After months in development, Philips is finally ready to sell LED light bulbs that last 20 years. Could be quite a game-changer — after all, if you didn’t have to change a light bulb between now and when your unborn child graduates from high school, just think of all the precious minutes you could spend on other tasks. And the environment would surely thank you.
Philips put the $60-bulb on sale yesterday, which was also Earth Day, of course. The bulb uses LED — otherwise known as light-emitting diodes — to light things up, instead of filaments, reports BBC News.
The design won the Bright Tomorrow competition run by the Department of Energy, which was aimed at finding more environmentally-friendly alternatives to the 60-watt and 100-watt incandescent bulb we all used to use. They were the only entrants in the contest, and worked on the bulb for 18 months of testing.
Certain stores have reportedly wrangled deals with Philips to sell the bulbs for only $20. We’ll do the math for you — that’s only $1 a year!
US introduces $60 LEd light bulb [BBC News]
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“‚Äî that’s only $1 a year!” – less the energy savings. Costs $1/year in electricity vs $5 for a regular bulb. (source: math on back of package)
I’m not willing to bet $60 that a better bulb won’t come along in the next 20 years.
The problem with these bulbs (both CFL and LED) is that each one contains a crappy, low budget power supply to run the lamp. Sure the LED/CFL can last 20 years, but the power supply can’t.
I use the bulbs in my house everyday and they have all lasted past the 5+ year mark now. They have not yet failed. They cost me 1- each so after 20 years that 4- for each bulb. I would rather spend 4- than 60- and change the bulbs 4 times.
Or I can buy more of the 3$ a piece, 8w LED bulbs that my local utility company is subsidizing.
I’m already paying less than $1 a year..They sell 3 packs at the dollar store of regular various wattage lightbulbs. Still on the same pack more than a year later..so..yeah, this is clearly a pricing gimmick.
The environment can piss off, I’m doing my part by not even driving a car.
far from being a nobrainer. unless you cant think for yourself. led light isnt exactly pleasant to most. ive always used incandescents, and havent exactly spent a lot of money replacing bulbs.
Every time I buy a bulb that is labelled “60w equivalent” it seems significantly dimmer. I’m glad I bought a few boxes of 100w standard incandescents. Not that I’m going out of my way to use them, most of my lights are CFLs. But sometimes they just don’t work as well. And the fact that the CFLs have an amount of mercury in them which may or may not be dangerous depending on who you ask and what province of china it was made in.
There is a new brand coming on the market soon called “Switch” that does list a 100W equiv. They are not available for purchase, they claim to be doing testing in hotels to see how they perform.
Google search for switch led they should be top result… or directly at http://www.switchlightingco.com/
No idea on prices, lets hops they are not gonna bilk people like Phillips did here
Let’s do some arithmetic!
I’m almost 66 now. A standard 100 Watt bulb, including sales tax, is 27 cents at Dollar Tree.
One bulb provides 1600 lumens of light. Assuming I have a few as 30 bulbs in my house, not all burning at the same time, but I won’t move bulbs from fixture to fixture, so I need to buy replacements for all. All the publicity I see about LEDs conveniently evades mention of the brightness, instead concentrating on power consumption. So, I would probably need four of these to get the same lumens as one standard 100-watt incandescent.
Everyone with me? Keep calculating!
So need 120 of these to replace my 30 standard bulbs. That’s $7.839 including New York city sales tax. Even with electricity here at ~25 cents per kwh, How many years is my break-even point?
But wait kiddies! It gets more complicated:
I said I am almost 66 years old. Yes, yuppies and hipsters, and normal young people, life does not end at 35.
The big questions:
1. Will I still be alive when these things burn out?
1a. Do I need to itemize these things, that are worth more than my jewelry, in my will?
2. What do I do with them if I move to another country where the voltage is 220 instead of 110?
The first person with the correct answer wins a prize: A 15-watt incandescent bulb I inherited when my mother died.
B.
There’s a core flaw in your math. CFLs and LEDs are rated by lumens, but sold as “watt equivalents” because people don’t know how many lumens their current bulbs generate. So a “100 watt equivalent” CFL or LED generates the same # of lumens as a 100 watt incandescent.
So, you only need a 1:1 replacement.
Doing the math, I get a breakeven point on CFL for you at about 500 hours, and at about 2500 hours for LED.
Incandescent ($0.27/bulb, 60 watts, 750 hour life, $0.25/KwH)
CFL ($5/15/10000/$0.25)
LED ($60/10/25000/$0.25)
The upfront price isn’t that important, the vast majority of the spend on a light bulb is for power. At $0.25/KwH, using a 60W incandescent bulb four hours a day costs $22/year in electricity.
Please post your address, so I can contact you to collect my bulb.
For those looking for a cheap alternative check out the LG LED LAMP A19 , they have 810lm at 12.5W (60W equiv).
Estimated life span of 17 years, 3 year warranty (note: save the upc AND the serial barcode AND receipt to take advantage of the warranty), Color accuracy 83, Light Color 2700 (warm white), Official model number is: LB12D827L2W.E80JSU0
I can’t find them online, but they do stock them in Walmart for around $16. I have found the lower watt versions online, but not this 12.5W @810 lumens.
LED light in general just hurts my eyes. Everyone is switching to LED Christmas lights and it’s just awful; I used to love looking at Christmas lights but now I’m faces with these darkly lit dots that my eyes can’t really focus on. So to me, that is LED light.
Another example is the light that comes from my iPhone due to a flashlight app. Great for not killing myself in my dark bedroom when I have to get up and pee, but not the kind of light I want shining in the room when I’m trying to read.
I had a hard enough time with CFL bulbs. We finally found some that put out warm light, but even with 5 of them running (3 floor lamps, 2 of them with 2 bulbs) it’s still slightly darker than I’d like it to be in our little old Chicago apartment living room.
But at least the light is warm–I tried the “daylight” bulbs and almost threw myself through the window as soon as thy were turned on for the first time. They lasted 10 seconds, long enough for me to call my husband in and show him the horrifically unnatural, icy blue, dark light that MIGHT be what daylight looks like after some nuclear winter or other post apocalyptic world? I don’t even know. It was like 100 of my iPhone lights all at once. They went right back to the store.
You can always tell who uses them, too. Drive down the street and look for the windows illuminated with ice blue darkness that is somehow too bright to focus on. I don’t know how people do it.
I am STUNNED that any corporation is wanting to make ANYTHING lasting 20 years. STUNNED!!!!
Now, this begs the question, why can’t they start making everything last 20 years? I hope this starts a trend, and those “experts” that decided we need a built-in obsolescense-based disposable society can go straight to hell along with all the undeserved profits.
I just walked through my house and counted 62 light bulbs. Even at $20 each that would be an up-front investment of $1240. Add to that the fact that I have no faith in the 20-year claim I won’t be buying any soon.
Isn’t there a light bulb made by Thomas Edison that has working since 1901? There is also a Shelby bulb (5-watt carbide filament) in a fire department in California that still works from 1901. Maybe one could learn from the old ways instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
The Model T Ford came out in 1908 and there are still plenty of them on the road. Who needs a Taurus? The T works fine.
/s
I just saw the short documentary “the light bulb conspiracy” yesterday. ironic and a must see!
I dont replace my bulbs that often. And seriously, what if you move?
In two years time, other companies will be in the field and you’ll be able to buy the same light bulb for $30.
How easily does it break? Is it compatible with most lights? Will technology change in 20 years and render it useless?
I’m cheap, I know.
Can’t wait for LEDs to get drastically cheaper.
We have about a dozen LED lamps in use and two dozens CFLs. I can’t stand the CFLs because they start so dim and take two minutes two warm up.
I paid $50 for a nn watt exterior flood bulb and it has been worth it. Instant on despite temperatures well below freezing. Exterior CFL flood lights take anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes to ” warm up ” before they give the needed exterior light :/
I’ll buy them when they are both smoothly dim-able and also color-temperature selectable. In the meantime, my 65 watt recessed incandescents have lasted 5-6 years with only a few needing replacement. Oddly, it’s always the same few that go… could be those dimmers.
Regular light bulbs cost about 50 cents each and last about 2 years at our house — there’s no savings. And if the less than five minutes it takes to change out a light bulb is really intruding into your time…you have bigger issues!
My problem with this “new” light bulb winning a prize is that the same bulb is made here in North Carolina by an American firm that sells them for $40.
http://www.cree.com/lighting
The site is awkward to use.
I’m pretty happy with CFLs. The light doesn’t bother me. I consider myself lucky because everyone seems to hate them.
Read the full info: this bulb will last UP TO 20 years if used no more than 4 hours per day of one-time-on-one-time-off-each-day useage. The phrase “up to 20 years” only means that they’re guaranteeing that it won’t last LONGER than that. If it fails the next day, it’s still lasted UP TO 20 years.
Even assuming that it DOES last that long–well, my 4/$1.50 incandescent light bulbs last 750 hours. At four hours a day useage, that means I can get a half a year out of a bulb. That means that for $1.50, I can get UP TO 2 years worth of light. That’s $15 for 20 years, or 1/4 the cost of this overpriced bulb.
You say you’re not getting six months of useage out of an incandescent bulb? Well, you’re not using it in the specific way that it’s tested–and you won’t get 20 years out of this Philips LED bulb, either, since you won’t use it under the stringent conditions by which they’ve rated the bulb.
And one more thing–
They obviously haven’t tested this bulb for 20 years. They’ve tested it under artificial conditions designed to simulate 20 years of use. There’s no way they can know how long this bulb will last in real-world conditions; by saying “up to 20 years,” they’ve used FTC-approved weasel words that legally cover them when and if the bulb fails much sooner than that.
A $60 lightbulb that lasts 20 years makes no economic sense — any lightbulb that lasts 20 years provides a dubious benefit. Why? Because for one thing, the average American moves every 5 or 6 years. Should I move, I doubt my next home will need the same number of lightbulbs, of the same type and wattage, etc. And if someone finds themselves downsizing from a larger home to a smaller one (as many of us will do at some point in our lives), maybe half of the bulbs purchased will be redundant, and just might end up in a landfill. Even if I don’t move, remodeling or redecorating will likely change my lighting needs over the years. Then there’s the fact that 20 years from now (or even two), the technology will be better and cheaper. In 2032, they might not even be making lamps that use any of the bulbs we can buy today — or replaceable bulbs, period. This “futuristic” idea is in fact short-sighted. (But of course, I’ll keep all my receipts, Phillips — just in case one of your bulbs doesn’t last 20 years, and I need a refund for a bulb that’s probably no longer being manufactured, for a type of lamp that no longer exists, but once provided illumination for a home I no longer own.)
If you sell your home, would you really remove the light bulbs? I know a married couple who did that, and thought it was so cheapskate!
20 years? HA! 12 years ago, my dad was working at the city dump, and found a box of 10 CFL light bulbs. Every one of them is still being used in my house today.
$60, no brainer in waiting for a better price. Home depot has 4 cfls for $7. Over the same 20 years, you’ll need to buy that 4 pack 3 times for a cost of $21.
Anyone know what store is selling it for only 20$???? I will buy. Just give me the link. If not, this is basically an upgrade from their LED 60W eq already on the market which is 800 lumens and 12 watts (this new one is 900 and 10) at the same price. It is better, but I presume the ‘old’ ones will get cheaper.
I’ve read all of the arguments, pro and con. For me the bottom line is to let the marketplace decide which device is best. Eventually, the CFL and LED devices may be attractive to all or some new device will take its place.
For now though, I’d prefer that the government stop crawling up my ass and deciding what’s best for me.
I bought the bulb and it sucks compared to an incandescent bulb.