LED light bulbs

grizzly1911

RosieBirkett wrote: »

Hi there,

I am the Sales Manager for a Cheshire based LED lamp manufacturer and can tell you there are a lot of lamps in the market today that won't be in coming years.

There are 3 major components to an LED lamp that mean it'll work consistantly well and for its full life:
The chip, the heat sink and the driver.

If any of these is made to a poor standard the entire lamp is likely to be compromised. Unfortunately there are not yet any helpful UK standards to meet before distributing the lamps to market and, as a result, the UK is seeing a lot of poor quality products.

I just wanted to write that I'm happy to answer any questions about the market in general and offer tech advice upon request.

The issues around product placement earlier in this thread and others is what I was trying to hilight on the other one.

Good luck and welcome I look forward to picking up m ore info.

buglawton

Oops I can hear the choir marching over the brow of the hill right now....

spam Spam SPAM S_P_A_M

sillygoose

Of all the threads, ones about LED bulbs seem to attract more than their fair share of commercial and spam 'contributors' for various reasons...

All this tells me is there is some very attractive margins in the industry if you can still get away with charging premium.

elstimpo

sillygoose wrote: »

All this tells me is there is some very attractive margins in the industry if you can still get away with charging premium.

I think you will find margins on LED products are far far lower than the other products in the lighting industry. Supply, demand and rising raw material costs make margins very tight and somewhat difficult.

It's disappointing people who are not in the industry, have no knowledge of the products, the margins or anything else make such comments.

TimBuckTeeth

The issue about LED lamps getting hot is not energy saving, but reliability. 3 Watts is 3 Watts no matter how hot it gets. Often the LEDs are overdriven (more than the rated current) to give a brighter light or because of unregulated driver circuits, if they do not have an adequate heatsink to dissipate the heat they will run hot and have a short life.

An aluminium heatsink has a thermal resistance, which describes the heat dissipation to the air, giving a temperature rise for a given input power. A typical GU10 aluminium heatsink could have a thermal resistance of 5C/W which means for a 3W lamp the temperature rise will be 15C. For a multiple LED (3W total) lamp with no heatsink the thermal resistance will be much higher eg. 25C/W which will give a 75C temperature rise.

Lamps with clusters of 3mm or 5mm standard LEDs are invariably poor quality, they are not bright, poor colour and not reliable. The LEDs are cheap and they run hot with no heatsink and unregulated basic capacitor dropper circuit. Cheap imports do not have proper safety checks and approval.
The 5050 type SMD LEDs are slightly better as they are brighter with 3 chips in each LED package. I have some 12V ones for extra lighting in my car boot, but the colour is bluish white. A SMD LED mains powered GU10 lamp has the same disadvantages as the 5mm LED types, some may have slightly better thermal dissipation.

The lamps which use 1W or 3W power LEDs are the minimum I would consider but the quality varies considerably too and you get what you pay for. The LEDs have a metal back to the package to mount directly on a heatsink and a lens is usually used to shape the beam angle. The driver circuits are usually better quality than the cluster types, although cheaper driver circuits will not have a long life. Colour is a problem with cheaper lamps, cool white often very blue tinged. I bought a cheap warm-white 3 x 1W LED lamp on ebay and the brightness not great and the colour is greenish.

It is a bit of a minefield trying to get a decent LED lamp and unfortunately a lot of people will end up getting poor lamps and deciding LEDs are not for them. I would advise sticking to better known brands which are safety tested and should be better quality and more reliable. I have recently bought a 7W warm-white Megaman GU10 lamp and it is pretty good. It gives a fairly wide beam and nice bright white colour, less yellow than halogen but not bluish. It is about as bright as a 35W halogen, but with the heatsink it is longer. Interestingly it is different from other lamps in that it uses two multichip LEDs (similar to : http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1794377 ) on either side of a vertical part of the heatsink in centre of the reflector.

I also recently bought a Toshiba E-core LED 5.5W warm white standard GLS bulb. It is OK in a small hallway, colour good, brightness around 40W incandescent equivalent, doesn't light up the ceiling as much due to the heatsink and downwards pointing half dome diffuser.

gord115

I've just been to Asda and they have some GE bayonet fitting light bulbs for £10. They are rated at 60 lumens, and use 2 watt.

How bright are they? has anyone tried them?

Steve_xx

I've spotted these Eveready GU10 LED's. I was wondering what you folk experienced in these LED products reckoned to these?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eveready-lifespan-spotlight-downlight-friendly/dp/B002U9MN90/ref=sr_1_65?ie=UTF8&qid=1321048908&sr=8-65

aboard_epsilon

Steve_xx wrote: »

I've spotted these Eveready GU10 LED's. I was wondering what you folk experienced in these LED products reckoned to these?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eveready-lifespan-spotlight-downlight-friendly/dp/B002U9MN90/ref=sr_1_65?ie=UTF8&qid=1321048908&sr=8-65

Date first available at Amazon.co.uk: 25 Oct 2009

think they MAY have come on a bit since then ..

all the best.markj

Steve_xx

I guess they could have changed the spec since then? I was just thinking that Eveready being an old name that the product might be fair?

TimBuckTeeth

Steve_xx wrote: »

I've spotted these Eveready GU10 LED's. I was wondering what you folk experienced in these LED products reckoned to these?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eveready-lifespan-spotlight-downlight-friendly/dp/B002U9MN90/ref=sr_1_65?ie=UTF8&qid=1321048908&sr=8-65

I would not buy them. They will be dim at only 1.8W and using a cluster of standard LEDs.
As I mentioned above I would only consider lamps using the 1W or 3W high powered LEDs, as they are brighter and better quality. With a minimum total of 5W for adequate brightness.

1 Star Review on Amazon