Product Name: Cree Standard 60W Replacement LED

The LED Designed for Us

Just when you think you’re starting to understand how this whole light bulb replacement game is playing out, along comes a brand new entry from a brand new company that’s suddenly in a lot of stores and demanding some attention. So you take a look. And the closer you look the better it looks.

Could this new player really be better than the others already on the field?

Well, yes, it could. Could this new company really be a competitor with the brands we’ve known and trusted for years? Well, yes, that could be true too.

We all know that the innovation is going on like crazy across the lighting industry as all the manufacturers are working overtime to try to be the leading supplier of the light bulbs that we want and need, and that meet the requirements of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. What we don’t know is who this new company is.

Who is Cree, and why haven’t you heard of them before? It turns out that Cree has actually been around since 1987. The reason most of us haven’t heard of them before is that they were focusing on their original business mission: producing high-quality and innovative commercial lighting products. Stadium lighting, arena lighting, assembly room lighting, mall lighting – that sort of thing. Everything from fixtures and the lamps (light bulbs) that go in them to LEDs and the chips they’re made from. TESS LED bulbs boast about “Cree (chips) inside.” Remind you of the stickers on some computers?

The reason we’re hearing about them now is that they’ve decided that they could, and should, become leaders in the push to replace inefficient lighting with high-efficiency LED lighting. And we still might not have heard from them if they hadn’t decided that they could make a better LED light bulb than the ones we were all seeing come to market.

That brings us to this bulb, the Cree Standard 60W Replacement LED A-line light bulb.

What’s different about this bulb?

It looks more like a familiar W19 incandescent light bulb than most of the replacement bulbs do.

It’s the most efficient 60W replacement bulb available.

It’s safety coated; and

It comes with a 10 year warranty

That’s all very impressive, but how does it really stack up? Let’s run the numbers and find out:

Just the Facts

Product Name: Cree Standard 60W Replacement LED

• Type:  LED A-line
• Voltage:  120V AC
• Wattage:  9.5 watts
• Size and Shape:  A19
• Base/Connection:  Medium screw (E26)
• Dimmable?  Yes
• Cost:  $8.95 US
• Rated Life: 25,000 hours
• Life in Years (based on three hours of use per day): 22.8 years
• Replacement Cost per Year:  $0.39 US
• Energy Consumption (kilowatt hours per year):  10.4 kWh
• Energy Cost/Year (based on $0.11 US per kilowatt hour):  $1.14 US
• Total cost/year:  $1.54 US
• Initial Light Output in Lumens:  800 lumens
• Efficiency (lumens per watt):  84.21 L/W
• Color Temperature:  2700 degrees Kelvin
• Color Rendering Index (CRI):  80

Analysis

Based on the numbers, this LED light bulb, the Cree Standard 60W Replacement LED, does what we want and need in a light bulb that’s going to replace our 60 watt incandescent bulbs. The light is the same color temperature as a “soft white” incandescent bulb – 2700 degrees Kelvin -- so it will look the same, and you, your friends and your room will look the same, as they did with your old bulbs. It produces an equivalent amount of light at 800 lumens. It’s fully dimmable with a standard dimmer.

It uses just 9.5 watts of electricity per hour, so it’s the most efficient light bulb available that’s putting out 800 lumens. That means it only costs $1.14 per year on your electric bill. Best of all, it costs less than $9.00 to buy and is rated to last for nearly 23 years, so it’s annual replacement cost is only 39 cents.

Reflections

What the numbers don’t tell us is whether this LED light bulb looks and feels enough like a standard 60 watt incandescent bulb to feel familiar. This one does, and here’s why:

As the provisions of the Energy Efficiency Act come into force, more companies are entering the competition to become the supplier of the new light bulbs that will both give us the light we want and meet the new efficiency standards. Most of those companies, it appears, are allowing manufacturing technology and cost to drive their design. In other words, it’s about “How can we make this cheaper and still have it sell?”

Cress has deliberately taken a different approach. They decided to design a light bulb that would replicate the bulb it was designed to replace, as closely as they could, and then work to get the cost down. One example of this, in addition to the close matches seen in the numbers, is the safety coating they put on each bulb. No more broken bulbs to deal with! Another is the 10 year warranty they offer with each bulb. But the clearest example is their trademarked LED Filament Tower™. What’s that?

It’s simply that Cree arranged the LED ships inside the bulb to sit in a circle at the widest part of the bulb. That’s where the filament in an incandescent bulb is, so the light comes out of these bulbs in the same way that it comes out of the bulbs we’re familiar with. It doesn’t sound like much, but it makes a difference in the way the light is thrown onto and through a shade, onto the surface of a table, or onto the wall above the shade. It turns out it is important. Just as important is what it says about the company’s design philosophy – they set out to make a product we’d be likely to enjoy.

"How much will these light bulbs cost me every year?"

$1.54. $1.14 in electricity and $0.39 in replacement cost. (That doesn’t add up exactly due to rounding.)

"Will they actually save me money?"

Compared to a 60 watt incandescent bulb, a Cree Standard 60W Replacement LED light bulb can save you an estimated $6.26 every year. You can eliminate roughly 80% of your lighting costs with each replacement.

"Will I like this bulb long-term?"

It’s likely that you will. They’re not only the least expensive alternative available, they’re intentionally designed to be a light bulb you’ll like. I also like that I can find the manufacturer online, and that they’re not outsourced – or that the responsibility for them isn’t, at any rate. And frankly, I like that I can buy them in a local store and return them there if I have any problem.