What most people want in a light bulb is as follows:
-Soft White (which appears somewhere between cream and yellow, like candle light)
-Long Life (subject to opinion and how the bulb is used.. usually over 1000 hours, hopefully over 2000)
-Bright
I had somewhat different requirements
-A more blanced color spectrum which is bluer than "Soft White"
-Over 1000 hours of estimated life
-Between 550 and 700 lumens
-Energy Savings
-Mercury Free
This met my needs almost perfectly.
Pros for this bulb were:
-No chance for a mercury spill in my own, UNLIKE Compact Fluorescent at the time of this review
-1250 hours of life means I won't be changing these every month, but will need a spare on hand for changes once in a while. This is on par with most incandescent bulbs.
-a more balanced bluer light than the yellow of "Soft White" or the red tint of GE Reveal daylight bulbs. GE has tried to create daylight bulbs and in my opinion they fail by using a purplish tint which succeeds in making things look more "daylight" but fails in adding a red/magenta hue. If you compare any Philips Daylight type bulbs with the blue tint to the GE Reveal bulbs with their purple/magenta/violet type of tint, you'll see the difference. On the other hand, if you are only after color of light, Sylvania has MUCH cheaper much more readily available bulbs called "Sylvania Daylight" available in local supermarkets, but none with energy savings.
-Cheaper to run per lumen of light than typical spectrum adjustment coated light bulbs. Bulbs that claim to produce whiter/daylight colored light are usually tinted with a transparent baby blue or light violet paint, to filter the yellows of a standard A19 "Soft White" bulb. The light being filtered to tint the bulb becomes heat, which makes the bulb less efficient at producing like, hotter, and therefore dimmer. For those of us who have some reason to want whiter light but do not want the mercury issues of current CFL bulbs, this added heat became a necessary problem. There is an alternative to CFL which is around halfway between the energy use per lumen of standard incandescent and CFL bulbs, which is the halogen enclosed tungsten incandescent bulb. I'm not going to explain why that is the case in this review, but check it out on wikipedia under Halogen Light Bulb or something similar. Anyway, the Philips term "EcoVantage" emplies ecologically sound, and claims to throw off a similar number of lumens as a comparable 60 watt bulb. Watts mean nothing as far as brightness is concerned, so I did a comparison, and these bulbs are appreciably brighter than other non-halogen "daylight" tinted bulbs. Note how I'm not comparing them to bulbs without a color tinting, because the tint implies inherent inefficiency to an extent. Another thing worth noting is that Philips never claims that these are halogen based bulbs, but it's fairly easy to see by looking at the casing around the filament, inside the bulb. I can't claim to know what gas is in that casing, but I think it's a safe bet that since they make energy efficient halogen bulbs, and "daylight bulbs" that their "energy efficient daylight" type of bulb would just be combining of the previous two. This is the only Halogen and "Daylight" tinted bulb I have found on the market, anywhere. That's why I bought it with all other pros and cons aside.
-Mercury Free; this is extremely important to me. If you look into the reasoning behind why the EPA is allowing the sale of Compact Fluorescent light bulbs, their explanation is that a single broken CFL can be cleaned up properly at home, adding less estimated mercury than should raise the risk of mercury health risks significantly enough to warrant public protection from the product in question. Now ... imagine dropping a box of a few CFLs off a shelf, or perhaps your kid breaks one to see what will happen, when he's at that curious stage, and the spill isn't cleaned up as per EPA recommendations, because he's a kid and doesn't want to get caught, so he does his best to pick up the broken glass, and the mercury remains. How about if the kid broke the box, dumped the broken contents out while trying to pick the box up, and did a poor cleanup of an entire box. Maybe that causes no harm, but I'm happier knowing such a senarion could not have been caused by kid number one, later to effect kid number 2 who the wife is pregnant with. And I can still be about 50% as green as the CFL would make me by using Halogen.
Cons for this bulb were:
-Gets hotter than a standard A19 bulb of any type (unless you could when several of our CFLs began arching over the course of their short lives, and smoldered in the socket, filling out house with the wondrous smell of molten flame retardant plastic. All "daylight" tinted incandescent bulbs are hotter and so I recommend screwing them into porcelain socks if available (half my sockets just happen to be the white porcelain kind) and if they have to be in plastic encased sockets, don't use them in an enclosed recessed fashion. Or just switch to the nice cool CFL or LED technologies, if you don't mind Mercury or the price and availability of LED.
-Is dimmer than "Soft White" incandescent halogen bulbs, due to having a light filter coating. This is not a problem for people used to non-halogen bulbs because the halogen adds brightness, offsetting the dimming effect of the filter coating.
-HORRIBLE quality control. I bought four of these bulbs and two of those four were defective. I don't mean the filament of half were broken from shipping. The filament happened to look intact, but the bulbs failed to light for some other reason, and almost got stuck in the socket. Some of the working ones almost got stuck, while some of them went in smooth and easy. I bought four others that were of a higher wattage, and all worked, but had their own manufacturing defects. If you consider all eight Philips EcoVantage Daylight bulbs I bought, about two of them had less blue spectrum filter coating (I could see the difference with my eyes with them unlit) around three of them were harder to get in and out of sockets because of what I think was too much solder stuck to the side of the male socket on the bulb, and two of them failed to light completely and showed signs of some scorching on the area that had solder abnormalities on the hard to install bulbs. What this says to me is that these bulbs are manufactured to a two sigma standard as far as quality control is concerned. That means every three bulbs, one will fail to work. If you want to look at quality control problems that don't result in failure, it's more like a 1 sigma manufacturing process. Amazon will accept defective bulbs mailed back to them, but I'm still trying to mail mine back, so I guess I'll cross my fingers.
Summary: This is the only Halogen Incandescent Daylight tinted light bulb I could find, and it worked really well, except for the 33% defective thing (or 50% defective if you only cound the 43W ones. Amazon offset the cost of the defects by allowed return of defective merchandise, but that doesn't pay for the customers wasted time. Still, I believe these bulbs are worth the wasted time to mail a few defective ones back. They don't seem to get all that much hotter to me, and that heat is beneficial in the winter, so I will switch out to Soft White in the summer. They help a lot with the dismalness of a cold northern winter, they are amazing to read under, and are very bright compared to other "daylight" tinted incandescent bulbs. I have never run into a whiter incandescent other than Philips non-halogen "Daylight" bulbs. It's just a shame these aren't available in the local stores or through another vendor so the price might come down a little. The current price per bulb three to six times the price of supermarket sold incandescent soft white by Sylvania, and double the price of incandescent Sylvania Daylight bulbs.
Since I'm so happy with the 66% of my order that worked, I'm giving it four stars.
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
These bulbs work great. They're just as bright as regular 60W bulbs but use 17 watts less per bulb that savings adds up when using multiple bulbs at once. The light quality is very nice too. It says on the package that they're suitable for use in open fixtures. I'm not sure if they can be used in totally enclosed fixtures it should specify that. Otherwise they're good quality bulbs that save energy, last longer, and are affordable.
Best Deals for Philips 43-Watt A19 EcoVantage Light Bulb, Natural Light
I've bought it too times. For both times, one of the bulb was already not working on delivery. I would say the product quality control is poor, not all the bulbs are working off the line.
The working bulb from last time only lasted for 4 months and died.
The color is warm yellow, which is pleasant. Perfect for a table lamp.
Although I like the bulb color, I wouldn't suggest purchasing this bulb based on my experience.
Thanks!
Honest reviews on Philips 43-Watt A19 EcoVantage Light Bulb, Natural Light
I needed a dimmable full-spectrum bulb, one with better energy efficiency than a normal incandescent. Sadly, after only three months, three of the four I bought have burned out. Ironically, the only one I regularly dim is the last one working. I have generally had good luck with Philips products, so this may just be a bad batch, but I'll save my pennies for their LED bulbs from now on.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Philips 43-Watt A19 EcoVantage Light Bulb, Natural Light
I purchased two twin packs of 100 watt bulbs, one Natural one Soft White. Not a single bulb worked.
Thinking it had to be something in the light I tried them in multiple fixtures. In every case a standard incandescent would operate perfectly while the EcoVantage would not.
Finally after I fiddled around for a while I got one of the bulbs to operate if I screwed it in just a bit, but no more. I suspected a cold soldier joint and that the bulb was working only when the blob of soldier was lined up with the copper tab in the socket but a VOM meter indicated the connection between the base and soldier looked good.
Then I bent the tabs in the socket out a bit figuring maybe the bulb was undersized. Didn't fix it.
I'm pretty sure the problem is a bad connection somewhere, probably in the base, but I can't be sure. But 4 dead out of 4 from two different batches makes me suspect a design problem rather than manufacturing problem.
Regardless of the cause its clear they aren't checking the bulbs or they aren't doing it properly. Whatever it is this is multibillion dollar company and they should know better.
