The Home Depot takes LED lighting mainstream with $20 bulbs
By Sean Hollister 
posted May 11th 2010 3:57AM
posted May 11th 2010 3:57AM
Slowly but surely, LED light bulbs have been getting brighter and more efficient, but price has always been a major factor staying their adoption. Back in 2007, a single 308 lumen bulb cost $65, and the more things changed, the more they've stayed the same. Now, out of the blue, The Home Depot has stepped forward with a cost-effective alternative. For $20, the new EcoSmart LED bulb promises a 429 lumen, 40W equivalent with a 50,000 hour expected lifetime, making it cheaper and nearly as powerful as the 450 lumen, $40-50 design industry heavyweight GE unveiled last month. Best of all, it's already available for purchase (though backordered) at our source link. Honestly, we're starting to wonder what the catch is. PR after the break. A REVOLUTION IN LIGHTING BEGINS TODAY AT THE HOME DEPOT WITH THE INTRODUCTION OF LIGHTING SCIENCE GROUP'S BREAKTHOUGH ECOSMART LED LIGHT BULBS...BUILT IN THE USA
First LED Bulb to Achieve 50 Percent More Lumens
at Half the Price of Competing Products
New Technology Paves the Way for Highly Efficient, Affordably Priced and
Environmentally Responsible Lighting
Satellite Beach, Florida, May 10, 2010 – Finally, an LED light bulb that delivers high quality lumens at an affordable cost. Starting today, homeowners can lower energy cost without sacrificing light quality by installing The Home Depot's new proprietary ECOSMART LED light bulbs. By revolutionizing the science of light, Lighting Science Group Corporation, a leading American maker of LED-based lighting, has produced for The Home Depot the first affordably priced, yet highly efficient 9 watt A19 LED bulb that is a smart choice to replace traditional 40 watt incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent lamps ("CFLs"). The ECOSMART LED bulb's retail price is $19.97, compared to over $50 for other LED bulbs, uses approximately 80% less energy than a 40 watt incandescent light bulb and is expected to last more than 22 years.* Built in the USA, the ECOSMART A19 LED bulb is the first in a full line of ECOSMART LED products made by Lighting Science Group that will be available exclusively in The Home Depot stores this year.
Independent tests show that the lumen output of the A19 ECOSMART LED bulb is unrivaled-outperforming similar products by 25-30%. The ECOSMART LED bulb is dimmable, available in the familiar A19 light bulb shape, and more energy efficient than an equivalent CFL. Furthermore, unlike CFLs, the ECOSMART LED bulb contains no mercury, is completely recyclable and offers outstanding light quality.
"We believe the ECOSMART LED bulb is the highest quality and longest lasting light bulb on the market-at a very affordable price," said Jorge Fernandez, Merchant-Electrical, The Home Depot. "If one of our new ECOSMART light bulbs is installed in a newborn's room today, it will probably not have to be replaced until the child is ready to graduate college! The ECOSMART LED light bulb represents a huge cost savings to the consumer, both in terms of the reduced use of electricity coupled with savings on replacement costs versus traditional bulbs. At The Home Depot we are committed to providing our customers with innovative merchandise that delivers value and everyday low price."
In most home applications, consumers are expected to save $155 in energy cost over the life of the product and the bulb will pay for itself in less than two years from energy and replacement savings alone.** Furthermore, to ensure consumer confidence and reliability, an independent testing lab approved by the U.S. Department of Energy's CALiPER program has validated the performance of the UL-listed ECOSMART LED bulb.
"The ECOSMART LED bulb is a significant leap forward from Thomas Edison's 130 year-old invention," said Zach Gibler, Chief Executive Officer, Lighting Science Group Corporation. "Consumers now have the freedom to switch to an environmentally friendly and energy efficient lighting solution without sacrificing light quality. Lighting Science Group is proud to be the technology provider behind The Home Depot's ECOSMART lighting products, and deliver an American solution for our energy and environmental challenges."
The A19 ECOSMART LED bulb is available on Home Depot's website (www.homedepot.com) and in stores nationwide.
Something tells me that Home Depot isn't just out to revolutionize lighting while taking a financial hit. I wonder how they made it cost effective.
@Nidan reread: "40W equivalent"
@Clyzm All that matters:
1) lumens
2) watts
3) color
4) price
Home Depot already has a myriad of CFL bulbs that outperform this LED. Buying a different tech for the sake of tech is teh lame. Results matter.
@Clyzm And to more directly answer your question: A single high quality LED is bright and very power efficient... and expensive.
What they have likely done here is grouped a crapton of cheapo LEDs into a clusterf*ck, hidden it behind that nice diffuser pingpong ball and slapped it on the shelves for cheap.
The low output, high powerdraw, and low cost are giveaways.
@Nidan
Read the press release. It says that it is 9W
@Nidan
Read the press release. It says it is 9W
@Hobsie My bad ;(
@Ducman69
I actually work for a large lighting control company and we recently tested this bulb out. I don't have all the numbers myself, but I can say it outperforms every LED bulb on the market, and even ones that haven't hit yet. Has great color to it, they say it's a 40W equivilent but looks more like 60W (yay), only takes an actual 8W, and has excellent dimming performance.
I've seen about two dozen LED fixtures, so I can say with confidence this is a great one.
@Clyzm
The whole light bulb industry is a gimmic. Your average incandescent lasts a few months. When we built my house 8 years ago, we installed commercial grade bulbs - not the walmart stuff. While we have replaced many with CFL's since then - it wasn't because they burned out. The commercial bulbs LAST. And, our CFL's go out in a steady stream - never approaching the promised lifetimes. At 10x the cost per bulb, the CFL's often don't payoff. At 100x cost per bulb, it doesn't take many LED bulbs going out to make the costs outweigh the gains.
@Ducman69 You're forgetting lifespan. Wiki says CFLs have 6000-15000 hours of life, and most I used up till now have 8000-10000. This promises 50000 hours.
@jcrash
No one is getting rid of incandescents because they don't last. We want to get rid of them because they use so much god damn electricity.
@jcrash It sounds like something is wrong with the electricity in your house or you leave your lights on all the time. I've never had an incandescent last fewer than 2-3 years. If yours are only lasting a few months, something is not right.
@Clyzm The bulb is designed by Lighting Science, and all their products to date seem to be high end and well designed (as far as I can tell from the website). Fact is, the new batch of LEDs coming out are very, very efficient, so you need less of these LEDs to achieve the desired lumen once you incorporate them in a luminaire.
@jcrash
The CFL lamp itself usually doesn't die, it the electronics in the base of the lamp (the ballast) that dies. You'll find they die a lot quicker used upside down because the electronics get hotter, thus decreasing their life span. Typically it's cheaper to run a halogen bulb a 85% dimmed (almost not noticeably lower light output) than run a cfl bulb when you factor lifetime and cost of the bulb.
@tbonet
Yep - folks need to check their house voltage. In my county it runs 120 to 122V ! County says it's due to outdated equipment. We buy higher voltage bulbs, but they are hard to find. Regular bulbs don't last.
@tboehmer what was the colour like on it? Was it a warm light like an incandescent, or the bright white like you see in some booklights and such?
@Ducman69 You forgot longevity.
And LED bulbs don't contain mercury either.
@tboehmer If these work nicely with a standard dimmer then I'll be ordering a few. The CFLs I've found that work with a dimmer are way too expensive.
@Ducman69 CFL light bulbs contain mercury, LED does not. That's one of the major reasons why there has been a recent uptick in LED lighting. Also, LED is more energy efficient then CFL.
You wrote
1) lumens
2) watts
3) color
4) price
1. Yup, couldn't agree more
2. LED will use lower W at same lumens
3. You mean "color temperature"?
4. As in initial cost or over the life of the bulb?
@tboehmer
That may explain why my CFLs last so long; all are in horizontal sockets.
Personally, I use fluorescents first for lower heat output (I live in the south), and secondarily for energy savings.
@jcrash
I'm with you on this. It's all a joke. I have had so many lighbulbs (incandescent and fluorescent) burn out well short of their promised life spans.
The 'catch' here, Engadget? These $20 will not last you 50k hours. Sorry.
Looks like this one for $14.20:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.37161
@Ducman69 You missed one. Perhaps the most important one: Lifespan.
We've got a large home - well over 5,00 sq feet - and we've got a *lot* of CFLs. There are no incandescents anywhere. We've been running CFLs for years, and let me tell you -- the lifetimes on them are FAR less than advertised with ONE exception, and that is in places where they don't get turned on and off. There, they tend to last even longer than specified, which is interesting, but not the common application. LED lamps are very likely to follow the same lifespan character, and for the same reason: To make these bulbs affordable, they use cheap components, and they skimp on things like surge protection.
While I'm delighted with the change in power consumption the new technologies offer, with all the benefits of that to the house's infrastructure, the constant replacement of the bulbs is a real hit to the financial part of the picture. Lifespan is very important. I'd rate it as critical.
@Ducman69 5) blink rate
60 and 120Hz fatigue my eyes and tend to cause headaches.
But the real question is can it produce a mellow light like an incandescant, or is it still have that sickly color of current energy saving ccfls?
@connorpoole There are 3 colors of CCFLs. One is at least as orange as an incandescent.
And which one would that be, as every damn silly-straw cfl I've ever seen gave me a headache or made ms want to vomit. Some folks like me are just light sensitive, which is why the majority of my home is lit with halogen bulbs.
@connorpoole The problem with CFLs is that their spectrum is a series (usually only 4 or 5) of sharp peaks, where as sunlight and incandescent bulbs have continuous spectra.
This means that things won't look the colour that they actually are. It's exactly the same as how you can't see colours under a low pressure sodium street light. That has a single horrible orange peak, so everything looks orange. Four peaks are much better, but still not great.
Fortunately LEDs have a much better spectrum that is fairly smooth:
http://web.ncf.ca/jim/misc/cfl/index.html
@Cash9007 Halogen? Do you _want_ to start a fire?
@Cash9007
I'm with you 100%. CCFLs are fine for porch lights or whatever, but if I'm going to spend any time near a light, I want full-spectrum bulbs. Halogens are my current bulb of choice, though if LED bulbs can actually come close to their spectrum, I might switch.
The real question is whether or not it can replicate the warmth of an incandescent bulb. No amour of feel good green talk will make me change out my bedside lamp for something that reminds me of hospitals.
@connorpoole
You know what can replicate the warmth of an incandescent bulb without using any electricity at all?
Burning whale oil.
@connorpoole i switched completely to cold leds years ago, and can only suggest it. getting rid of the warm light will interestingly give you a better mood overall. it's very relaxing, and the "it's not yellow" issue gets away in the first minute. after that, you love the white, as well as the surrounding yellows and blues (as it's yellow and blue based). the darker reds make skins look better (less pig-rose), too.
there are the options to get 'warm' leds, but they are less efficient. and trying out the cold ones is really worth it. so far people all enjoy the light, after the first "urgh wtf?".
the other big thing about led lights is the instant-on-ness. never turn on a light and even wait a second till you see something. just walk into the room, and while walking, turn on the light. it will be instantly on and you see where you walk to. you get pissed at every other light once you get used to that (similar to ssds).
so yeah, you can chose. but you should chose wisely.
@connorpoole Actually it looked just like the "Bright White" CFL. I work at Home Depot and was flipping out when I saw the price on these things. Although the energy use is about the same as a comparable CFL, the life on one of these babies is ALOT longer than any other bulb HD carries.
@davepermen This man speaks the truth. My house is filled with Daylight-balanced CFLs from Ott-Lamp, and I have a (quite expensive =/) LED lighting fixture with daylight balanced LEDs. It puts out around 200W equiv. for around 40W consumption.
I cannot stand the warm incandescent glow now.
@davepermen
I like my skin pig-rose.
(What's pig-rose?)
@connorpoole
Think about this way; now the hospital will feel like your own bedroom, how lovely!
@DrDr
Man, you just gave me my laugh for the day, thank you kind sir!
Hmm. 440 lumens? If I buy $80 of them I could almost light my hallway.
Catch is it's still 20$.....
Still too expensive and not powerful enough, but it is something that people should consider for lights that are on for multiple hours a day.
As for the color, I got really white CFLs and they are great. Super bright, really white, much better than incandescents. I don't understand people who say they prefer incandescent bulbs, the color is totally not natural.
@DrDr
People don't like the white color. I find it very ugly.
@Peter F takes half a minute to adapt to white led light. after that, you don't want to switch back. it's the most enjoyable relaxing light ever, and not just for me, but for about anyone really testing it out in a home setup so far. there are "warm light" leds, but in the end, i'd suggest you to try them. their light spectrum is very similar to full-moon light, which is a light we normally enjoy very much. and is very relaxing.
@davepermen
"their light spectrum is very similar to full-moon light, which is a light we normally enjoy very much"
You and the other lycanthropes? ;D
will it blend?
@travisonfire
No, it's a lightbulb, not a blender.
I don't think they even make LED blenders.
@DrDr
I guess you are not getting the joke?
@hh83917 or he did, and you didn't? ... oooohh the suspense... :)
@hh83917 it's actually you that's not getting the joke...
@travisonfire I wish people who constantly referenced outdated internet memes could be put in a blender.