Fudging on Lighting Facts

I bought a 9 watt, 800 Lumen, 5000K 2 pack of LED bulbs for $20 from Menards. They were no name brands, but I've had good luck with low cost LEDs, so I figured I'd try them out. My first LED bulb disappointment. First these are no brighter than the 450-500 lumen 6 - 7 watt LED bulbs I've tried. My "room bounce" test confirmed it. Secondly, the light quality was poor. The other 5000K bulbs show the redness in my skin where these lacked the color rendering even though the color temp was the same. I returned them. Junk

Second is a Utilitech branded bulb from Lowes. This is a 3000K, 800 Lumen bulb rated 9.99 watts (yes that is how it is shown on the box!). My Kill-A-Watt meter shows it at 12.5 watts which is way out of spec. I'm keeping this one because it is still 64 lumens per watt (My baseline is that LED bulbs must be better than 60 l/w before I consider them). It also seems properly bright and has a high power factor.

I'd be curious for a 2nd opinion - next time you're in Menards, snag one of the Polaroid '60W' lamps. They are the absolute cheapest 60W equivalent I've seen, at $6.50 (I don't think they're subsidized). I've bought a few and they draw 10W - the color temp seems honest, at least they seem a touch less yellow than a real incandescent and they are as bright as a 60W incandescent. The only catch I've seen is they're not dimmable, though they seem to dim fine with a variac - just not on a conventional dimmer.

If I can find one for that price, I'll check it out. I don't recall seeing the Polaroid branded bulb the last time I was there which would have been a couple weeks ago when I bought those aforementioned crappy bulbs.

brickbat said:

I'd be curious for a 2nd opinion - next time you're in Menards, snag one of the Polaroid '60W' lamps. They are the absolute cheapest 60W equivalent I've seen, at $6.50 (I don't think they're subsidized). I've bought a few and they draw 10W - the color temp seems honest, at least they seem a touch less yellow than a real incandescent and they are as bright as a 60W incandescent. The only catch I've seen is they're not dimmable, though they seem to dim fine with a variac - just not on a conventional dimmer.

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Bad idea .. they are not designed to run on what essentially is low voltage and if they don't have brownout detection, the power supply may get quite hot.

semiman

Since when was experimenting a "bad idea"? Good grief, what is this place coming to...

And please explain in more detail about your "quite hot" theory.

You are right, you should keep experimenting with non-dimmable bulbs on variacs ......

Your advice on this wasn't sought and isn't desired.

Whatever ***

So...what was the point of this thread again? A Rant? A flaming flamer? A request for advice? Reported 'results' are acquired over a rather large sample of test products with an average deviance of 10-15%. Furthermore, variations in apparent lumens are not always too apparent in real world use especially if the CCTs are different.

P.S., it is actually quite dangerous to have overheating electronics in an enclosed residential area, as most people are ill equipped to deal with an electrical fire.

Basically, 'fudging' facts might not be fudging at all, maybe it's just the round average over a large sample, or maybe the combination of CCT fluctuation and 10% difference in lumen output are enough to seem like manufacturers have been fudging facts. It costs too much to individually check each and every unit of product, and much more cost efficient to replace problematic products and fix the underperforming ones.

JohnR66 said:

Second is a Utilitech branded bulb from Lowes. This is a 3000K, 800 Lumen bulb rated 9.99 watts (yes that is how it is shown on the box!). My Kill-A-Watt meter shows it at 12.5 watts which is way out of spec. I'm keeping this one because it is still 64 lumens per watt (My baseline is that LED bulbs must be better than 60 l/w before I consider them). It also seems properly bright and has a high power factor.

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Lowes in Canada is selling under the Feit brand. The ~10W 800 lumen bulb is
spec'ed at 9-3/4 or 9.8W on their website; anything to keep it below 10W I suspect.
I have not seen what's on the packaging yet. At any rate, measuring 12.5W on a
~10W spec'ed bulb doesn't seem like just normal variation, +25% on a random
selection does not seem like an outlier limit.

Has anyone tried the 7.5W 500 lumen version? Lowes here sells them for $12 each,
or in 3-packs for $30.

The older Feit 7.5W 450 lumen bulb is down to $7 regular, more or less competing with
Ikea's 6.3W 400 lumen bulb for the same price.

Dave

12.5w when 9.5 is listed would be considered fraudulent packaging. What is the max current listed on the bulb for AC draw.

Can always twitter it and see what reply you get.

Semiman

^^^ I totally agree . Most electronics allow for +/- 5% deviation in there specs so 10w would be OK, but a 31.5% difference over printed specs is fraudulent :scowl:

Remington597 said:

^^^ I totally agree . Most electronics allow for +/- 5% deviation in there specs so 10w would be OK, but a 31.5% difference over printed specs is fraudulent :scowl:

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For a high-volume consumer product, 5% seems a bit tight, I'd give it 10% tolerance,
plus consider the accuracy of the measuring device. There is a lot of specsmanship
on products, not to excuse any deliberate misleading specs. Higher power may be not so
good but all else being OK, not the worst than can happen; unless it is caused by a
defect in this case. Let's not jump too quickly.

Best thing would be someone checking one or more of these for power, given that if it's
not JohnR's meter, the reading accuracy will differ. Not sure, what's the spec for Kill-A-Watt? I have a different brand meter, would have to dig up its spec...

I too set a minimum cutoff for efficacy of at least 50 lumens/W. There is older stuff
being cleared, including Philips, some with dismally-low efficacy (like 25-30). As the energy cost over lifetime swamps the purchase price, I pass on these "bargains". One exception might be higher CRI or some other characteristic.

Dave

Dave_H said:

For a high-volume consumer product, 5% seems a bit tight, I'd give it 10% tolerance,
plus consider the accuracy of the measuring device.

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Then, of course, Cree gives +/- 7% on LED bins.

95% sure of the capacitor, 95% sure of the resistor, 95% sure of the inductor, 93% sure of the LED, so we're 80% sure of them all together!

My Kill-A-Watt meter seems accurate as far as I have tested it on non reactive loads. My other LED bulbs measure spot on or reasonably close (.5 watt), so I assume my meter to be close enough. Sometimes a product design changes or the OEM changes and the packaging is not updated.

The line voltage at my house is high, running in the 124-127v range and one morning it was 128.4v (Tested with a true RMS multimeter and the Kill-A-Watt.) This could affect the bulb, but the other led bulbs don't change much.

JohnR66 said:

My Kill-A-Watt meter seems accurate as far as I have tested it on non reactive loads. My other LED bulbs measure spot on or reasonably close (.5 watt), so I assume my meter to be close enough. Sometimes a product design changes or the OEM changes and the packaging is not updated.

The line voltage at my house is high, running in the 124-127v range and one morning it was 128.4v (Tested with a true RMS multimeter and the Kill-A-Watt.) This could affect the bulb, but the other led bulbs don't change much.

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Sounds like this bulb may (or may not, would have to be checked out) poor current
regulation over line variations. Earlier comments about variacs aside, this is one case
one would come in handy. John, if you get the chance to check power at more
nominal line (115-117v) that could answer it, and/or someone else might jump in
(I don't have the bulb or the variac).

Dave

AnAppleSnail said:

Then, of course, Cree gives +/- 7% on LED bins.

95% sure of the capacitor, 95% sure of the resistor, 95% sure of the inductor, 93% sure of the LED, so we're 80% sure of them all together!

Click to expand...

I don't think it works that way...tolerances on components don't directly correlate
with the variation in power on the line side. It depends what is used to regulate the
LED current.

I don't know enough specifics about current control circuits in LED bulbs but
think a well-controlled switching circuit in constant-current mode should not
show much variation over minor line variations.

The brightness variation of the LED itself does not figure into this, as the
stated brightness must be an average or minimum by design; drive current
would not be individually tweaked on each bulb in production.

Dave

Here are the wattage figures at different voltages
124v 13.3w
120v 12.4w
117v 11.6w
I let the bulb warm up a bit before taking a measurement. The bulb is dimmable.

JohnR66 said:

Here are the wattage figures at different voltages
124v 13.3w
120v 12.4w
117v 11.6w
I let the bulb warm up a bit before taking a measurement. The bulb is dimmable.

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Interesting...the power changes roughly as the square of the voltage change,
looks more like a linear load than constant-current or constant-power.

Dave

Dave_H said:

Interesting...the power changes roughly as the square of the voltage change,
looks more like a linear load than constant-current or constant-power.

Dave

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Wouldn't this be because it is a high power factor dimmable bulb?