UPDATED WITH PHILIPS 13 WATT LED BULB ADDED (75 watt equivalent)

At the Lounge Network, we are great fans of LED lighting technology. However we have found affordable high quality LED light bulb replacements for conventional E27 (Edison Screw) and B22 (Bayonet Cap) Fitting bulbs, quite difficult to source in the New Zealand market. There have been a small number of ‘No Name’ and ‘House’ brand bulbs available at an affordable price for a few years, but very few leading name brands. But that is now beginning to change with Philips releasing a range of more affordable LED bulbs, that fit many existing conventional light fittings, and they are available at regular hardware and lighting stores.

We are all about embracing new technology, especially if it means saving power and reducing our carbon footprint. We therefore decided to change our current energy saver CFLs, with these new Philips LED bulbs which can now be sourced for less that $NZ 20, and write a review about our first impressions of them.

Unboxing the Philips LED Light Bulb

The good thing about LED bulbs with conventional B22 and E27 connectors, is that they can usually fit into existing light fittings without any modification to the light fitting. So there is often no need to replace existing light fittings. Although please read the bulbs specifications to check clearances and other requirements before installing them, as LEDs may not be suitable for all existing light fittings. Many LED lights now being sold by lighting stores are an integrated light fitting and bulb, and thus have non user replaceable bulbs. This means that if the LED light fails, you may need to replace the entire light fitting too. As these fittings are usually wired in, this will often require you getting in an electrician to do this for you. It is true that LED light bulbs should last many years, but there will be a certain percentage that may fail prematurely, or may get damaged by power surges. So what do you do if the manufacturer no longer makes the light and fitting that you previously purchased? You may end up with a light fitting that doesn’t match the others, or needing to replace all of your fittings so they all match again. The cheapest LED light fittings with built in bulbs that we have seen, start from about $60, and we have seen some for over $150, just for a single light. So there is a good amount of money to be made selling LED light fittings at the moment.

Products above are from the Amazon USA website, and maybe designed for the USA market. Therefore they may not operate on New Zealand voltage.

However you may not need to spend that sort of money, in order to benefit from LED lighting technology in your house. These Philips LED bulbs cost around $20, and it can fit into many existing light fittings, so they are only a fraction of the price of the integrated LED fitting/bulb option. This is why we prefer LED bulbs that have regular connectors on them. We predict that in the future as the price falls , these LED bulbs will become known as energy saver bulbs, and will replace the existing CFL energy saver bulbs. Up until fairly recently, the cheaper LED bulbs were very low power, maybe only 1 or 2 watts, making them unsuitable for regular lighting, and more suitable for things like stair lighting. But thankfully that has now changed.

The LED bulbs we are reviewing are called the ‘Philips LEDbulb’, and their technical specification is below:

The first thing we should note, is that we initially wanted to do our review on the 10W Philips LED bulb (60 Watt incandescent equivalent), but according to the Philips website, there are only two stockists in the Wellington region that currently sell the Philips brand of LED bulbs. They were Bunnings and Lighting Direct. However when we went into Lighting Direct, they didn’t know anything about them, and only had Philips CFLs. Bunnings only had a limited supply of LED bulbs, and didn’t have any 10 watt ones.  We were told by Bunnings staff that they were having trouble getting B22 bulbs, as most were being supplied in the E27 fitting format, and ironically most of the light fittings they sold were B22 fittings. Bunnings either had 13 W Cool Daylight LED bulbs in the E27 fitting, or  8W & 5 W LED bulbs in both the E27 and B22 fitting. So we decided to go with the 8W , B22, ‘warm white’ ones. So availability of these bulbs still appears to be a problem.

The first thing we noticed after unboxing the Philips LED bulb, was that it was noticeably heavier than a traditional incandescent bulb, probably due to the electronics in the driver. The size and shape of the bulb was more like a traditional incandescent bulb, and appeared to be an all solid plastic construction, apart from the metal connector which is the same conventional light bulb.

The box said that they are suitable for down lighters with a minimum of 3 inch diameter. Our down lighters are a lot larger, and are also ‘Philips’, so size wasn’t a problem. Installing the bulb was the same as any normal B22 bulb.

As with an CFL energy saver light bulb, an LED bulb also contains electronics in it’s base to ‘drive’ the bulb. In LED bulbs, this is called a driver, and it is because of this driver that LEDs and CFLs tend to be longer in size than their incandescent equivalents, so they can extend out of light fittings and look ugly. However the bulb we are reviewing isn’t any longer in dimension, and is almost the identical size to a regular bulb. However the more powerful Philips LED bulbs are longer and wider, so may not fit in as many existing light fittings.

Philips LED Light Bulb on the right, compared to a conventional 40W incandescent bulb on the left.

Upon turning on the bulb and comparing it to existing CFL bulbs, it was noticeably brighter, with a more startling white light quality. It did appear to have a slight blue / green tinge to the light, compared to the CFL bulb ,which produced a more yellow (warm) colour of light. Infact we would say that they have more of a cool white light to them. We also noticed that the light on the wall from the LED bulb had more of an edge to it, where the CFL bulb light was more even and distributed across the wall surface. This may have been partly because the LED light has a white back part to it, containing the driver and electronics, so less light gets reflected by the down-lighters inbuilt reflector, from the back of the LED bulb. The CFLs can take a good 10 minutes to fully warm up, but even after 10 minutes, the LED bulb was still noticeably whiter and brighter. Although this was difficult to photograph, we have a comparative photo below, comparing the new LED and older CFL bulb. The LED is on the left (furtherest away), and the CFL is on the right (closest). We should note that the existing CFLs are about 6 months old, and are 12 watt (60 watt equivalent) ecobulb spiral bulbs, so theoretically they should produce a far brighter light that these 8W (40 Watt equivalent bulbs). As a result of this, we consider these 8W LED (eq 40W) bulbs suitable replacements for the 12W CFL (eq 60W) bulbs, even though their equivalent wattage is less.

To view the Pros and Cons and conclusion of this LED Light Bulb Review, please click the Facebook Like button below, and you will then be able to view it.

Please note that we didn’t carry out any scientific tests or measurements on these bulbs. Our review is solely based on our own visual observations in real world conditions. We don’t accept any liability for any information published here.

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