I don’t why, but it seems like I’m constantly changing light bulbs at my house. Normal incandescent bulbs last only a couple weeks in some of my lights meaning every other time I hit the switch it feels like I’m needing to pull out the stepstool and replace some bulbs. I would love to use LED-based light rather than the little florescent bulbs I’ve started using because I don’t care for the color of light they produce.
The problem is that most LED light bulbs are either too dim or too expensive for me to justify. Finally, LED light bulbs are beginning to come down in price and increase in brightness to the point where you can use them in your average light fixture. Home improvement center Lowe’s has a new line of LED bulbs sold under the Utilitech brand that are surprisingly affordable.
The company offers several different watt ratings under the Utilitech name including a 100 W equivalent. That 100 W equivalent bulb consumes 23 W of power and produces a warm white light color in the 3000K range. The bulbs are rather odd looking with a very large finned heatsink and the yellow protrusion where the LEDs are actually housed.
I’d like to see the bulb in a fixture to get an idea of how much of that is going to stick out or if it’s approximately the same size as a traditional bulb. With looks aside, the 100 W version sells for $34.98. That’s still pretty expensive, but it has a 25,000 hour lifespan meaning you won’t have to replace this bulb for years, in fact the manufacturer says 22 years. Perhaps even more appealing than the 100 W equivalent is a incredibly cheap 40 W equivalent sold under the same brand name that costs $9.98. That isn’t much more expensive than the small florescent lights on the market and you shouldn’t have to wait for an LED bulb warm-up the way you do a florescent bulb to get full light strength.
[via Lowe’s]
Utilitech LED light bulbs get cheap at Lowe’s is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
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