LED bulbs a total bust at Catch a Gideon

November 10th, 2006 by digerati

I recently wrote about LED light bulbs on sale at Think Geek. Ordered a spot light and the “vivid” bulb.

I received them the other day. Unfortunately, they are a total bust and I’m returning them.

The good side of LED:

very low power (watts) for the output in lumens
very low heat produced
hard to damage because they are solid state
last forever (up to 200,000 hours)

The problems:

High cost of bulbs. This is somewhat inconsequential given the length of time they will last
Color is awful. The color of the light is bluish white, like a xeon headlight. It feels very unnatural in a room. Also would look strange in a kitchen when focused on the food.
Bulbs didn’t fit most fixtures. The Spotlight was too wide to fit into standard canister lights, though only by a quarter of an inch or so. The vivid bulb didn’t fit in some lamps because the base of the bulb is too wide.
Light is too focused. They would work alright for a reading lamp (except they didn’t fit in mine). But for a lamp for a room it doesn’t work.
Not bright. The brightness didn’t compare remotely with a standard bulb.

So basically they were a total bust. I’d recommend them for accent lighting and maybe for a reading lamp but not for anything else. It’s really too bad, I think the LED bulbs will eventually be a great source of lighting. Perhaps other brands have better colors or brightness or something.