From the article -- "The new $5 BR30 LED bulbs I just installed in the kitchen are amazingly bright and crisp: tests with a lux meter show the illuminance is mo

From the article -- "The new $5 BR30 LED bulbs I just installed in the kitchen are amazingly bright and crisp: tests with a lux meter show the illuminance is more than 60% higher. Plus, they’ll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced." This is what amazes me, I've been an early adopter of LED bulbs (Google even gave out a bunch at one time to employees) and have seen my share of failures, from color shift, to brightness degradation, to controller failure. That said, they nearly always cost less to operate than the previous incandescent lamps they replaced. When the LED 'tubes' which replace fluorescent bulbs became cost effective I replaced all the bulbs in my garage. And when a credible can light with acceptable dimming came out I replaced all of the recessed lighting in the family room and living room. I now don't have a single incandescent lamp in the house and it has reduced by monthly energy by anywhere from 35 to 55 KWhr per month. That represents about a $50 a year in energy cost savings. The cost has come down to the point where the bulbs pay for themselves well within their lifetime range (my experience over a population of 62 different bulbs has been 7.5 years MTTF). That said, I haven't been as diligent in figuring out exactly why a bulb has died, if it is just the power supply I expect they could be resurrected less expensively than a new bulb, caveat the reassembly of the light diffuser bulb.