Good query!
First, a little bit about me: I am not a lighting engineer, however I’ve examined and reviewed gentle bulbs for CNET for over 5 years. That features lots of of hours in our selfmade lighting lab — a climate-controlled room geared up with a spectrometer and an integrating sphere that lets us run probably the most scientific and correct gentle bulb assessments we will presumably run. I’ve additionally visited and written options about main North American lighting producers resembling Cree and GE to get a greater understanding of their strategies and requirements. That is one among quite a few LED shopping for guides and roundups that we attempt to replace as usually as doable.
A peek inside our integrating sphere.
We load every bulb we take a look at into the middle of our integrating sphere — a giant, hole ball with particular, reflective paint coating the within. Our spectrometer peeks in by a tiny gap within the facet of the sphere, with a “baffle” that blocks it from trying instantly on the gentle bulb. As a substitute, the bulb’s gentle bounces round inside, which lets our spectrometer take dependable, calibrated measurements for issues like brightness and shade temperature.
We log these brightness measurements each 10 minutes for 90 minutes, then take a ultimate studying on the finish. At that time, I plug the sphere’s energy twine into quite a lot of dimmer switches, then measure for the common most and minimal settings throughout all of them whereas additionally preserving an in depth lookout for flicker or buzz.
As soon as a bulb we’re testing is finished within the lab, we take an in depth take a look at issues like gentle unfold, tone and shade high quality. Our picture and video group (Tyler Lizenby, Chris Monroe and Vanessa Salas right here in Louisville) have been an enormous assist, with standardized images that lets us take a extremely shut take a look at these metrics. They’re additionally simply actually damned good at taking photos of sunshine bulbs.
All of that mentioned, a very powerful factor is not what I believe once I’m taking readings in our lighting lab — it is what you and your loved ones assume after screwing the bulbs in and turning them on in your lounge or different space. As I mentioned, LEDs like these are designed to be sturdy and waterproof and final years, so it is nicely value shopping for ones that you’re going to truly like dwelling with. You’ve got bought a whole lot of good choices as of late, so there’s actually no must compromise. I am simply right here that will help you discover these “good” bulbs a bit quicker — or extra effectively, you would possibly say.
This new floodlight LED from Sylvania is not accessible outdoors of California but, however it’s environment friendly, placing out 93.7 lumens per watt. It’s going to be one of many subsequent bulbs I evaluation.