Nikko A19 LED Bulb Teadown: another unique construction

This vendor tackles the problem of creating an LED bulb which looks like an incandescent. It's such good mimicry that you need to smash the bulb to peek inside to confirm that's it's indeed an LED bulb.

It's a fairly interesting fusing of very old school ceramics and blown glass and newer LED technology. I am amazed that they were even able to get LED emitters and a power supply mounted and functional with a blown glass envelope and ceramic tower.


Not sure how long the bulb would last as thermal management looks difficult but it's another very interesting take on how to build a bulb. The LED market continues to produce bulbs with a wild variety of approaches.

Some ceramics have high heat conductivity, e.g. Aluminum Nitride. Were you able to do any thermal measurements?

Where did you get this? Is there a 60W equivalent/800 lumen version?

Sorry, no thermal measurements. The use of ceramic is clever as it will allow a conduction path from the led to the base.

The bulbs were on a shelf at my local (non chain) hardware store.... they only seemed to have 40W equiv.

...hmmmm...more uniform beam pattern and less flicker than the CREE a19.

Of course, who knows if it will last more than a month....

MattPete said:

...hmmmm...more uniform beam pattern and less flicker than the CREE a19.

Of course, who knows if it will last more than a month....

Click to expand...

I think that would end up being the ultimate problem with this bulb. I just don't see anywhere for the heat to go other than the base, and many fixtures have their base thermally insulated. It's a great idea, though. I think this could be killer with some hyper-efficient LEDs in it.

Output is weak. I kind of expect 500 lumens from my 40 watt equiv's.
But if each LED is only making 30 initial lumen (x16 gives you 480, minus thermal & OTF losses), they can't push this type design any further until efficiency, or more specifically efficiency per $ goes up.

And Cree should take notice, that is how you avoid the lack of light, by having top firing LEDs, in addition to the 'filament tower'.

And still no 4000K