The best LED light bulb EVER made is $3.50. Excellent CRI, No Flicker, Even Dimming.

While blue-ish lighting can impair sleep, it's silly to suggest that the blue spike of that ridiculously low magnitude has anything to do with it. After all we don't perceive light as a spectrum, we don't have the requisite hardware to do this, our cones are well represented with a tristimulus model, so there's no way we can actually perceive the spke. The only problem with the blue spike is the CRI, and even that isn't so bad, with reds presenting another CRI compromise.

Also no IKEA lightbulbs in this test? I don't know about their actual CRI or anything (only 80 guaranteed on the ones i bought, the filament style ones boast 90), but to my taste, the light looks beautiful, the endurance has so far been good, and they are ridiculously cheap and the efficiency is on the better side, not the highest but much better than typical and sort of close to the best. Though i should say i live in a 230V region, so i don't know whether the products they offer in your region are of the same quality. That being said issues like flickering would be more distracting here.

The temperature test is not correct. For the same power consumed, the hotter the lightbulb body is, the lower the internal temperature is, because thermal impedance from heat emitting LEDs to case is lower. You need to do this power-normalised, use a dimmer or a variac if you have to.

Would love to see a clear glass version of this test!

That's cool info, but surprisingly useless for EU, couldn't find the UD kind, only two different ones, that are as energy efficient, but 80 CRI :/

This was incredible from beginning to end! As a film professional, I was hanging on every word. Thanks for a comprehensive and helpful review! And thank you for not wasting a second.

Availability in Europe :(

Is this series of bulbs available only in the US?

3x more expensive here in the UK with a dig name

You missed the FEIT Electronics bulbs, sold at Costco. I find these are generally less reliable than the GE's I buy at Sam's Club.

answer at the beginning got you a like and sub! watched the whole video as you're speaking my language with light quality.

every time i change a bulb i write the date on the base in sharpie. 25,000 hours is about 3 years continuous, and i only average 2-3 years of occasional use on led bulbs. i wish i would have kept better track over the last 15 years since i started buying led bulbs. i don't know where they are coming up with these numbers as I've never had an led bulb last even 10% of their claimed life.

Presenter irritates me to no end.

Does the Phillips UD have a similar BR35 or BR40 option?

I wish I had seen this when they were still $3.50 each. They are now $5 each, but if they are good, I guess it's still worth trying, as the dollar store variety don't last much longer than a year for me. It would probably work out the same price in the end (if it lasts as long as four cheap bulbs) but not changing the bulb as often or storing them is worth something.

am I blind or did you not include CREE's 60W bulbs?

I bought the cheapest LED bulbs at walmart then my neighborhood had a power surge and all my LED bulbs.. the actual BULB had melted and shrunk like burning plastic usually does. My houses' electrical system is up to code (as much as a redneck city will care about) but now i'm apprehensive about using LED bulbs for home use.

The inventor of the blue LED works for a company called CREE lighting. They make LED bulbs. I''d be really interested to see how their bulb stacks up on this list.

9 out of 16 of my Philips Ultra Definitions failed within 6 months in both enclosed and open environments. I got warranty replacement but will no longer buy Philips products. I suspect they’ve been value engineered to death.

nah bro protect incandescent

The Phillips bulb scored very high on CRI, even though it had several big spikes on its spectrum. Is it possible that the specific colors in the CRI test happen to be colors that it's good at? It seems like there could be other materials where those spikes would seriously distort their apparent color.

Thank you for this video! Does the CRI change while dimming?

I watched the whole video, even if you gave me the crucial info at the start. The whole video was worth my time.

title is misleading. research Dubai Lamp

Amazing and thorough analysis! Question: Why would a homeowner choose a “daylight” (5000k) bulb versus a “soft white” (2700k) bulb? Philips Ultra HD offers both, the daylight being discounted on Amazon. Is one better for reading? Working? Just general room illumination? Thank you.

You should also test an Ikea led bulp

anyone knows the philips ultra definition aequivalent model in europe? Cant find any ultra definition bulb here.

Its no longer 3.25...

I love that 25,000 hour claim. lol I haven't found any LED bulbs that last more than 6 months.

did you do a smart bulb comparison? I would gladly buy from your link something smartthings or google compatible

You're kidding. $3.50 for a light bulb? Forget it.

What rate are you actually sampling for flicker? Are you actually uses an oscilloscope or a different method. If your not using a oscilloscope than you are not getting meaningful results. Phillips has some of the lowest flicker. Well they don't flicker on and off like other bulbs but they absolutely pulsate pretty badly. Night and day better than other bulbs but you can absolutely see the pulsating even in a 960FPS recording. Even 240FPS can show it. This is far from acceptable for anyone with migraines especially with auras. Its tolerable but flicker is absolutely unnecessary and doesn't need to exist.

Fantastic work! If only a national lab did measurements like this... uniform testing of numerous relevant statistics. One thing I would've like to have seen is how many lumens each bulb actually had, including relative to its stated watt-equivalent (which must've been 60 w.e. for all bulbs here). This is not so critical for these middle-of-the-road 60 w.e. bulbs, but can become much more interesting and important for lower or especially much higher stated watt-equivalent bulbs. Stated another way: In my experience they sometimes grossly overstate how bright they are (in w.e.) and you can tell it's true just by seeing its stated lumens. (Sometimes even that is exaggerated, which a glance at the watts indicates.) Most people do not know what the actual lumens arefor even an incandescent "standard bearer". By glancing at that, you can put a little more depth (and educating) into your future videos. Especially the farther the bulbs are from 60 watt-equivalents.

P.S. For some relatively inexpensive energy meters that show considerably more detail than that old Kil-A-Watt, try the Walfront (ATorch) AC85265V or the Zhurui PR10-E on Amazon.

Thanks again. GREAT and informative video. Love your fast (but not too fast) style, with the conclusion right up front!

I was already replying with my negative experience on LED bulbs overall (because even though I bought premium brands they broke way earlier than I expected) before the end of the vid. But I have to say: good in-depth review. Curious to see how they hold up after a couple of years in use.

I would like you to keep them burning for 2 years and see which one makes true their claims for burning hours. I just brought back Philips leds because they started flickering dimmed just before 2 years wareanty. Also had a lot of Osram's fail after just out of warranty time about 3 to 4 years. Unexpectedly old school edison bulbs from China (they are banned here in The NL (land of Philips) they still work until this day and I bought those 4 years ago. I pay a fixed monthly price for energy (which is not common) so I don't care and use a variety of lights from old school edisons to TL and fancy LEDs.

I bought old school edison bulbs and the light is so much warmer and more cozy. My Philips leds started flickering while dimmed. The old school indescent dim perfectly. I'm not convinced at al.

I wonder if these results hold up when comparing the high lumen versions of these bulbs. I use the 1600 lumen version of the GE Relax HD bulb, you tested the 800 lumen version.

I only use incandescent, and I just ordered the Phillips bulbs with your link to test. Excited to see how they compare. Though LEDs will not replace incandescent lights or other black body radiators until they can reproduce red properly.

Faultless. Thank you.

The blue spike has been debunked. It's irrelevant to sleep.

Do you have any plans to do a comparison of remote control bulbs, like Hue, like you did for regular LED bulbs in this video? If you do, can you do white as well as at least one or two white/colored ones (again, like Hue's)? Thanks for your great work!

You can just lower the wattage of each LED diode to about 0.1 to 0.3 watts and they will last almost forever. Mostly the wattage is about 0.8 to 1.2 what's way too much and will cause an early failure. To lower the wattage you just have to increase the resistance of the resistors controlling the voltage regulator. I made all of my led bulbs consuming only about one third of it's claimed power consumption. As an example, one 6 watt led now consuming only 2.4 watts and is still bright enough.

Because it's a light bulb?

Great video so far. One minor nit though, I fail to see how US power (120V AC, 60Hz) goes from a max of 170 to -170?? It actually goes from 120V to -120V (plus or minus an allowed variance)

all of these bulbs are trash. look up dubai lamps

About temperature measurements, specifically of Philips HD lamp. What you measured is actually borderline terrible. The low temperature doesn't mean it would be long lasting. With same power draw at same luminous flux and same area, lower temperature means far worse thermal flux, i.e. internal components stays hotter.
You could put shitty passive radiator onto powerful CPU without much of thermal pase, and great radiator with fan with metallic thermal paste, and second one could end up hotter, while CPU temperature would be cooler by a lot in second case, because heat distributes more evenly between the heat source and radiator, and higher temperature of radiator means better efficiency of heat dissipation.

Damn not available in EU that sucks

Thanks for the upload! Unfortunately i was unable to find the Ultra Definition in German stores. Do they have a special name in Germany I'm not aware of? Best regards

Please test the new philips ultra high efficient 210Lumen/Watt!!!

Man you’re ahero

"soft white" just call it red, sheesh... if it's not at LEAST 4600k it's not white at ALL

I'm not as dedicated a lightning nerd as I thought, apparently. BUT - I thought those linear "filament" style LED lamps used several tiny LEDs linked together to make the filament?