The $5 LED light bulb is here

LED light bulbs have come down in price significantly since I bought the first ones at $30 a pop. I just came across this CNET article that mentions brand name bulbs available at regular retailers in the $5 to $10 range. http://www.cnet.com/products/philips-60w-equivalent-led-bulb-9290011350/

We've replaced almost all our light bulbs in the house with LED bulbs over the last few years and are not looking back. 2700K bulbs create light that is just as pleasant as incandecents, no mercury issues, super low power consumption and 10-20 year lifespans.

I monitor our power consumption pretty detailed since we have solar panels and our overall power consumption in the last 3-4 years has dropped by over 20%, even though we added a larger hot tub to the house. While I can't proof it 100%, the light bulbs appear to be a major factor in that.

I like the LED lights. They look like normal light bulbs.  Hate the pig tail lights, although I still have a bunch of them around the house.

This is good to hear.

I also converted all my bulbs to LED -- albeit when the prices were a bit higher ;( I've been for LED bulbs replacing incandescent since I was in college and thought it would be a good idea then, but at the time no company was making them...

Light output color/temp bothers me eyes. I did put 2 of those 5-10 year bulbs in the fixture in the bathroom because they are such a bitch to change.

for some reason these never work in our house - they flicker or burn out. 

cleg said:

for some reason these never work in our house - they flicker or burn out. 

Do you have dimmers?  If so, the dimmers likely need to be replaced to work on the lower wattage.  

qrysdonnell, not your fault, but I see a one-pack of those bulbs is $20, and a two-pack is $50. Wake up, Amazon.

Tom_Reingold said:

qrysdonnell, not your fault, but I see a one-pack of those bulbs is $20, and a two-pack is $50. Wake up, Amazon.

The two-pack is not sold by Amazon. It's "Sold by E P D and Fulfilled by Amazon."

Now the six pack for $87.9 (or almost $15/bulb) is sold by Amazon. Soyes, a bit crazy.

Tom_Reingold said:

qrysdonnell, not your fault, but I see a one-pack of those bulbs is $20, and a two-pack is $50. Wake up, Amazon.

The two pack was still $50 when the single bulbs were $15.

Home Depot generally has good deals on Wink-enabled stuff as well.  Actually I just looked at their site and I do see a $25 starter kit there, as well as the bulbs being $15.  They do have a 90W equivalent LED flood for $25 http://goo.gl/OsjKMS

Steve said:

cleg said:

for some reason these never work in our house - they flicker or burn out. 

Do you have dimmers?  If so, the dimmers likely need to be replaced to work on the lower wattage.  

That is probably it. All the bedrooms & living room have dimmers.

Tom, the recessed floods in my house were the first that I replaced. At the time Feit was about the only company that made decent ones, I also got some HD house brand ones. None of them are 100W equivalents, so I can't speak to the ones you mentioned. However the newer GE bulbs seem to get good reviews.

I also have a few 1600 Lumens bulb shaped LEDs from Osram/Sylvania and Phillips and they are very good.

cleg said:

for some reason these never work in our house - they flicker or burn out. 

 If you have older dimmers, this might be a problem, we had two that flickered and made a humming sound and both times changing the dimmer fixed it.

I have so far not had a single bulb fail in my house.

Freeway said:

Light output color/temp bothers me eyes. I did put 2 of those 5-10 year bulbs in the fixture in the bathroom because they are such a bitch to change.

Current LEDs come in a variety of color temps and spectrums. Some of the off brand ones early on made for bad lighting conditions. All the bulbs that I have bought in the last 2-3 years make for great light. I would give it another try.

Bulbs also need to be rated for dimmers.  Good luck.

Steve said:

Bulbs also need to be rated for dimmers.  Good luck.

 While most LED's these days are dimmable, some are not. Definitely check on the packaging before buying.

We have one particular 60-watt equivalent bulb at home, and I measured its consumption with a kill-a-watt meter. It uses 5 watts! It is almost completely cool to the touch, even after burning for hours. I didn't check to see if it really puts out the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb, so maybe it's not really using 8% of the original power, but any way you slice it, it's a huge savings!

Tom, to answer your earlier question re 100w eq LED bulbs -- i actually have 120w eq LEDs that use 24w -- they are SUPER bright producing 2200 lumens, but they are in br40 form factor with majority of the bulb being a heatsink

Tom_Reingold said:

We have one particular 60-watt equivalent bulb at home, and I measured its consumption with a kill-a-watt meter. It uses 5 watts! It is almost completely cool to the touch, even after burning for hours. I didn't check to see if it really puts out the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb, so maybe it's not really using 8% of the original power, but any way you slice it, it's a huge savings!

 ... over incandescent. 

I think the best comparison is to the cost of a CFL alternative.  And this muddys the water ALOT!  A 60W eq CFL uses about 15W.  If your LED uses 5W you're only saving an add'l 10W.  1kWh would be equal to 100 hrs of use.  Now consider the cost per kWh... which is less than 20 cents.

If you use that particular light 4 hrs per night it will take 25 nights to save an additional whopping 20 cents.  What's that...like 3 added Starbucks every 2 yrs.

Apollo_T said:

Tom_Reingold said:

We have one particular 60-watt equivalent bulb at home, and I measured its consumption with a kill-a-watt meter. It uses 5 watts! It is almost completely cool to the touch, even after burning for hours. I didn't check to see if it really puts out the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb, so maybe it's not really using 8% of the original power, but any way you slice it, it's a huge savings!

 ... over incandescent. 

I think the best comparison is to the cost of a CFL alternative.  And this muddys the water ALOT!  A 60W eq CFL uses about 15W.  If your LED uses 5W you're only saving an add'l 10W.  1kWh would be equal to 100 hrs of use.  Now consider the cost per kWh... which is less than 20 cents.

If you use that particular light 4 hrs per night it will take 25 nights to save an additional whopping 20 cents.  What's that...like 3 added Starbucks every 2 yrs.

Except CFL bulbs put out ugly light, contain hazardous materials, and don't last as long. 

ParticleMan said:

Except CFL bulbs put out ugly light, contain hazardous materials, and don't last as long. 

They also don't have slow start up problems.

I will say that since I've switched to putting in mostly LED bulbs I can definitely say I prefer them.

We still use CFL bulbs in our ceiling fans since we had a LED bulb start humming and then smoke when we installed it there.  I think it might be because of the downward facing light fixture, they can't handle heat and downward facing fixtures capture the heat they put out.

In other fixtures we have been getting rid of the CFL bulbs through attrition.  I don't know if we have any incandescent bulbs left except for the fridge and the oven.

I have a few that are three years old, but before that they were too expensive for me to consider so none in my home are older than three years.  I've had good results with the Phillips brand.  @Scully purchased another brand and it burned out in less than a year.  I don't recall the brand off the top of my head.  I've heard they are covered under warranty, but who actually keeps receipts for light bulbs?

I have Edison bulbs that have lasted longer in my house than the CFL ones. I'll be happy to start switching over to LEDs.

You'll need to buy CREE brand LED bulbs (which are by far the best IMHO) at Home Depot, as they have an agreement, and prices will be much higher outside Home Depot.

We find the CREE "soft white" bulb performs identical (color temperature, etc) to an incandescent bulb, but the 60W CREE seems to produce about as much light as a 75W incandescent, which is a bonus.  The new CREE bulbs which came out in the past month or so are made of plastic, instead of glass, and I'm not familiar with their performance.

The 100W CREE works wonderfully in outdoor fixtures, and I'm always shocked that people leave the exterior of their homes completely dark at night when the cost is just pennies to light up the property at night.

peteglider said:

the best bargains in LEDs are at Ikea -- they're all $5 or less, sometimes on sale for half price.

Not really if you look at the chart from the link given in the first post. Lumens are deficient (25 % lower than Philips) and power usage is excessive (60 lumens per watt vs 94 for the Philips bulb).

 Maybe they are really a case of you get what you pay for.

We use the Cree 60 watt LEDs for our porch lights, which are turned on via a light sensor and thus on all night, and I am surprised how much brighter they are than the 60 watt incandescents they replaced. I dislike CFLs, which never seem to make a room feel well lit, and find the LEDs far more effective. We use them not so much to save electricity as because they  are supposed to last so much longer and are thus more convenient for hard to reach places, including ceiling fixtures. I have not yet tried them in regular lamps because we have a good supply of incandescents on hand, but will certainly  transition to the LEDs rather than CFLs when we run out.