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jron · 7 years

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I’ve been nerding out for weeks about replacing lightbulbs, and I figured I might as well share it. Here I go.

Almost every light fixture in my house is dimmable, and I’m a little particular about the feeling that a light gives to a room. It makes a huge difference to me, and in my quest for more hygge and general relaxation in my house, I find I want lights that more closely approximate candlelight. I also don’t want to spend a fortune on lightbulbs.

In other words, I want old-style standard 60w incandescent lights everywhere, but they’re banned, and the stores offer only LED and fluorescent. This used to be easy-- I just needed the right wattage and was good to go. But now you need to check color, lumens, dimmability, color rendition, etc.

Most LED and fluorescent/CFL bulbs on the market tend to be non-dimmable, and most LED’s sold have a color temperature of 3000k. This is what my contractor had installed throughout our renovated house, and it’s said to give a “cleaner” light than the old bulbs had. I don’t like it, I think it’s too blue, and at night it feels cold and isn’t relaxing. I also don’t think skin tones render as well under the higher Kelvin temperatures, so people just don’t look as good. I know there are great uses for them, but in my own house, where I want to relax in the evening, it’s not what I want to use.

2700k LED’s are close to incandescent and even have the proper-looking round bulb shape, but there are varying quality levels out there, and like CFL’s they’re relatively expensive.

So, I thought, why not get online and just find some old 60W incandescent bulbs for $1.50, and forego the $12 LED’s? The color rendering of LED’s tops out with a score of about 80 out of 100, whereas old incandescents are a perfect 100; the incandescents all dim; they’re cheap; they’re all the same color temperature so one doesn’t look weird next to the others, etc.

It turns out you can do just that. However, and this is important, most of the bulbs sold are industrial replacements, and 220v or 130v instead of 120v. They will work, but will not be as bright as what you probably need. If you do find the elusive 120v bulb, they aren’t manufactured to the old brightness of 800 lumens. They are dimmer as well, and only produce about 540 or so lumens. So don’t waste your time trying to game the system. Incandescents are banned from stores, they don’t last as long as LED’s, they use more energy, and you can’t even get the old ones online.

So - next tack was a dimmable LED at 2700k. Let’s bite the bullet and enter 2017, saving energy in the process. They use about half the electricity of a comparable fluorescent and about 15% of an incandescent. Also, incandescents last about 1,200 hours, fluorescents/CFL’s last about 8,000 hours, and LED’s last about 25,000 hours. Great decision by me, most big stores have one brand of these in stock. I tried out a couple. They are the right color, and they dim. However, when they dim, the ones I had flickered at low level and don’t dim at a warm color. Incandescent bulbs get warmer as they dim, and that helps them to approximate candlelight better, something I believe is innately appealing to humans.

Finally, I found out about “warm-dim” bulbs. Their color is 2700k at full brightness, but lowers to a redder 2200k at their dimmest. Inside a globe or shade it looks almost exactly like an old incandescent bulb. Only thing is, no stores around me offer one. So I had to buy it online, which means the options available were actually too big and I wasn’t sure I was selecting the right thing.

So I guessed. The Philips Warm Glow Dimmable bulb blew me away. It doesn’t dim all the way to zero, which I think is good. It dims smoothly and doesn’t flicker, it looks awesome.

So here’s the TL/DR that I needed when I started this weeks ago:

To replace your old 60W dimmable bulbs, get these:

LED

“60W equivalent”

A-line, A19 shape (if you want them to look like the old ones)

800 lumens (light output)

Soft White Color

Dimmable

2700K - 2200K Actual Color Temperature (called “Warm Dimming” or something similar)

E26 Bulb base (that’s the standard ones)

120v

At least 80 CRI (Color Rendering Index)

Get them from a reputable company, and not some off-brand unless you know it’s good quality.

(I found them here for only $4.90 each, way cheaper than I expected.)

#me nerding out #sorry so long #thought I'd share

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etechwire-blog · 6 years

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Philips Hue review | TechRadar

New Post has been published on https://www.etechwire.com/philips-hue-review-techradar/

Philips Hue review | TechRadar

Ambitions are high for the smart home. Over the years we’ve been promised that eventually our smartphones are going to talk to our fridges, which can talk to our toasters with a little help from a friendly neighborhood internet-connected toilet.

By comparison, the ambition of Philips Hue’s internet-connected LED light bulbs seem much more limited in scope. However, with its attention laser-focused on lighting alone, Philips has created one of the most complete smart lighting systems out there, and it’s one that easily beats much of the smart home competition in terms of its robustness and completeness.

While Philips Hue is definitely one of the better smart lighting systems out there, we’re still not entirely convinced that these are decisively better than the traditional ‘dumb’ light bulbs that we’ve been using to light our households for decades.

The different Philips Hue bulbs

Before we dive into our full Philips Hue review, we thought it best to break down the Philips Hue family so you can see exactly what’s on offer. While not a complete list, we aimed to give you information about the different Philip Hue product lines, rather than individual products (there are loads of them).

The Philips Hue lineup for LED bulbs come in a variety of shapes and sizes for just about any household lighting need. Here, we’ll explain the key varieties of Philips Hue light bulbs, what sizes are available in each type, and what light fixtures they’ll fit in. Also included are non-light bulbs, like switches and lamps.

Philips Hue White

This is Philips’ most basic Hue LED bulb type. All of the Hue White bulbs shine with a warm white light. The color temperature of these light bulbs is not adjustable. However, they do still connect to the Hue Bridge for full wireless control, and their simplicity helps keep the price down.

Philips offers standard size A19 E26 Hue White bulbs with a color temperature of 2700K. It also offers outdoor-ready PAR38 bulbs that can serve as flood lights. The PAR38 bulbs can screw into an E26 light fixture, and have a 3000K color temperature.

Philips Hue White Ambiance

The Philips Hue White Ambiance light bulbs make things a bit more exciting, as all of these bulbs offer a wide range of color temperatures, ranging from a warm 2200K all the way up to 6500K, akin to daylight.

These bulbs can help set a mood, whether you’re trying to wind down with warm lights, or wake up with cool white light. Philips offers the Hue White Ambiance for the E26 and the smaller E12 light socket types, as well as the GU10 lamp sockets. The bulbs themselves also come in a wide variety, from smaller lamp bulbs to standard size bulbs and up to BR30 indoor flood lights to help you brighten up large rooms.

Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance

The party really starts with the Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance bulbs. All of these Philips Hue light bulbs can shine with a broad range from warm white to a cool daylight white, and they also are configurable with 16 million different colors.

In other words, if you have a very specific lighting scheme in mind, these are the ones that can support it. Of course, with the increased functionality comes a higher price tag. Philips offers the Hue and White Color Balance bulbs in the A19, PAR16, and BR30 sizes for E26 fittings; B39 for the E12 fitting; and as a GU10 model.

Philips Hue LightStrip

In addition to Philips’ Hue light bulbs, the company also offers the Hue LightStrip Plus, so you can continue to control the lighting even in places where you can’t install a light fixture or lamp.

The Hue LightStrip comes as an 80-inch main unit, or as 40-inch extensions. The LightStrip supports warm and cool white lights as well as the same 16 million colors of the other Hue White and Color Ambiance lights.

The strip is flexible, and ideal for mounting onto objects in your house to add a touch of style. If 80 inches is too long, the LightStrip has designated sections where it’s safe to cut it shorter, allowing for more customization.

Philips Hue lamps with integrated lights

Not all Philips Hue products require you to have your own lamp or light fixture in place.

Philips sells a wide variety of lights that come bundled with its bulbs, and it also sells specially designed lamps that come with integrated LED lights.

These Hue lamps range from outdoor walkway lights, table lamps, wall and ceiling lights, and hanging suspension lights.

Because these are complete packages, they do cost a fair bit more than standalone bulbs. But, all of them use either Hue White Ambiance or Hue White and Color Ambiance lighting, so you’ll be getting control of color temperature and possibly 16 million color options as well, depending on which product you choose.

Setup and installation

To get going with a Philips Hue in your home, you’ll need at least one connected light and the Philips Hue bridge, which connects to your router and allows you to communicate with your smart bulbs.

This makes the two bulb and bridge-equipped starter kit ($69.99 / £59.99 / AU$144.95) the cheapest entry point into the range, but you’re forgoing more advanced features such as smart light switches and color-changing bulbs.

For our tests we used the next step up, a three bulb starter kit that included the company’s color-changing bulbs. Despite the fact that this is still a fairly basic kit, this retails for a much more substantial $199.99 (£149.99 / AU$289.99).

The standard starter kit comes with a bridge and three bulbs

Once you’ve bought this starter kit things get a lot cheaper, however, as you only need one bridge to control your whole setup. Additional lights and switches can all be synced with this same bridge as you build up your home system.

If you’re looking to jump into Philips Hue then this color-changing starter kit is probably the best way to do it, since it will allow you to play around with Hue’s more advanced features without investing too heavily in your initial setup.

Outside of this starter kit, you have a huge number of options for how to proceed. You’ve got additional bulbs that are available in a wide variety of different form factors from candle bulbs through to spotlights, lamps and lighting strips.

Philips also sells a couple of different switches, which allow you to control your lighting without getting your phone out of your pocket (although, yes, we appreciate this is something you can already do with your existing lights – we’ll get to that later).

Installation will vary with the complexity of your setup, but we found it to be about as painless a process as it could be.

Once you’ve got the bulbs seated in their fixtures you’ll need to make sure they’re powered on in order for them to be discoverable.

Next, you simply plug the Hue bridge into both power and your router, download the Hue app (available for iOS and Android devices), and wait for it to discover the bulbs in your home. Our setup discovered the bulbs quickly and easily.

Once your bulbs are found you’ll need to assign them to rooms, which allows you to control groups of them much more easily.

With your bulbs assigned to rooms, the setup process is complete and you’ll be able to get stuck in configuring them to your heart’s delight.

The one sticking point here, and it’s a big one, is that you’ll need to leave your bulbs turned on at the wall if you want to be able to control them remotely. Turn them off using your standard light switches, and the bulbs won’t have any power to be able to receive wireless signals.

This proved to be a big problem, as you’ll see from the performance section to come.

#Hue #Philips #review #TechRadar

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