8 ms·

Dump your fluorescents and incandescents for this amazing new LED bulb

96 points by robg 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
- tintin 15y ago
  Well they do exist. I was actually surprised to see this as 'news'. I got one at home for almost 2 years. Works like it was advertised. It's from Pharox http://www.pharox-led.com http://www.pharox-led.com
- weeny 15y ago
  These exist - but the $20 price tag is only possible using subsidization from investment funding. There are at least $20 worth of LEDs in the Switch bulbs - meaning they will be making negative dollars on each sale at $20. But that's how they make the stats look so appealing. That, and they're made of glass filled with an unknown liquid, is the reason I'm not very convinced by Switch.
KirinDave 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
sudont 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
    - LogicHoleFlaw 15y ago
      Those low-hz LED tail lights drive me nuts. The strobing effects are incredibly distracting and headache-inducing.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
      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.
pitdesi 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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=1233525&Ntt=cfl&pl=1&currentURL=%2Fpl__0__s%3FNtt%3Dcfl&facetInfo= http://www.lowes.com/pd_20845-371-60038_0__?productId=123352... Dimmable ones have cost me $5.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      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 15y ago
        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.
mgkimsal 15y ago
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.
smackfu 15y ago
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/ http://a.wholelottanothing.org/led-bulbs/
- cschneid 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
pkteison 15y ago
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.
- camiller 15y ago
  I didn't look at the guys spread sheet, but I wonder if he discounted the future savings to their present value and current interest rates.
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  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.
dimitar 15y ago
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.
weeny 15y ago
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.
libria 15y ago
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.
- weeny 15y ago
  You are right about the PWM dimming - but it's a better alternative to the lack of dimming of CFL bulbs. The 20k hour figure likely does figure in "lumen maintenance" - although Switch maybe stating a "consumer lifetime", the mean lifetime of the product, they are required to provide a lumen maintenance figure called L70 - the time it takes for a 30% reduction in light output. Chances are these light bulbs just broke before reaching that target, and the consumer lifetime is more useful to the market at large. And, yes, the warm color with high CRI is the hardest LED to make - that's why they're waiting until next year to try and offer a warm white 100W equivalent bulb.
- Daniel_Newby 15y ago
  "If the LED driver handles dimming through PWM, no thanks. The flicker is very noticeable." The flicker is unnoticeable if the chop rate is a few kilohertz or higher.
- slug 15y ago
  If you notice flicker, the PWM frequency is too low. I recently built a PWM driver for high power RGB LEDs and there's no flicker, even at very dim brightness. I don't know what's on the market, but probably I should get into it ;)
- calloc 15y ago
  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 http://www.epanorama.net/documents/lights/lightdimmer.html
Turing_Machine 15y ago
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.
e40 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
hapless 15y ago
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!
- weeny 15y ago
  They aren't usually purple, they are usually a sickly greenish.
- yaakov34 15y ago
  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.
- calloc 15y ago
  I have a couple of LED bulbs and they are not purple, they are a very "harsh" (I actually prefer it) blueish white much like the neutral white CFL's I have purchased and use.
scromar 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      Hmmm, it is possible I am doing the math wrong based upon the timer/interrupt on the micro controller and the rows we had...
bhartzer 15y ago
As long as it's a bulb that will put out enough light to light a room I'm all for it.
bhartzer 15y ago
As long as it's a bulb that will put out enough light to light a room I'm all for it.
ck2 15y ago
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 15y ago
  While they are more efficient, all the waste heat is produced in the die. Incandescents on the other hand radiate infrared light.
yaakov34 15y ago
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.
- rauljara 15y ago
  To be fair to the environmentalists who back this legislation: they almost certainly want to pass higher progressive taxes on electricity use. As the current budget debate is showing, it is all but impossible to raise taxes in this political environment. But also, a generic tax on electricity would probably never result in more efficient lightbulbs as they just don't take that up much electricity on a per house basis. People don't change their behavior over $5-20 a month in electricity bills. It's only at a larger scale that you notice the waste. If this were purely a windfall for cfl manufacturers, the law would mandate cfl's. It mandates a minimum efficiency and lets the markets figure it out. If someone builds a better bulb, it will win out. If the casual observation of this article proves correct, this particular bulb will win out. If not, it is only a matter of time before someone builds a bulb that will. The mandate all but guarantees it.
  - yaakov34 15y ago
    First, to settle the question about this particular lamp: I found some specs on their website, and they claim a CRI (color rendition index) of 65 for their "neutral" version and 85 for the "warm" version. This is poorer than most modern fluorescents (which people complain about), and the better CRI for the warm version is at the expense of making the light yellow, which many people also don't like. So we're not looking at the at the coming of the savior of efficient light bulbs. For the question of the law, I agree that the savings in electricity are barely measurable, which is why I think it's theater. The huge growth in residential electricity use has been driven by increase in average home size, and by the explosion in the use of air conditioning. Also, it's not even clear that bulbs like this save energy over their lifetime. Sure, one of these theoretically replaces 20 incandescents and uses less electricity, but an incandescent light bulb is just a tiny tungsten wire + steel leads + glass + aluminium base + a drop of epoxy, all made in one factory with extraordinary efficiency that has been polished through 100 years of manufacturing. This thing has 20 LEDs + mounts + cooling tubes + cooling fins on the outside + "non-toxic" liquid + a bunch of electronics for control and dimming + enclosures and wiring for all of the above, made out of plastic and ceramic and glass. All manufactured in probably 20 factories and transported to be assembled in yet another place. If there is a win here for the environment, it's super-tiny.
tomjen3 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
protomyth 15y ago
Anyone know how well LED bulbs handle cold (below water freezing) temperatures?
- weeny 15y ago
  The LEDs themselves work excellent at low temperature - but you may have problems with your electronic driver's properties changing at lower temperatures.
huhtenberg 15y ago
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/catalog/15684.410316_4.jpg http://www.homedepot.ca/wcsstore/HomeDepotCanada/images/cata...
- weeny 15y ago
  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.
  - Daniel_Newby 15y ago
    "... it's a phosphor doping they embedded in the plastic and it's the reason the bulb costs so much." It costs so much because if something cannot compete on cost, it has to compete on premium features at a higher price point.
  - mturmon 15y ago
    For more on the physics behind "white" LED's, there's a pretty good summary at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_light http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_ligh... The fundamental challenge is that the wavelength of light emitted from the LED is constrained by the band gap structure of the diode. To get white-looking light, you need more than just one narrow frequency band. For instance, until some new materials were developed in the 1990s, this is why there were no blue LEDs, only red, green, and amber.
    - billswift 15y ago
      Bob Johnstone's We Were Burning has a fascinating look at the development of the first blue laser diodes. http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Burning-Entrepreneurs-Electronic/dp/0465091180/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310070559&sr=8-1-fkmr1 http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Burning-Entrepreneurs-Electron...
richardw 15y ago
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.
ams6110 15y ago
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 15y ago
  The concern isn't with a limited supply of electricity but with the environmental costs of how it's generated...
rjett 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
- mturmon 15y ago
  I agree that this is more interesting. Some basic background is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_light http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_ligh...
mmagin 15y ago
I would like it if "news" like this had a less biased title (or subtitle in this case.)
code_duck 15y ago
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.
WalterBright 15y ago
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.
kragen 15y ago
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.

96 points by robg 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
tintin 15y ago
Well they do exist. I was actually surprised to see this as 'news'. I got one at home for almost 2 years. Works like it was advertised. It's from Pharox http://www.pharox-led.com http://www.pharox-led.com
weeny 15y ago
These exist - but the $20 price tag is only possible using subsidization from investment funding. There are at least $20 worth of LEDs in the Switch bulbs - meaning they will be making negative dollars on each sale at $20. But that's how they make the stats look so appealing. That, and they're made of glass filled with an unknown liquid, is the reason I'm not very convinced by Switch.

KirinDave 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.

sudont 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
  - LogicHoleFlaw 15y ago
    Those low-hz LED tail lights drive me nuts. The strobing effects are incredibly distracting and headache-inducing.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
    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.

pitdesi 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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=1233525&Ntt=cfl&pl=1&currentURL=%2Fpl__0__s%3FNtt%3Dcfl&facetInfo= http://www.lowes.com/pd_20845-371-60038_0__?productId=123352... Dimmable ones have cost me $5.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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.

mgkimsal 15y ago

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.

smackfu 15y ago

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/ http://a.wholelottanothing.org/led-bulbs/

cschneid 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.

pkteison 15y ago

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.

camiller 15y ago
I didn't look at the guys spread sheet, but I wonder if he discounted the future savings to their present value and current interest rates.
JoeAltmaier 15y ago
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.

dimitar 15y ago

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.

weeny 15y ago

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.

libria 15y ago

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.

weeny 15y ago
You are right about the PWM dimming - but it's a better alternative to the lack of dimming of CFL bulbs. The 20k hour figure likely does figure in "lumen maintenance" - although Switch maybe stating a "consumer lifetime", the mean lifetime of the product, they are required to provide a lumen maintenance figure called L70 - the time it takes for a 30% reduction in light output. Chances are these light bulbs just broke before reaching that target, and the consumer lifetime is more useful to the market at large. And, yes, the warm color with high CRI is the hardest LED to make - that's why they're waiting until next year to try and offer a warm white 100W equivalent bulb.
Daniel_Newby 15y ago
"If the LED driver handles dimming through PWM, no thanks. The flicker is very noticeable." The flicker is unnoticeable if the chop rate is a few kilohertz or higher.
slug 15y ago
If you notice flicker, the PWM frequency is too low. I recently built a PWM driver for high power RGB LEDs and there's no flicker, even at very dim brightness. I don't know what's on the market, but probably I should get into it ;)
calloc 15y ago
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 http://www.epanorama.net/documents/lights/lightdimmer.html

Turing_Machine 15y ago

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.

e40 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

hapless 15y ago

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!

weeny 15y ago
They aren't usually purple, they are usually a sickly greenish.
yaakov34 15y ago
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.
calloc 15y ago
I have a couple of LED bulbs and they are not purple, they are a very "harsh" (I actually prefer it) blueish white much like the neutral white CFL's I have purchased and use.

scromar 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Hmmm, it is possible I am doing the math wrong based upon the timer/interrupt on the micro controller and the rows we had...

bhartzer 15y ago

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

bhartzer 15y ago

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

ck2 15y ago

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 15y ago
While they are more efficient, all the waste heat is produced in the die. Incandescents on the other hand radiate infrared light.

yaakov34 15y ago

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.

rauljara 15y ago
To be fair to the environmentalists who back this legislation: they almost certainly want to pass higher progressive taxes on electricity use. As the current budget debate is showing, it is all but impossible to raise taxes in this political environment. But also, a generic tax on electricity would probably never result in more efficient lightbulbs as they just don't take that up much electricity on a per house basis. People don't change their behavior over $5-20 a month in electricity bills. It's only at a larger scale that you notice the waste. If this were purely a windfall for cfl manufacturers, the law would mandate cfl's. It mandates a minimum efficiency and lets the markets figure it out. If someone builds a better bulb, it will win out. If the casual observation of this article proves correct, this particular bulb will win out. If not, it is only a matter of time before someone builds a bulb that will. The mandate all but guarantees it.
- yaakov34 15y ago
  First, to settle the question about this particular lamp: I found some specs on their website, and they claim a CRI (color rendition index) of 65 for their "neutral" version and 85 for the "warm" version. This is poorer than most modern fluorescents (which people complain about), and the better CRI for the warm version is at the expense of making the light yellow, which many people also don't like. So we're not looking at the at the coming of the savior of efficient light bulbs. For the question of the law, I agree that the savings in electricity are barely measurable, which is why I think it's theater. The huge growth in residential electricity use has been driven by increase in average home size, and by the explosion in the use of air conditioning. Also, it's not even clear that bulbs like this save energy over their lifetime. Sure, one of these theoretically replaces 20 incandescents and uses less electricity, but an incandescent light bulb is just a tiny tungsten wire + steel leads + glass + aluminium base + a drop of epoxy, all made in one factory with extraordinary efficiency that has been polished through 100 years of manufacturing. This thing has 20 LEDs + mounts + cooling tubes + cooling fins on the outside + "non-toxic" liquid + a bunch of electronics for control and dimming + enclosures and wiring for all of the above, made out of plastic and ceramic and glass. All manufactured in probably 20 factories and transported to be assembled in yet another place. If there is a win here for the environment, it's super-tiny.

tomjen3 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

protomyth 15y ago

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

weeny 15y ago
The LEDs themselves work excellent at low temperature - but you may have problems with your electronic driver's properties changing at lower temperatures.

huhtenberg 15y ago

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/catalog/15684.410316_4.jpg http://www.homedepot.ca/wcsstore/HomeDepotCanada/images/cata...

weeny 15y ago
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.
- Daniel_Newby 15y ago
  "... it's a phosphor doping they embedded in the plastic and it's the reason the bulb costs so much." It costs so much because if something cannot compete on cost, it has to compete on premium features at a higher price point.
- mturmon 15y ago
  For more on the physics behind "white" LED's, there's a pretty good summary at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_light http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_ligh... The fundamental challenge is that the wavelength of light emitted from the LED is constrained by the band gap structure of the diode. To get white-looking light, you need more than just one narrow frequency band. For instance, until some new materials were developed in the 1990s, this is why there were no blue LEDs, only red, green, and amber.
  - billswift 15y ago
    Bob Johnstone's We Were Burning has a fascinating look at the development of the first blue laser diodes. http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Burning-Entrepreneurs-Electronic/dp/0465091180/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310070559&sr=8-1-fkmr1 http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Burning-Entrepreneurs-Electron...

richardw 15y ago

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.

ams6110 15y ago

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 15y ago
The concern isn't with a limited supply of electricity but with the environmental costs of how it's generated...

rjett 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.
mturmon 15y ago
I agree that this is more interesting. Some basic background is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_light http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#White_ligh...

mmagin 15y ago

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

code_duck 15y ago

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.

WalterBright 15y ago

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.

kragen 15y ago

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.