust GE for LEDs. In fact, I'm so disillusioned with almost every company out there (Cree, Philips, GE, Sylvania) that I've simply gone back to building my own lights for my specific purposes. I can't trust any of these companies to be accurate or truthful in their marketing.
  - j_koreth 10y ago
    > that I've simply gone back to building my own lights for my specific purposes. Is this what your username references?
    - lightedman 10y ago
      Yup. I design my own LED units, have a company called SinkPAD (I think it's Adura, now) make the boards, then I populate the boards myself.
      - Zak 10y ago
        Maybe you could point me in the right direction. I'm looking to construct a panel that can make it look like day, but has infinite dimming. Making daylight is easy enough. The Nichia 219B LED in 5000K R9050 (CRI 90+, R9 50+) is beautiful. 12-18 of them will comfortably make over 5000 lumens without having to be driven especially hard. It's not terribly hard to come up with options to wire them up and heatsink them properly either. What I haven't been able to find is a suitable power supply and driver. I want to plug it in to 100-240V and have a dimmer knob giving me 5-5000+ lumens via current regulation, not PWM, though very fast (> 10kHz) PWM might be acceptable. Yes, I'm aware the tint will shift a bit through the brightness range without PWM. I'm OK with that.
mapmap 10y ago
Parent is correct, high CRI[1] is what you want to look for. I'm embarrassed to reveal how much time and money I've spent down this rabbit hole and ultimately went back to halogen. As you research, you'll discovered that there is in fact more to the single CRI value. It is actually an average measurement of a range of different colors.[2] R9 in particular is the one that is hardest for LEDs to reproduce. Some manufactures goose their CRI value by getting high scores for the other values even though their R9 or R13 (skin tone) is poor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index [2] http://www.lightology.com/img/howto/cri/cri_2.jpg http://www.lightology.com/img/howto/cri/cri_2.jpg

ashmud 10y ago

LEDBenchmark [1] does a good job with their own spectrum and flicker graphs. So far, the LED bulbs I have gotten based on their results have been good. [1] http://www.ledbenchmark.com/ http://www.ledbenchmark.com/

mark-r 10y ago

The cheap bulbs I found at Costco are high CRI. I think it was these in a smaller package: http://www.costco.com/Feit-LED-A-Lamp-60W-Replacement-Soft-White-12-Pack-.product.100308157.html http://www.costco.com/Feit-LED-A-Lamp-60W-Replacement-Soft-W...

incongruity 10y ago
That's a great price point for high CRI bulbs – but the reviews on the page you linked to make them sound massively unreliable!
- mark-r 10y ago
  They might be unreliable, I've had some bad luck with Feit bulbs myself in the past. But if the price is right it might be worth the gamble, it was in my case. My bigger fear is that they're stretching the truth with their CRI number, I don't think there's any independent verification of their claims. There might also be some degradation over time as the phosphors wear out.

amluto 10y ago

Be careful, though. Soraa, for example, makes fancy LEDs with CRI 95, and they use violet LEDs behind the phosphor. The problem is that the phosphor lets a decent fraction of the source light through. Soraa even has a nice graph on their spec sheet, and it has a violet peak. Also, a neat fact: all CEC qualified LEDs are high CRI. (P.S. I bought a GE Reveal once and it had the worst color fidelity I've ever seen. Some normally bluish surfaces were distinctly green. I don't understand how it has a high CRI.)

lightedman 10y ago
GE has been busted by myself falsely advertising their UV LED bulbs. In fact, I'm currently looking for more people that bought these A19-style UV Black Light bulbs from GE so we can start a class-action suit for false advertising and unfair competition. In short, I wouldn't trust GE for LEDs. In fact, I'm so disillusioned with almost every company out there (Cree, Philips, GE, Sylvania) that I've simply gone back to building my own lights for my specific purposes. I can't trust any of these companies to be accurate or truthful in their marketing.
- j_koreth 10y ago
  > that I've simply gone back to building my own lights for my specific purposes. Is this what your username references?
  - lightedman 10y ago
    Yup. I design my own LED units, have a company called SinkPAD (I think it's Adura, now) make the boards, then I populate the boards myself.
    - Zak 10y ago
      Maybe you could point me in the right direction. I'm looking to construct a panel that can make it look like day, but has infinite dimming. Making daylight is easy enough. The Nichia 219B LED in 5000K R9050 (CRI 90+, R9 50+) is beautiful. 12-18 of them will comfortably make over 5000 lumens without having to be driven especially hard. It's not terribly hard to come up with options to wire them up and heatsink them properly either. What I haven't been able to find is a suitable power supply and driver. I want to plug it in to 100-240V and have a dimmer knob giving me 5-5000+ lumens via current regulation, not PWM, though very fast (> 10kHz) PWM might be acceptable. Yes, I'm aware the tint will shift a bit through the brightness range without PWM. I'm OK with that.

mapmap 10y ago

Parent is correct, high CRI[1] is what you want to look for. I'm embarrassed to reveal how much time and money I've spent down this rabbit hole and ultimately went back to halogen. As you research, you'll discovered that there is in fact more to the single CRI value. It is actually an average measurement of a range of different colors.[2] R9 in particular is the one that is hardest for LEDs to reproduce. Some manufactures goose their CRI value by getting high scores for the other values even though their R9 or R13 (skin tone) is poor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index [2] http://www.lightology.com/img/howto/cri/cri_2.jpg http://www.lightology.com/img/howto/cri/cri_2.jpg