Good CFL, bad CFL...user recommendations

It would be great if Sylvania were to come out with a 23w/1600 lumens micro mini that could take a standard clip-on lamp shade.

 

The one area I refuse to use CFL's is for a reading lamp. CFL's cause me eyestrain, but a 60 watt light bulb works fine

 

Strange that no-one has mentioned FEIT Electric CFLs in this thread as far as I can tell.
I have been getting these from our local Costco from time-to-time, on sale when SCE offers a subsidy. Apart from the occasional bad batch which FEIT have replaced, I have been quite satisfied with them, both the shrouded and un-shrouded twisties. They are not instant-on, but so what! Being retired, I have time to wait!
I have replaced all of the formerly incandescent bulbs throughout the house and outside, except for those in areas that are only on occasionally, for short periods of time. The electric bill savings were dramatic, especially from replacing the external lights that burn throughout the night.

The new GE Energy Star rated refrigerator we recently bought has a bottom freezer with a double french door configuration. It has LED lighting at the top of the refrigerator section, and the lighting excellent! Very bright so you can see everything inside, even when full. I like it a lot.

 

We picked up a pair of LED flood lights, and a cheap fixture, and have now replaced our porch light with incredibly low wattage, cool LED lights! Yay!!

 

As long as we're resurrecting this thread, I've got more input
for it. I used my huge-nice person TCPi 68W units for an event or two
and they were great, even in rain. I've got another one coming
up and need to throw together more lighting, so I wanted to try a
couple of different avenues and one of the options I stumbled across
was the "bright effects" line from Feit Electric, sold by Lowes.
What a piece of crap. Another fine example of how offs(w)horing
is killing our industry potential. By comparison to the TCPi
ones [available at the Orange Box, as noted] it's a night and day
difference [and especially in this case, "night" because the bulb I
bought didn't even work] This is the essence of what I sent off to
Feit's supposed customer-service department, also posted over
at CleanMPG:
________________
.
I recently bought one of your large spiral compact-fluorescent lamps,
the "bright effects" model L65TN, to try as part of a low-budget
area lighting solution I'm working on. I was sorely disappointed.
.
Apparently some shipping or in-store damage had happened because the
unit didn't work, or at least flickered briefly and unsuccessfully
*tried* to work when the base was gently tapped. When shaken,
something in the ballast base was obviously loose and felt about
the weight and sound I'd expect from one of the small transformers
typically used in these ballasts rattling around. Other lamps in
the same case I checked in the store were also like this, so perhaps
the whole pallet fell off the truck and they decided to try and sell
them anyway -- who knows, but what I noticed while examining all
this were some much more serious issues.
.
Compare the two units in this picture:
.
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/pix/misc/bigCFs.jpg
.
The one on the left is from your competition at TCPi, and here are
several reasons I'm going to continue buying *their* CFLs instead
of yours:
.
Your ballast is much larger, indicating some poor engineering
choices regarding how to pack the electronics into the base. From
the damage that the units I looked at seem to have sustained, your
engineering staff apparently doesn't see any point in good physical
restraint of some of the heavier parts, leaving them to bash around
and come detached with a relatively mild impact. I figure if the
glass didn't break, NOTHING else should have happened to these as
I'd expect the electronics to be much more robust than the tube.
.
Your housing doesn't even make a pretense of being weather-resistant,
since it has ample ventilation holes in the top, sides, and bottom.
Neither unit is claimed to be completely weatherproof like a true
outdoor unit, but the TCPi ballast is completely sealed, listed as
weather-resistant, and I *have* used them at wet outdoor events
already with no problem at all.
.
Look at the top surface of the TCPi ballast: it's a sheet of
aluminum, used to couple what minimal heat is lost in the ballast
to the outside air without ventilation holes. Using a heat sink
like that eliminates the need for the holes and probably allows
for a more compact arrangement of parts underneath. The TCPi
ballast is *very* efficient, producing almost no heat of its
own and sending all the power used to the lamp tube.
.
The tube area of the TCPi unit is larger, yielding more light-
emitting surface overall.
.
The TCPi lamps come in a nice form-fit clamshell plastic inner
packing sleeve that snaps apart, easily re-usable as protective
storage when moving the lamps around. Your cardboard packaging
leaves a lot to be desired, and wouldn't last long in damp storage
environments as where one might commonly find special-event
equipment spending a lot of time.
.
With all these disadvantages, your units are about $2 MORE expensive,
and apparently sold on some exclusive basis through Lowes where a
choice in large-format CFLs is not offered to the consumer at the
shelves so they feel locked into solely buying these.
.
In short, I would warn all potential buyers of large-format CFLs to
100% avoid your product line until some major rework is done. Right
now you are not competing in the market, you are losing and simply
lowering everyone's overall expectations and standards. Don't do
that, especially with a relatively new product type. You have every
motivation to not only fix this problem TODAY, but to also revisit
similar design issues in your lines of lower-wattage lamps as well.
.
Escalate this up the chain until something is done about it.
.
The unit in question has already been returned, so I don't expect
any particular response to this, other than perhaps going into
a Lowes a few months from now and either see greatly improved
product on the shelves, or just continuing to find the same old
disappointment. But while you're in there reworking some designs,
how about something truly innovative to go your competition one
better? How about a 100W native unit that can produce a 500W or so
incandescent-equivalent, and maybe with an improved spectrum at the
same time?? That could put a nice ding in the halogen-worklight
market, which from the standpoint of energy-inefficiency needs
to die anyway, and be a desireable part of various large-area
lighting solutions.
.
_H*

 

Good for you. So many folks out there get a bum product, they may quietly grumble to themselves, but never take it any further

 

October 2009 Consumer Reports tested 24 CFLs. Here's the Ratings Chart (Sorry if the image appears small on your screen -- I think the PriusChat software sometimes automatically resizes it, and sometimes it doesn't. But if it's too small on your screen, just zoom in/blow up the view to 200% and it'll be very legible.):

[imglink]http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/resources/images/magazine-archive/october-2009/home-garden/compact-fluorescents/ratings/cfls-rate.jpg[/imglink]

Guide to the Ratings

Overall score combines life and rapid-cycle testing, 3,000-hour brightness at 3,000 hours of use, and warm-up time performance. Life testing reflects how many 3-hour on and 20-minute off cycles a bulb survives after 3,000 hours of the "on" cycle. Rapid-cycle testing reflects the average number of 5-minute on and 5-minute off cycles each bulb survived. Brightness indicates the brightness (lumens) of each bulb after 3,000 hours of life testing, as compared with the brightness of a comparable incandescent. Warm-up time is how long the bulb took to reach near full brightness. Actual brightness (lumen) is the averaged measured brightness of 10 bulb samples after being life tested for 3,000 hours. Actual color temperature (kelvin) is the averaged measured color temperature of 10 bulb samples. Those with 2700 K are closest to incandescent bulbs; ones with 3000 K are similar to halogen bulbs. Claimed equivalent wattage is equivalent incandescent bulb that a manufacturer says the CFL will replace. Claimed life is how long the manufacturer says the bulb will last. Price is approximate retail.

 

You know, the Feit's I've bought recently (past 2 years) are actually pretty good. Yes, the spirals I've bought turn on instantly. Only issue is that some seemed to die an early death.

The only CFLs I've bought recently (in the last year) that aren't instant on was a PAR40 and a globe-style CFL and some outdoor floods.

 

I like my color temperature about 3,000 degrees Kelvin, but these are hard to find except by mail order, and they are more expensive. Incandescent is about 2800 and "normal fluorescents" are 3500 and up.

I've also had a lot of bad luck with CFLs burning out in enclosed fixtures.

And I find that in order to have the equivalent light of a 60 watt incandesceant bulb, I have to buy one rated for 75 watts.

 

I need some that are small candelabra based for 3 ceiling fixtures that I do NOT want to replace. I also have 2 fixtures that use flame bulbs, what can replace those? They are also candelabra based.

 

I've put the ongoing "outdoor lighting" saga and more of its
developments here for general amusement. There may be a little
more added after the event in question and we see how it works.
.
_H*

 

Don't know what to say. I bought a bunch of Feit 13w & 23w spirals about a year ago from Costco for something insanely cheap - like 10 bulbs for $5.

Out of the 20 or so bulbs I've put in use, I've had 2 die (which I took to Home Depot to recycle/dispose of). The rest still fire up instantly and provide good light (they all have some sort of shade on them).

At Home Depot they have a couple different candelabra bulbs under the EcoSmart of CFLs they have. They had some really small, low power ones that take a while to warm up but barely provide any light. They have other spirals that are 13w I think and those fire up instantly and are pretty good. Read the lumen ratings on them - that will tell you how much light it really puts out and watch out for the "pretty" enclosed ones which tend to take a while to warm up.