> ten times as energy efficient As CFLs? Nowhere near. Early LED bulbs had a horrible color rendering index, too. They made things look weird. Cheap LED bu

> ten times as energy efficient As CFLs? Nowhere near. Early LED bulbs had a horrible color rendering index, too. They made things look weird. Cheap LED bulbs have the same reliability problem as cheap CFLs, too. They both skimp on the heat dissipation. The life of semiconductiors (in the control circuitry, for CFLs) halves with each ten degree Celsius rise in temperature. Cheap bulbs use cheap, low-spec components close to the edge of their ratings and treat them badly. Irrespective of the base light-producing technology. The mercury-in-CFLs problem is as overhyped as the asbestos problem (there are hundreds of thousands of miles of asbestos water pipes carrying drinking water) and the idea that plastics are bad for the environment. (In most cases, they're far better than equivalently priced alternatives.) Finally, I had CFLs in my house for over ten years before LED substitutes became available. Now that LEDs are cheap enough and good enough, I'm using them. But from the late '90s to about 2012, CFLs were it.