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Philips' new LED bulb costs just $5

April 22, 2015
Philips' new LED bulb costs just $5
The new Philips 8.5-W LED bulb is equivalent to a 60-W incandescent bulb
The new Philips 8.5-W LED bulb is equivalent to a 60-W incandescent bulb
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The new Philips 8.5-W LED bulb is equivalent to a 60-W incandescent bulb
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The new Philips 8.5-W LED bulb is equivalent to a 60-W incandescent bulb
The bulb is available in a warm white color temperature of 2700 K outputting 800 lm of light
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The bulb is available in a warm white color temperature of 2700 K outputting 800 lm of light
The A19 bulb size is the most commonly used
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The A19 bulb size is the most commonly used
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If you've previously been put off LED bulbs by the price, now may be the time to reconsider. Philips, in partnership with The Home Depot, has announced that it will sell an A19 60-W LED equivalent bulb for just US$4.97. The firm says it's the most affordable LED bulb on the market.

Philips says that its new 60-W LED bulb will cost $62 less over its lifetime to run than a traditional incandescent bulb. If used in different light fittings throughout the home, the annual saving could therefore be significant.

The bulb uses just 8.5 W of power and is available in a warm white color temperature of 2,700 K outputting 800 lumens of light. A daylight version of the bulb with a color temperature of 5,000 K will also be available, as will 100-W A19 LED equivalent.

The bulb will be available at The Home Depot stores from the beginning of May in a two-for-one pack for the first 90 days, but is available now online.

Source: Philips

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15 comments
lwesson
I am sure that there are good places for such bulbs. Hotels can use these and ditch the hideous twisty florescents and not worry that they will be stolen. Hotels have some of the worst lighting.... maybe this will end that.
However, for the home where you want to dim, really dim a light, so far these things, even if they say they dim, just kind of dim. Thankfully, we bought many incandescent bulbs for our down lighting. On dimmers, in 5 years, we had two such lights burn out.
Living in a 20's home, we also have Edison type bulbs, and none of them have burned out, also on dimmers.
I will hint to a friend who put the twisty bulbs all over her house to check these out as her home is difficult to visit with those gaudy things blinding us. No, she does not work for a hotel or motel chain. Hey, a call to Tom Bodett might be in order!
Robert in Vancouver
$5.00 is still way too much, and the bulb will die long before you save enough energy to pay for it. The lifespan of energy efficient bulbs isn't anything like advertised, in real life they last as long as regular incadescent bulbs that cost 50 cents.
dink
As robo said. They keep turning to China suppliers for support electronics to do the ac/dc switching conversions and cut costs. It simply isn't teneable, the actual III-V material and phosphor might last 50000 hours, but nothing else will. The innovation needs to happen in the wall. Housewide 3.3vdc wall power would go a long ways in making these cheap.
Fretting Freddy the Ferret pressing the Fret
LED bulbs are way, way different from those ugly, flickering, mercury filled, compact fluorescent lamps that die quickly. It also turns out that CFL are not suited bathrooms, because rapidly switching them on and off is detrimental to their lifespan. I bought two LED bulbs for my room, and I haven't regretted it ever since.
White Druid
robo, you are incorrect. I've a few remaining incandescent bulbs in my home on a dimmer in my dining room. Most of the bulbs I have in that fixture are dimmable CFLs. I rarely use the dimmer function and will be pulling it out so I can replace them all with inexpensive LED bulbs I got from Ikea.
The cost of a dozen 25 or 40watt incandescent bulbs in that fixture would be 300 watts of power, which at 10cents per kwh doesn't seem like it adds up to much, but the calculations (and my monthly electric bill) show that it really does add up.
When we bought the house in 2011 it had almost a dozen incandescent spotlight bulbs in the kitchen, each of which were circa 90-100 watts. I replaced them with the best I could find, 3 packs of CFL spots at circa $14/pkg and saw a dramatic drop in electric. 10 bulbs of CFLs were running about the same cost as a single spot on that circuit. 10 @100 watt at 5 hours per day at 30 days per month ends up being 10 times the cost in electricity for incandescent as it would be for CFL or LED. In this case, the monthly cost would be $1.50 per month for that one circuit alone, or $18 per year, which means the bulbs paid for themselves inside of two years or so. And yes, they have indeed lasted the full four years we've been in the house.
My LED bulbs I bought back in the day, are on 24x7 as safety lights just inside my front door. Just enough light to see what's going on and about a watt or so of power between the three of them.
I don't know what kind of electric power you have that burns out CFLs in the same time frame as an incandescent, but I've been using them for 20 years and don't have the same experiences. Instead, I've saved heat in my house and saved on my monthly bill and not had to regularly replace the incandescent bulbs, like I used to have to do back in the day.
tyme2par4
@robo I'm not sure what bulbs you are using, but they do in fact last far longer than incandescent. I've had the same LED bulbs in a few fixtures in my house for the last 3.5 years. The incandescents would last less than 6 months. As for paying for it, do some simple math. at $.12/kWh, these bulbs would pay for themselves in under 1000 hours (roughly the life span of an incandescent, or 2% of the estimated LED lifespan). That's only a few months of daily use.
Daishi
>The bulb will be available at The Home Depot stores from the beginning of May in a two-for-one pack for the first 90 days
I was actually at Home depot a couple days ago and happened to spot these. They were under $5 for a 2 pack which is incredibly cheap for LED. That's pretty much what CFL's cost which need to be replaced more often and use 13 watts rather than 8.5.
They aren't dimmable but I can live with that. I've had lots of CFL's burn out too quickly because being turned on and off often significantly shortens their lifespan below the 8 year projection but the LED's I've installed have so far been reliable.
At 12 cents/kWh if you left a light on 24 hours a day a 8.5 watt LED would be about $55 cheaper/year than a 60w incandescent and about $4.50 cheaper than a 13 watt CFL.
LED's are now the cheapest lights to install and its getting to the point where they would be cheaper even if electricity were free because they don't have to be replaced as often. The first LED's I bought in 2012 or 2013 were $20-$25 each and only around the same efficiency as CFL but the new ones have improved significantly.
They are also more durable against breaks than CFL and don't contain mercury.
toolman65
when they make a 100 watt equivalent for under five bucks, that will be something worthy of a press release. At my local home depot they are selling the 8.5 watt LED "lollipop" style for $3.00 because no one is buying them.
moreover
Robo - stop spreading misinformation. LED bulbs are superior in every way. Much cheaper to operate, much lower energy consumption, dimmable, color temperature choices, heat/cold resistant, very long life, shock resistant, no mercury, and we're past first generation issues. Those are the facts.
Rob Preece
I can't believe the negative comments. I've moved to LED lighting. Light is fine. Electric bill is dramatically lower. I can't say whether I'm getting my ten year use because it hasn't been ten years but definitely better life than old-fashioned 'use in your kiddie oven' incandescent bulbs. Plus, if you life in a part of the world where air conditioning is a problem, you'll save even more on your electric bill. Many of us also have fixtures that are hard to reach--how great to have a long-lasting bulb rather than try to find a long ladder or (as I did for years) simply refuse to use some lighting because I didn't know how I would replace the bulbs when they blew out.
LEDs are great and $5 is a great price although I've been paying this lor less thanks to electric company rebates already. Wonder if these will be even cheaper???
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