led light brands

[oscarMadison]

any good ones? Bad ones?

Looking at Amazon and they have a lot of brands I've never heard of.

[daddo]

If I may add to your questions.

Are they lasting as advertized?
Have you found they are worth the extra expense?
How is the light spectrum? I don't really care for the florescent type lighting. We like warm light.

[Robert Adams]

Lots of brands out there. I have bulbs from lowes (utilitech) that are good though a little too yellow. They are going on just over 3 years old and still fine though some have a tiny bit of flicker that can just barely be seen when the ac gets unstable. Our power quality here is poor and unreliable. My UPS for the routers and computers often kick in because the power dips.

I have the Costco 6" led can lights in the kitchen and they are almost 2 and still fine however they don't get used much because we generally use the cabinet lighting to light the kitchen. These cans are not as yellow as others which is nice.

I have a couple of depot CE 6" can bulbs which are very good with big heat sinks on them. Good bulb.

Cree is now making their own bulbs and they are good although pricey.


My favorite bulb brand is TCL. After using them for commercial I haven't seen one fail and they are burning way more than one in a house. They are fairly priced as well and available in many color temps. Their 4100k ones are good for home use as they are not the dingy eye hurting yellow that many of the older CFL bulbs. For kitchen and work spare as don't go below 4k as the white light is easier on your eyes and colors look right ie when cooking instead of looking like a house coated in nicotine.

I have had very bad luck with CFL bulbs in our house and commercial compared to led and incandescent. CFL are usually either very yellow or blue and they don't last very long and have had many self combust or just melt down with burn marks.
I wish I had some of the edision bulbs that were in my grandmother's house in detroit. Those bulbs lasted forever since the Elec company provided them for free.

I have hound that the TCL ordered from depot or other places online or the lowes bulbs are the best bang for the buck but the higher color temp at lowes does cost more as the higher color temps cost a little more to manufacture hence why the yellow ones are cheap.

[oscarMadison]

i've used some from Lowes for security lights. I've had good luck with them, they were pricey (5 years ago). I think they were worth the cost because it minimizes my dragging a ladder out and replacing them. I really like the daylight bulbs. Since I started using cfl daylight bulbs inside it seems like I have less eye strain and colors look right.

Now I'm starting to look at putting some led's in ceiling lights and am looking for specific styles. Lowes and HD just don't have what I want in shape in daylight bulbs. On Amazon the prices seem all over the board. What makes me unsure at this point is the price variance and brand names I haven't heard of. On some of the cheaper ones I wasn't sure if it was low quality or just simply that the bulbs are starting to come down in price and these companies are just trying to be at the head of the pack, trying to get some name recognition.

[JosephP]

I know it is not a perfect science, but use Amazon reviews. If there are a few hundred reviews and they are generally favorable, probably a save bet. See why people don't like them. If half of the one stars are "package showed up smashed", then you have some kind of feel for the people who are rating a product based on the shipping company. If all of the low ratings are for the same thing, think about it a little more...

[oscarMadison]

i do that often, but like to see responses from here if possible to since I figure they're less likely to be stacked.

[PaulM85]

I bought some Feit LED (60 watt equiv) bulbs and they are not as bright as the GE bulbs that I bought. The Feit were a cheap test and I got what I paid for.