Saturday, November 24, 2012

LED Bulbs vs. CFL bulbs

Might sound a lame on a super shopping weekend, but I went shopping for a light bulb tonight. Since the compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) last forever I couldn't remember whether it was 'bright white' or 'day light' that I bought the last time. Now you may ask, "why don't you take the old bulb out and read the fine print?" Well, of course I did just that after I returned home. It would have saved me hours deciding in the store aisle. Oh, I ending up buying 'day light.' And yes, it's real important.

If you weren't aware, CFL bulbs are old style. The bulbs modern day people are using are LED's. CFL's replaced incandescents, and now LED's are replacing CFL's. Well, almost. LEDs are still too expensive, and I don't really know if they last so much longer that they're money effective. Another thing that I realized after I returned home was for some reason it never occured to me to order light bulbs off the Internet. Anyways, the way I understand it, is that the hour ratings for an LED's are based on the LED's fading to 80-percent of their original brightness. The CFL bulb that I replaced was still working but the light was getting so dim. Thusly, so even if the label on a CFL bulb states it'll last 50,000-hours, it doesn't mean it'll provide useful light for that many hours. That's where LED's are better. Well enough talk about how better LED's light up our lives because I still ended up buying a CFL bulb. Actually, with LED's threatening to make CFL bulbs fade away into extinction, CFL's are getting cheaper.

4 comments:

Kay said...

For a while there our CFLs were burning out within a few months. It was so aggravating. However, lately... they've been doing OK. I don't remember if we'd bought cheaper bulbs or what. Art is thinking maybe LEDs are the way to go sooooooon.

RONW said...

Kay- Led's are like $20, but still worthwhile if you can afford them. Online probably cheaper. CFL's take a while to reach full brightness after you flick the switch. After they get old, they only reach 50% brightness anyways. To me, the Led's advantage is that you could use 90 watts safely because Led's don't generate much heat.

Cloudia said...

Nice to know who I can ask (You!) about these things, Ron :-)


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RONW said...

Cloudia- dunno about other people, but when you get olden, I don't like walking around in dimly lit rooms. Can't find CFL's in 90 watts so forth.

Led's do make up for their cost by their extra low electricity consumption. Way way more than CFL's.

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