LED lighting is preparing to take over the world, from flood lights to desk lights to night lights. And Enlux just won the Popular Science Grand Award for home technology for their part in this revolution.
The Enlux approach is apparently to remove LED diodes from their individual packing and place them together onto a single circuit board. In this way, the circuit board can draw away waste heat more efficiently, allowing more LEDs to be packaged together, and resulting in larger lumen level of consistant lighting. The first Enlux LED Flood lights come in three different white light (warm, neutral, and cool), and multiple colors (like red, green, blue), last 50K hours (well, they potentially last much longer than that, just around the 50K hour mark is when the output will have ‘dropped off’ – just like the backlighting of current LCD TV sets), and generate as much brightness in a 22-watt flood as a traditional 45-65 watt incandescent bulb.
And for those of you who don’t want to do the math, I’ve pulled the following from the Enlux website:
Just how long is 50,000 hours?
50,000 hours lit for 24 hours per day will last over 5 and a half years.
50,000 hours lit for 12 hours per day will last for over 11 years.
50,000 hours lit for 8 hours per day will last for over 17 years.
50,000 hours lit for 4 hours per day will last for over 34 years.
Also, with no silly filament, I presume these LED lights also aren’t prone to the ‘freak’ burn out typical of incandescent lights. I mean, they are an electric/electronic device, so they are still open to some level of surge, but I’d doubt one would die on me like my kitchen fixture has, twice in a year and a half! I should also note that unlike ‘glass’ bulbs, the Enlux bulbs are rather sturdy, able to withstand vibrations (which could kill a filament) and even small drops (that would simply shatter a regular incandescent).
At around $80 for these first lights, they’re not for everyone. But if you can put them to use, you’ll save in the long run on electricity, you won’t have to replace them for a very, very long time, and they come with a 2 year warranty (if they fail, send them back and Enlux will send you a new one).
Similar products are making their way into the consumer marketplace, which should help drive competition, further innovation, and the creation of more consumer consumables (say that ten times fast!), like a typical 60-watt desk lamp lightbulb, or wall-plug nightlights – that’s what the average consumer really needs to reduce their electrical bills.
For more, you can check out the for a cool image head-on with the LEDs, or browse the to buy one for yourself.
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I’ve been watching these LED lights for some time now. I spent a while trying to buy LED floods for my kitchen redesign, but didn’t have much luck. For example, these can’t go into recessed fixtures and they can’t be dimmed, both of which were requirements for my kitchen. However, the product mix is changing quickly. I ended up installing cheap incandescents in the hope that LED replacements will be available soon. These guys are getting there, but haven’t convinced me yet.