Pretty good $10 LED light bulb
EcoSmart 429 Lumen LED light bulb, $10 at Home Depot
Home Depot has this 429-lumen LED bulb for $10, so I thought I’d try one and see how it worked.
Pretty good. The light is bright and crisp. It comes on instantly, and it’s dimmable. The bulb is quite directional, so it works much better in a fixture where it is pointed at the surface to be illuminated. A floor lamp or desk lamp would be good applications. When installed in a table lamp where it’s pointed at the ceiling or at the inside of the shade, not so much. So think of it as a little floodlight.
The color quality is very good. It is a bright, slightly warm neutral white which is a neat trick with an LED. I really like the result for reading or cooking. Better than CFL or most incandescent.
The box claims extraordinarily long life for the bulb; I doubt it but we’ll see. I decided to use it over the stove, which (because it is a hot location) will probably shorten its life. Otherwise it’d be great for locations where it gets used a lot or is switched on and off a lot. Or needs to be dimmable.
NOTES:
- Most people who say they don’t like the color of CFL bulbs complain that they aren’t “warm” enough, but what’s really bugging them is the slight green cast. Since the eye is 8 or 10 times as sensitive to green light, that spectrum spike really throws off the result for most people. Of course, some companies do a better job mixing the phosphors, and the GE “Reveal” CFL bulb actually has neodymium-doped glass to filter out the green.
- One big advantage of an LED is you can turn it on and off and then back on again without worrying about hurting it.
Here it is installed above my stove. I took this picture in the daytime to show that it is a strong bulb. When I get up before sunrise to make breakfast, it’s the only light I turn on in the kitchen. Click the picture to embiggen.- Need more light? Check out Philips’ 800-lumen bulb for $25. (h/t @LesJenkins for the link)
- Question: why the hell is “embiggen” not in my spell check dictionary? It’s a perfectly cromulent word.