Philips 420224 10-Watt L-Prize Award Winning 60-Watt LED Light Bulb Review

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $49.99
Sale Price: $47.50
Today's Bonus: 5% Off

I actually purchased four 420224 bulbs, but received four 423244 bulbs from restassure. It seems this is the same product, only packaged differently. Those I received were in hard to open plastic packaging, while the ones I ordered were supposed to be packaged in easy to open cardboard boxes. I already own the older 12.5 watt Philips LEDs that sell for approximately 1/3 less and are also rated as 60 watt incandescent equivalents. Here are some differences I have noted after several weeks of use: When not in use, in my ceiling fixtures with the bulbs visible from below, the L prize winners are far less noticeable (translation = ugly) than their 12.5 watt predecessors. This is primarily due to their yellow, rather than orange color when off. When on, the L prize winners, despite using 10 watts instead of 12.5 are noticably brighter and give off a more natural looking light. However, when operated with a dimmer, the L prize winner does flicker slightly as the dimmer is adjusted, whereas the 12.5 watt version does not flicker at all. My advice is if you do not need to operate the bulbs with a dimmer, it probably pays to buy the L prize winner. If using the bulbs with a dimmer, the choice is not so clear, although the flickering stops when the dimming process is completed.

Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>

I bought a bunch of these to replace some 60w incandescent bulbs at one of my offices.

These are actually a tad bit brighter than the "Reveal" 60w. I usually dont like bulbs in the 2700 color temp range but these look brighter.

The initial delay is definitely less with these to the point you dont even notice it. I have a 15w LED floodlight i got from lowes last year at my house and it has a much longer delay.

10w! how awesome is that?

30,000 hour life is a pretty big improvement from the 20,000-25,000 hour life spans of the last generation LED bulbs

Light spread-some LEDs dont throw the light out evenly. Even though this is made up of three different LEDs with splits in between them, it still does an excellent job of distributing the light evenly.

The only downside is the cost right now. $50 per bulb is high especially if you plan on using these in a home environment where the lights arent on as much. Just doing some rough math at 8 hours per day, 20 days per month and $0.10 per kw, they will save you about $9.60 per year. That doesnt factor in the other positives like not having to buy/replace incandescents or compact fluorescents (they never seem to last as long as what they say) so there is a little more cost savings you could add on but that is only in a business/retail environment. At home, the savings wouldnt be near as much. I think we will see these come down in price and as they do, it will make it a better fit for home use. Right now, the bulbs are just too expensive. But if you have the money, you will certainly see the savings over time and they dont have any mercury in them.

I really thought about giving these 4 stars for price but that is the only flaw the bulb has so i had to go with 5 star.

Best Deals for Philips 420224 10-Watt L-Prize Award Winning 60-Watt LED Light Bulb

I purchased these to replace my halogen dimmable bulbs. I must say the light is remarkably warm for a LED. If I were ranking just the light, it would be a 5 out of 5 stars. However, I had to send one bulb back because it didn't work out of the box. Then once I finally got my 3 bulbs installed, they do produce a noticeable buzzing sound. Not to bad if you have a television or other background noise. But if you have nothing, it is pretty loud. For the price I paid for these bulbs, I expected them to be perfect. So the warm light quality is 5 out of 5 stars. But I'd give the buzzing a 1 out of 5 stars. So a 3 out of 5 average.

Honest reviews on Philips 420224 10-Watt L-Prize Award Winning 60-Watt LED Light Bulb

Bought two bulbs right after they announced the L-prize winner; got the bulbs about 4 weeks later. Installed one in a glass bulb ceiling fixture in the front entryway; it's perfect! The older, dimmer bulb in there was a frosted 60W. The other one is in a living room lamp which replaces a 3-way 50/100/150W bulb; the jury is still out, but it's doing quite well. Great color, color uniformity. Slight delay in turn-on time is no big deal either!

Just wished that Amazon would clean out all the old crap from the list; it makes the new and improved LED bulbs hard to find! I actually had to cancel an order before finding these since a bunch of SKUs look similar but actually perform quite differently.

Want to buy more now!

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Philips 420224 10-Watt L-Prize Award Winning 60-Watt LED Light Bulb

WHAT THIS IS

This is the light bulb that won the US government's L-Prize, which was set to spur creation of highly efficient lighting. There are two products out there, but as far as I can tell, only the packaging is different. The other item is here compare prices and order the cheaper one :)

LIGHT OUTPUT AND QUALITY

This thing puts out 940 lumens of light using less than 10 watts, something one would need an 60W incandescent or even halogen bulb for. This is better than CFLs and yet, it's not its best feature!

The best feature is the pleasant light. Typical energy saving light sources have a Color Rendering Index of 80 (out of 100 max), meaning that they lack certain wavelengths present in natural light and therefore have a tendency to make things look unnatural even if the light itself appears white. This bulb's CRI registers at 93, which is still not perfect, but in my opinion perfectly adequate. I can distinguish CFL light from "real" light, but I don't see a difference between this and, say, halogen light.

DIMMING

This product is also designed to work with dimmers. Mine is acting up a little: the dimming seems to work in discrete stages (maybe 10 levels as opposed to continuous), and once the desired level is reached, it switches to a slightly higher or lower output after a few seconds. Also, there are funny color casts on the dimmer side (pink and blue, alternatively). But still, it works on the higher levels and newer dimmers will probably cause less problems than my six yearold Insteon.

DOWNSIDES

So what's not to like? Two things:

1) the bulb is rather unsightly, and yet it must not be used in closed fixtures

2) it's still expensive, almost ten times as much as CFLs bought in bulk

ENERGY SAVINGS

Philips gives you a rather conservative "saved dollars" amount. But I'd recommend you do your own math as there are some numbers that Philips may not be allowed to factor in:

One is the cost of electricity. In my case, the official rate is 11 cts/kWhr. But that number doesn't include taxes and "delivery"; once that is accounted for, the real cost is about three times as high!

The other number is the saved air conditioning cost in the summer. 50 Watts of heat are produced less, and those 50 Watts take an even higher number of AC power to compensate.

WARRANTY EXPERIENCE

One of my bulbs failed after 6 months of use. I admit I used it 6+ hours daily, but it was freestanding and upwards-facing all that time, so that shouldn't have happened. The first thing I did was enter an issue through Philips' web site they didn't have the model so I picked a close one and explained my plight through the web form. Shortly thereafter, I got an email asking for another dozen data points (purchased where, model number, did it say "Philips" on the bulb, etc.), and requesting that I call a phone number with the info. I tried my luck and replied by email instead of calling, but didn't hear back. However, a few days after that, I got a check in the mail, as well as a prepaid Fedex return slip to please send in the defective bulb for analysis. It was nicely worded, apologetic even. I actually would have preferred to just receive a replacement bulb in the mail because the price had gone up, but that's complaining on a high level. Overall, my warranty issue was handled courteously and quickly.

CONCLUSION

It's mostly the purchase price that is holding this bulb back. If it was in the same range as CFLs, there would be no comparison hopefully, this will happen in 2013! If you're an avantguardist (read: money is less of a factor), this light bulb is definitely "it".