LED 60 WATT REPLACEMENT BULB- CONSUMES ONLY 8 WATTS OF ENERGY. NICHIA SERIES E27 BASE COLOR: COOL WHITE

Review: I have about 8 or 10 of these in my house (various brands, including Nichia, Toshiba, and Sharp; no Westinghouse bulbs). I can’t remember which of my bulbs are made by Nichia and which are Sharp or Toshiba, so this is a review of my experiences in general terms, including the product on this page.

The first thing to know about LED bulbs is that if you want something equivalent to a regular incandescent light bulb in brightness, you have to go with these $40-ish ones. The $10 or $15 ones do not put out much light at all and they are only really good for nightlights and other such applications. Prices are coming down (these retail for about $25-30 here in Japan) but it will be a while before we get to $10 a bulb that has full “power”.

These 8-watt bulbs truly generate as much light as a “regular” incandescent light bulb, but without the heat. You absolutely will not notice a difference between this and a regular 60-watt incandescent bulb, which is not something you can say about CFLs.

CFLs are ridiculously slow to turn on after you hit the switch. They also need 90 seconds to get to full brightness. This can be more annoying than you may first realize. I have stepped on (brown) dog poop on my (brown) wooden floors because a CFL bulb was still “warming up” and at half capacity in light output, so I couldn’t see the dog poop at the foot of the stairs. Annoying.

On that count, these LED bulbs are wonderful. They light up immediately, just like regular incandescent bulbs.

CFLs also have a tendency to burn out MUCH earlier than what manufacturers claim. Two of my CFLs burned out in 4 months. These LEDs have worked great for 10 months already and not one has given me trouble. (I will update this review if one burns out.)

Moreover, CFLs are toxic if broken. Run a search for “CFL bulb mercury” or “CFL toxic EPA” and you will find the Environmental Protection Agency’s scary list of what to do if you accidentally break a CFL bulb (it includes *throwing away* all clothing/bedding that came into direct contact with the mercury powder released from the bulb– these cannot be washed as they contaminate the washing machine with mercury and pollute sewage). You should consider CFLs only after researching the health & environmental risks of these bulbs.

So, if you either want to save energy (my main reason for purchasing these) or if you want to change the light bulb once and not have to worry about it again for 10 years (my secondary reason, for hard-to-reach places), go with these LEDs instead.

Note that a true “regular light bulb color” does not yet exist with any manufacturer, to my knowledge. The “warm” ones are intended to be “light bulb color”, but in my opinion they are yellower than a regular bulb, while the “cool” ones are *very* white. Personally, I find the “very white” bulbs make working in the kitchen and reading easier than with regular light bulbs, but I needed a few weeks to adjust to the color shift.

These are admittedly expensive but the current price is in fact a price breakthrough– they had been selling for about $80/bulb until 2 years ago. Sharp broke the price barrier in June 2009 by slashing prices fully in half and Toshiba quickly followed suit.

If the current price is too expensive, I recommend putting this into your Amazon cart and then going into the Cart and clicking on “Save for later” (as opposed to putting this on your Wish List or Shopping List). If it is in “Save for later” mode, every time you click on your cart you will get updates on changes in the price. My personal guess is that after another year or two these will go down in price again quite dramatically, and “Save for later” will be an easy way to track the price changes. Here in Japan, including on the Amazon Japan site, they are now selling for about $25 or $30 (compared to $40-45 when I bought mine 10 months ago), and I assume the US market will follow in a year or so. Panasonic, for example, plans to expand into the foreign market, and that should bring prices down in the US substantially.

As stats about these lights in general (and again this is for the ones that are designed to replace 60 or 100-watt bulbs, not the 1-watt or 3-watt versions that are nothing more than nightlights):

- LED bulbs last 40 times longer than regular incandescent bulbs and 6 times longer than CFLs.

- LED bubs use 90% less energy than regular bulbs and at least 40% less energy than CFLs.

- A typical LED bulb is said to run 6 hours for a penny at Tokyo prices (25 cents per kWh). US rates are typically in the range of 8 to 15 cents per kWh, so that would imply roughly 10 to 18 hours of use per penny in electricity costs for folks in the US.

Negatives to LED bulbs include:

- You are not supposed to use them with dimmer switches, automatic on/off functions, or lamps that have three intensity settings, unless they state explicitly that such uses are OK (ones compatible with dimmer switches cost an extra $10). I personally use them in light sockets with sensors (the light turns on when someone passes) and I haven’t had any problems thus far. I assume it will cut the life of the bulb, but I’ll need to wait and see.

- You are not supposed to use these bulbs with remote controls. Again, no idea why.

- Regular bulbs heat to about 300 degrees F (the filament heats to between 4500 and 5000 degrees F to make it glow); LED bulbs heat to roughly 150 degrees F. So, it is still possible to get a burn from an LED light, but they are much, much cooler than regular bulbs.
Rating: 5 / 5