Has anybody tried this new style led bulb?

[velvetfoot]

I had to replace two led bulbs that intermittently stop working. I found these in HD. About $2.50 each. I put in 4. They look good and are very light, compared to the replaced bulbs. I wonder if the few electronics will make them more reliable?

 

[woodgeek]

I am a big fan of those so-called 'Filament LED' bulbs. The emitters are cooled by filling the bulb with Helium gas (which is excellent conductor). Because the He is (obviously) transparent, tis amounts to a clear heat sink, and higher luminous efficiency....many are 100-110 lum/W, versus the 85-90 of 'conventional' LEDs.

I think they will take over, and the Chines apparently agree....they are making them by the boatload in every form factor, some with frosting on the glass. I have bought many shapes and sizes from amazon, all Chinese made, and had zero problems (over a couple years).

One limitation....the heat rejection is ultimately limited by the (Standard) glass bulb size...and this seems to limit the wattage to <9W, so max 900-1000 lumens.

I thought of them as good bulbs for @Ashful, but apparently he is very choosey about CRI: likes it to be 0.99+

 

[velvetfoot]

They are very light in weight. Maybe it's the helium.

 

[sportbikerider78]

I haven't tried them but have been tempted. I think they would look very cool in outdoor applications like lamp post lights.

 

[woodgeek]

Of course they are also made in 'retro' Edison bulb shapes....and show up in trendy restaurants, often dimmed to a low level.

I am certain that 98% of folks that see them think they are incandescent.

I also got an outdoor string of 12 1W small filament bulbs for exterior illumination. Very nice ambiance, cheap and 100 lum/W (the listing is incorrect at 50 lum/W).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LEJG67Q/?tag=hearthamazon-20

 

[iamlucky13]

They're not dimmable, and I don't know if they might have some faint flicker that some people are sensitive to, but their simplicity lends itself to very good efficiency.

By the way, the new Philips 7W bulbs (the lowest power 60W equivalent I've seen) that just showed up at Home Depot appear to be a filament bulb, even though it's frosted. Very low price, too. I haven't tried one yet, but I suspect it will work well in enclosed fixtures due to the low heat production.

 

[velvetfoot]

This is the one I got. Dimmable, haven't noticed any flicker, cheap. I believe not for enclosed fixtures. I like the clear blub with artsy filament and apparent simplicity. And the price, although I haven't been checking regularly.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/EcoSmart...D-Light-Bulb-4-Pack-A7A19A60WESGD01/301766884

edit: I bought some more today.

 

[iamlucky13]

Thanks for the link. Likewise, here's the Philips bulb. They're surprisingly similar.

Both are also the same length as standard A19 bulbs. Most A19 LED's are 1/2 inch or so longer, and so may protrude slightly from fixtures.

 

[jharkin]

Thats interesting - where to they fit the control electronics? Miniaturized enough to cram into the plug base now?

I had thought these where just getting popular due to the retro fad - Ive seen them discussed on my old house board as options for old exposed bulb fixtures in restored Victorians, etc. I didn't realize the design had functional benefits.

 

[iamlucky13]

The electronics usually aren't that much bigger than the base already, although I know there's some with more complex drivers. Here's somebody else's tear down of one of the Slimstyle bulbs, for example. I've taken apart a dead Feit from Costco and found a similar sized driver, so they didn't need to lose much size:
(broken link removed to http://www.notcot.com/images/2014/02/slim0.jpg)

Perhaps just as importantly, they cool the LED's differently. Most existing LED bulbs use a metal core circuit board to transfer heat from the LED's to the metal case. The size of metal case is dictated by the cooling needs more than it is the electronics inside.

These "filament style" bulbs use a larger number of smaller LED's such that each can be cooled by the air (or whatever gas they use) inside the bulb. The air naturally circulates to move heat to the outside of the bulb, and then there is enough glass area to keep the whole bulb at a reasonable operating temperature even though glass doesn't conduct heat nearly as well as aluminum. I think I read somewhere they pressurize the bulb to increase the effectiveness of circulating heat to the glass. I suspect Woodgeek is right, however, that their total power level is limited to not much more than these consume. They'd probably have to increase the physical bulb size to go beyond a 75 Watt equivalent, although most 100 W equivalent LED's with metal cases are larger than the standard A19 size anyways.

Also, every improvement they can make in power consumption of the bulb reduces the cooling requirements of the bulbs.

 

[begreen]

Wondering how this will affect global helium supplies?

 

[iamlucky13]

Wondering how this will affect global helium supplies?

I find these kinds of questions interesting and often do back-of-the-envelop calcs to get a rough idea.

Google says 2.5 billion light bulbs are made per year (not sure if that's current, or back when most of the world was using bulbs that only last 1000 hours). A standard bulb is 2.5 inches in diameter, and surely the neck increases the total volume less than 1.5x compared to a simple sphere. That means the volume is roughly 12 cubic inches, or 5000 bulbs per cubic meter. So at 1 atmosphere, making all our bulbs this way would take 500,000 cubic meters of helium per year.

Global production of helium is about 175 million cubic meters (not counting what isn't captured, since only the natural gas fields with the richest levels of helium bother extracting it).

That means it would be an 0.3% increase in helium demand. If the bulbs are pressurized, multiply that by whatever the pressure is in atmospheres.

 

[jharkin]

So bulbs are not a big deal... Interestingly I just went and looked up what the total world helium reserves are - seems I completely misdeed a story last year that they found a new field in Africa adding another 6 or 7 years to the previously estimated 20 years worth remaining worldwide.

Seems there may be more of it than we thought.

 

[woodgeek]

Great answer. I figure the He in one kids balloon can fill all the LED bulbs in my house and cover me for 10 years. And my kids were at 2-5 balloons/week there for several years.

I don't think its pressurized....sometimes lower pressure improves the conductivity....I should go look it up.

And H2 would work nearly as well.

 

[woodgeek]

A nice article with links to teardowns and nice comments:

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/guest-blogs/led-filament-bulbs

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And my 2 year old thread:

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/if-you-miss-those-incandescent-filaments.142331/#post-1920763

 

[iamlucky13]

So bulbs are not a big deal... Interestingly I just went and looked up what the total world helium reserves are - seems I completely misdeed a story last year that they found a new field in Africa adding another 6 or 7 years to the previously estimated 20 years worth remaining worldwide.

Seems there may be more of it than we thought.

Reserves are generally estimated based on what is currently economical. If we actually started to run out of helium from the current gas fields, so the price went up, we'd just stop throwing so much of it away from the overwhelming majority of natural gas fields where the helium is not captured, because it would become profitable to capture it from more fields.

 

[jharkin]

The cool thing is these bulbs make the old L-prize bulbs from 5 years ago look quaint now. In retrospect I should not have been so quick to jump on the bandwagon... had I waited I could have converted the entire house for the (subsidized!) price I spent on 3 of those just to play around

 

[Highbeam]

The cool thing is these bulbs make the old L-prize bulbs from 5 years ago look quaint now. In retrospect I should not have been so quick to jump on the bandwagon... had I waited I could have converted the entire house for the (subsidized!) price I spent on 3 of those just to play around

I was thinking the same thing. Dang it, now something is better. Aesthetically better and more efficient.

Sure, only 1 less watt for the same output but that's 10%! (not exact numbers)

 

[velvetfoot]

First failure today. Two of the filaments stopped glowing. Remainder glowing faintly.
Far from the 15,000 service hours promised.

PS: Ever notice while stopped at an led stoplight how many of the leds aren't lit?
PPS: They do help with powering the house during an outage with a 2,000 watt genny.
PPPS: At least they're cheaper.

 

[tadmaz]

My local Ace hardware has the occasional sale on LED bulbs, 4 for $1. 25 cents a piece. Reliability is ok so far, the R20 shape seems to be the least reliable.

 

[begreen]

My local Ace hardware has the occasional sale on LED bulbs, 4 for $1. 25 cents a piece. Reliability is ok so far, the R20 shape seems to be the least reliable.

R style bulbs are often installed base up in ceiling cans. This concentrates the heat more around the electronics which can shorten their lifespan, probably from drying out the caps.

 

[maple1]

R style bulbs are often installed base up in ceiling cans. This concentrates the heat more around the electronics which can shorten their lifespan, probably from drying out the caps.

I'd guess 90% of bulbs get installed base up. In whatever fixture. All of ours are, that I can think of, anyway.

 

[velvetfoot]

These clear led bulbs with the 'filaments' have been more reliable than other led bulbs I had. Still didn't make two years of very light usage though. They do look good and now cost $1.34 each. I hope it's not gonna be a trend for me with these bulbs.

(broken link removed)

 

[woodgeek]

As with all things, these filament LED bulbs vary by manufacturer quality and ruthless cost cutting. I suspect that as a class there is no reason they would be less reliable than the other kind of LED bulb. I'v been running quite a few filament LEDs the last few years, which were more expensive when I bought them...and they have held up very well.

I like the dimmable Phillips ones, that have 4 filaments that run warm white, and two that run reddish and are only activated in dimming....giving a 'warm glow' effect.

 

[Gunfixr]

I have some that have a spiral twisted set of "filaments", a retro Edison bulb. They are inna chandelier, so are base down. Haven't been using them long yet, plus not in a location to get used all the time.
Off white, semi yellow light, good cool factor. Not cheap like discussed here, $7 a bulb.