If you're looking to substitute a 100W light bulb, you'll find a number of LED choices at prices that aren't almost as unreasonable as they were only a yr or two in the past. The present crop, including the Philips 100W Equal LED, hovers proper around the $20 price point. Initially priced at $25, Philips' LED has since been marked down just a few bucks to $22, which continues to be barely dearer than what you'll see from opponents like GE and Cree. Philips justifies that by claiming an extra eighty lumens' value of brightness over those two, along with superior dimming capabilities. However, our exams did not reveal any noticeable distinction in both brightness or dimmability. That, together with the fact that Philips offers half the warranty that you'll get with GE or Cree, makes this bulb troublesome to suggest. Philips' 100W Equal LED shares the same, flat-topped build of its smaller siblings in the 60W and 40W classes, however sets itself apart with a singular design that splits the bulb into three sections separated by deep channels.

This helps keep the heat buildup at bay, something that will get particularly necessary when LEDs start placing out this much gentle. Even with the emphasis on thermal administration, the bulb gets scorching to the contact after just a few minutes of use, which is not unusual for a 100W replacement LED. As such, EcoLight dimmable Philips recommends not using it in an enclosed fixture -- if you happen to do, you'll risk shortening the bulb's lifespan. That lifespan is rated at 25,000 hours, the identical as the opposite 100W substitute LEDs I tested, EcoLight dimmable with the exception of Utilitech. That lifespan comes out to 22.Eight years if the bulb is used for a median of three hours per day. Philips warrants the bulb for the primary 5 of these years, whereas GE and Cree each offer ten-12 months warranties. 25,000 hours is the longevity benchmark for Vitality Star certification -- the Philips 100W Equal earned certification over the summer season, as did the GE LED I examined. Cree's bulb is not certified but, but it meets the factors -- Cree's staff tells me they anticipate it to be certified in the near future.

Philips claims a light output of 1,680 lumens at a golden hued 2,700 K from a energy draw of 19 watts. That makes it good for about 88 lumens per watt -- a powerful quantity, but not as spectacular as GE and Utilitech, which both handle to place out a hundred lumens per watt. These 1680 lumens are a slight step up from what you will get with GE, Cree, or any of the other bulbs we tested. With brightness being certainly one of the first stuff you want from your property lighting, that quantity would seem to present Philips an edge, albeit a minor one. However, the engineers at Energy Star check bulbs out for themselves, posting the complete specs for every LED they certify on-line. On Philips' listing, Energy Star rates the bulb at 1,620 lumens -- not 1,680. Whereas an extra eighty lumens is just barely sufficient to make a noticeable difference, an additional 20 lumens is largely insignificant. We wanted to know which quantity had it right.

From a simple eye check, the light put out from the Philips 100W Equivalent LED doesn't differ much from its nearest opponents, the Cree and GE 100W replacements. Facet by facet, the three have practically equivalent glows, all of them boasting similarly warm tones. That is not shocking, given that all three are rated with the identical 2,seven hundred K shade temperature. When examined, each erred low, EcoLight on the yellowy aspect. Remember, though, that Philips claims to place out 1,680 lumens to Cree and GE's 1,600. That is a pretty minuscule difference, however it's one which must be noticeable if you're wanting carefully for it. The issue is that I couldn't discover it. Testing bulb brightness gets a bit tricky. In addition to measuring shade temperature and color rendering scores, our spectrometer can take luminosity readings from a given mild -- however those readings are simply skewed by things like viewing angle and distance. To get numbers you'll be able to rely on, you want something known as an integrating sphere.