Light Quality
I love this bulb! The light from this LED is exactly as advertised--very bright, omnidirectional, and in the same pleasing color of incandescent bulbs. Even my very picky sister, who claims CFLs give her headaches, is satisfied with the L-Prize light. There is absolutely no flicker or hum to bother her, and the color faithfulness is fantastic. Its 92 CRI (Color Rendering Index) is much higher than any competing LED or CFL in the A19 warm white form factor, and very close to the maximum 100 on the CRI scale. Cheap, imported LEDs can have really horrible color, like early CFLs had. If you go with any other bulb, always look for an Energy Star seal of approval, which guarantees at least an 80 CRI (the L-Prize bulb will get Energy Star status very shortly). Color temperature is different from CRI, but just know that it produces warm, yellowish light exactly like an incandescent bulb, not harsh blues or ghastly greens like first generation LEDs and CFLs. And this bulb is very bright--at 940 lumens, it's 17% brighter than the 800 lumen output of a 60W incandescent.
Drawbacks
There is a very slight (but noticeable) delay when turning it on--perhaps 1/5 of a second. It does come on at 100% percent brightness though, with no 'warm-up time' like CFLs need. This bulb can be dimmed smoothly down to 10% of output, but the light quality suffers. Instead of transitioning to a romantic and orangey candlelight glow, these get a progressively harsher, unflattering color. I recommend just using them close to full brightness. Also, like most LEDs, these should not be used in totally enclosed fixtures or you risk shortening their life. Finally, some may find the appearance of the unlit bulb ugly if placed in unshaded fixtures. Personally, I think it looks cool (and it's a great conversation starter). The light yellow panels and white body look much more attractive to me than the bare LEDs and exposed metal fins of other LEDs' heat sinks.
Price
This is by far the biggest drawback. Fifty dollars?! Is Philips crazy? Well, depending on where you buy this bulb, maybe not. You see, some local electric utilities are offering rebates of between $10 and $25 when you buy this bulb, applied automatically at the register. No rebates for online retailers, unfortunately. If you can find this discounted at your hardware store, buy it! Not only is the quality of light great, the efficiency of this bulb is unmatched. It gets a whopping 94 lumens per Watt. Compare this to the measly 13 lm/W of a 60W incandescent, or ~64 lm/W in current CFLs or LEDs. It's 50% more efficient than ANY other bulb of its type. Wow!
Whether that efficiency is worth it to you is another matter. If you're satisfied with CFLs or cheaper LEDs, the efficiency gains of this bulb will not offset the $50 bulb cost or save you money. But if you get a store discount or have applications where CFLs are unsuitable (like cold/high humidity/heavy vibration/frequent on&off cycling), then buy now! As a rule of thumb, for every 60W incandescent you replace with one of these, figure it will save you $2 per year for every hour you typically burn it per day. If you have a 24/7/365 application, it will pay back even the $50 price in a single year. With reduced A/C use and bulb replacement costs, it should even turn a profit. Make sure you place these bulbs in the highest use rooms of your house so they have the quickest return on investment.
Durability
To take the L-Prize crown, this bulb was put through a slew of very rigorous tests FAR exceeding the requirements of Energy Star LEDs. The DoE put these LEDs, along with some high quality CFLs in a light bulb "torture chamber" where they were subjected to extreme heat and cold, high humidity, vibration, repeated on/off cycling, and various degradations of voltage and electrical quality. ALL the L-Prize bulbs emerged unscathed from the stress testing, while every single CFL died. I wouldn't worry too much about breaking the thing. Though pretty hefty, it has no fragile filament, no glass, and no moving parts. Teardowns of the bulb show it has exceptional build quality and use very good electronics and capacitors inside. Even so, save your receipt and UPC for the warranty period.
Life
Unlike the sudden death of traditional bulbs, LEDs fade over time and are normally deemed "dead" when they reach L70, or 70% of original light output. High heat accelerates the degradation. Well, the DoE has been running 200 of these bulbs continuously for over 12,000 hours at 113°F (45°C) in accelerated life testing to verify Philips' claim of 30,000 hours life. With 95% confidence they can predict that these bulbs will maintain over 99% of their light level after 25,000 hrs of use! Amazing!
--Updates (Feb 2013)--
LEDs are a rapidly evolving technology, and there have been notable changes in the past year. Here are a few:
The L-Prize bulb formally received Energy Star certification on May 4, 2012.
DoE testing is ongoing, still with no failures among the 202 test bulbs after 22,000 hours of use. Also, an L-Prize bulb will be housed in the Smithsonian next to Thomas Edison's original incandescents. It's that big a deal!
Massachusetts and Rhode Island residents can buy these bulbs for just $10 each. That's a KILLER price. Google "estarlights" to find the website.
Philips started selling packs of color-changing LED bulbs called Hue. Very pricey, and only 40-Watt equivalent brightness, but Forbes called it "The Best Product of 2012". I bet this will become a common feature for home lighting in several years.
If you like the appearance of Hue, but can't pay $60 per bulb, Philips now sells new 830-lumen, 11-Watt bulbs with the same (not yellow) aesthetic for $25. The 75 lm/W efficacy is midway between the old AmbientLEDs and the L-Prize LEDs, but it can dim down to 2% of full brightness. They also come in 5000K (daylight), if you prefer a bluer light.
Switch Lighting released bulbs (in 40, 60, 75, and soon 100-W equivalents) they claim can safely be used in totally enclosed fixtures, unlike most other LED lamps.
Several 100-Watt equivalent LEDs are entering the the market now, but they're usually in the longer A21 form factor. A year after launch, the L-Prize bulb remains the lamp with the highest efficiency and best color accuracy, as well as being the LED brightness champ in the typical A19 length. But expect that to change in 2013!
--More Updates--
Cree, a giant in the LED industry, made a big splash by debuting their first LED bulbs marketed directly to consumers. The big news about them is the price--only $13 for a 60W equivalent, and $10 for a 40W. It also has a 10-year warranty, and a more conventional glass-globed design (if you dislike the appearance of Philips' bulbs). I still prefer the L-Prize for its greater CRI and brightness, but if you can't buy them cheaply in your state, Crees are your next best option, and available nationally at any Home Depot.
Executives at both Philips and Cree have predicted that 60W-equivalent LEDs should break $10 by the end of 2013. But don't let that dissuade you from upgrading now--no competing bulbs will top the L-Prize's light quality for a while, and if you go with Cree you'll likely save money faster than any future price drops.
--July 2013--
DoE testing has concluded on their 202 L-Prize bulbs and they've more than lived up to their promise. No failures among them, and they maintained 100% of their original brightness even after 25,000 hours! This proves that well-designed LEDs really can deliver on their incredible claims.
Unfortunately, it seems Philips is discontinuing production of the L-Prize and focusing fully on their less expensive (and lower spec'd) AmbientLED line. While affordability is crucial for widespread adoption of LEDs, and a CRI of 80 is good enough for most people, I'll miss having a higher-end option with better color accuracy. It may be several years before manufacturers focus on surpassing the L-Prize in that regard.
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I bought three of the Philips LPRIZE LED bulbs to use in my dining room fixture. Unfortunately, they do not work with my existing Leviton dimmer (even though that dimmer works with the old 12.5 watt Philips LED bulbs). Nor do they work with a Lutron dimmer I bought at a hardware store that was explicitly rated for LED bulbs. Nor do they work with another Lutron Diva dimmer I tried after it was recommended by someone at Philips customer support. The latter is still claiming that dimmers recommended for the old, orange 12.5 watt LED bulb will work wIth this new, yellow 10 watt LED bulb, but this is not true for the dimmers I've tried. In fact, a tech support person at Lutron told me that the few dimmers they have tested with this new Philips LPRIZE LED have all failed.
Philips customer support is awful, by the way. The most recent attempt I made to get help with this bulb's dimmer compatibility problems resulted in my being transferred to "product management": I was left on hold for 10 minutes until I finally hung up.
Pros:
This bulb is bright and gives off a warm, "soft white" light similar to an incandescent bulb, whose size it resembles. It only consumes 10 watts instead of 60, and it is supposed to last for many years of use.
Cons:
The Philips LPRIZE LED bulb is heavy compared to an incandescent bulb or even a CFL bulb. It emits light in three distinct partitions, so it is best not used where the bulb will show. This LED is still incredibly expensive, even when discounted by some electric utilities. Most of all, if your application involves a dimmer you should probably look elsewhere until Philips identifies which dimmers actually are compatible--if any.
-------------Update:
The company that supplies energy-saving consumer items for my electric utility tested this bulb with a variety of dimmers and selected one, the Leviton IPL06-10Z, as the most compatible for residential use (see Leviton IPL06-10Z IllumaTech Universal 150-Watt LED and CFL/600-Watt Incandescent Dimmer). The Philips LPRIZE LED bulbs do in fact work well with this dimmer, with no flicker, hum, buzz, or other issues (note that the specific 10Z model is not on Philip's list of "compatible" dimmers). As someone pointed out in another review, these bulbs have both a red and a blue LED and when they are very dim the blue LED cuts out first, making he bulbs glow red. With the Leviton IPL06-10Z dimmer, however, you can easily program the minimum brightness to be just above the level at which the blue LED cuts out. The Philips bulbs will then range from very bright to quite dim while retaining their warm white color throughout. Now these bulbs are useful to me!
Best Deals for Philips 423244 10-Watt 60-Watt L-Prize Award Winning LED Light Bulb
This lightbulb is amazing. I believe in efficient lightbulbs, but I find the light from CFLs hideous, even the ones other people think look just like incandescents. I can always tell which is a CFL without looking at the bulb--it's the one that makes everything around it ugly.
I was happy when Philips came out with their 12.5 watt LED bulb--the one that looks like this one, except with a dark gray ribbed base and an orange (rather than yellow) top. While the light from that bulb is not as beautiful as incandescence, it's also not unspeakably hideous. It has a very slight fake pink tinge that I can live with, though it's not ideal. I replaced several of my incandescents with it.
When this bulb came out, I read that it had a higher CRI (Color Rendering Index) than the 12.5 watt version, 93 instead of 80 (out of 100). Supposedly, the higher the CRI, the less the light makes the objects it falls on look weird and fake. Because I liked the 12.5 watt version, I was eager to see if I would like this one even better. I decided it was worth $50 to find out.
Turns out I love this new bulb. No fake pink tinge, no uglifying. It's completely acceptable. The light it sheds looks almost exactly like the light of an incandescent bulb. It's slightly brighter than the (already very bright) 12.5 watt version, it turns on immediately, it sheds light in all directions, and it doesn't heat up my lamp.
The only thing I don't like about it is the price. Once it comes down, I'm replacing my incandescents with this bulb.
Honest reviews on Philips 423244 10-Watt 60-Watt L-Prize Award Winning LED Light Bulb
I'm using a lot of the older generation Philips LED bulbs in my house and have been very happy with them so when I saw these L-prize bulbs selling locally for $39 I picked one up to evaluate. Overall I'm very impressed. It lights almost instantly, unlike the earlier 12.5W model which has a very slight delay between when you flip the switch and when the light comes on. The light quality is noticeably better, likely on account of the 92 (vs ~80) CRI. To get this improved color rendering index, these bulbs use a few red LEDs in addition to the blue LEDs that pump the phosphor panels. This adds additional red spectrum to the area where the phosphors are relatively weak and inefficient. This bulb claims 940 Lumens which I believe it lives up to. I know that side by side it looks MUCH brighter than a 13W curly CFL with similar claims. It's too soon to say how long these will last, but in the year since I started replacing my CFLs with LEDs, not a single one has failed. Even the dusk-till-dawn ones in my porch lights look as fresh as the day I bought them.
There are a couple of cons, none of which are deal breakers in my opinion. The red emitters appear to light a few milliseconds before the blue emitters, causing an extremely brief reddish flash when the bulb is first turned on. It's brief enough that most people are unlikely to notice but I am sensitive to these things. The second is that this model seems to be more picky about dimmer switches, and some that worked great with the 12.5W model cause some flicker with this 10W model. If you plan to use a dimmer, you might be happier with the 12.5W bulb.
In a nutshell, the cost is still high, but this is the Rolls Royce of domestic lightbulbs. If you want the best of the best and don't mind paying a premium as an early adopter, as of this writing this is the bulb to get. If you are on a budget, consider the earlier 12.5W model, you get something I would call 90% as good for roughly half the price. That said, these will easily pay for themselves if you are replacing incandescent bulbs, and if you are upgrading from CFL, you will get dramatically more pleasant light, no warmup time, far longer life, and no mercury along with marginally better efficiency.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Philips 423244 10-Watt 60-Watt L-Prize Award Winning LED Light Bulb
This bulb gives off a nice, warm light similar to, but brighter than, a 60-watt incandescent bulb. It should provide a triple savings: air conditioning bills as well as lighting bills, and I'll never need to replace it.
I really wanted to use it in an overhead globe fixture, but this ran into two limitations of the bulb. The first is that it can only be used in fixtures open to the air -not ones that are totally enclosed. The second is that it doesn't work with my dimmer; Philips's Web site contains a list of compatible dimmers. I'd have been willing to replace my dimmer, but not the whole light fixture.
So I'll be using this bulb in a table lamp, and looking for a warm-light, dimmable compact fluorescent for overhead. Suggestions?
