LED Blog: LED Lighting And All Things Green

Announcing our new 3rd Generation LED Light Bulbs

We are extremely excited to announce our newest 3rd Generation LED Light bulbs! After weeks of testing we’ve found the brightest LED bulbs on the planet.

How do we know these are the brightest? We got a bunch of samples from manufacturers from all around the world and put them through weeks of testing. The following are the winners that are not only the brightest but have the best bang for the buck.

2nd generation LED bulbs use a big hunk of metal to cool them. This isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that it makes them expensive - and price is one of the biggest factors in getting people to adopt LED lighting. Our new bulbs are different as follows:

Quanta-18 and Quanta-9 - Uses shatterproof plastic and air-cooling technology to make them feather light and cool to the touch as well as cost MUCH less than comparable 2nd generation LED light bulbs from other manufacturers.

Chromia-6 - No more all metal heatsink - just metal fins that provide much more surface area for cooling similar to those used in the newest computer processors (CPU’s)

Hydralux-4 - This is the first LED bulb in the world to use LIQUID COOLING technology, so half the bulb isn’t covered with the metal heatsink anymore unlike other LED globes, and you get light ALL AROUND, instead of just off the top half.

Check out Eternaleds.com for more detailed descriptions, and as always real-life side by side application photos so you can see how these bulbs compare to their incandescent equivalents!

Super cool 21W bulb with an insane heatsink

Sorry guys, for the lack of updates. We’ve been VERY busy looking for some new manufacturers and new products. LED light bulbs and the technology that powers them is changing so fast, I’d almost say that the ones you’ve seen online 1 year ago are already obsolete.

The biggest advance we’ve seen is with heatsinking technology. Since LED dies/chips only get marginally better, the only other thing that manufacturers can do is cluster more LED’s together, and drive them harder.

More power means more heat, so they’re forced to come up with some insane heatsink designs (they’re starting to look like computer CPU heatsinks). I wonder if any CPU heatsink manufacturers are making LEDs……

The guy you see on your left is a whopping 21W LED floodlight that is DIMMABLE and is meant to replace about a 100W incandescent flood. 80% savings and it lasts 10x longer…NICE. Price? Well, let’s see if we can get them over here and we promise you we’ll get the lowest price possible.

So stay tuned and we’ll keep you updated on our status in the hunt for better, brighter LED bulbs. What’s the most common bulb you’d like to replace in your home or store? Floodlights? Halogen or Globes? Leave a comment and let us know…

Size comparison to a regular incandescent bulb

“It walks down stairs
Alone or in pairs
And makes a Slinkaty sound

A spring, a spring
A marvelous thing
Everyone knows it’s Slinky”

Which this is not. But it does have that feel with its funky looking heatsink. This monster is made in Korea and is one of the brightest screw-in replacement LED light bulbs I’ve ever seen. This is WAY brighter than the LR6 we mentioned in a previous post. The size is almost definitely for heat dissipation reasons. Which works wonders because for the brightness and light that this things produces, the bulb only gets slightly warm. Other lesser sized bulbs with a smaller heatsink and more compacted LEDs would definitely be too hot to hold, though not skin-scorching like an incandescent can be. The size IS quite…large…but it’s not as heavy as you would think considering it’s for heat-sinking purposes.

It’s interesting because many people think that if you buy an LED bulb - it must have a CREE chip to be the “brightest”. Absolutely untrue. The LEDs in here are “no-name”, but put into a package that can disperse heat extremely well, you can pump up the power and get more light. See the pictures below for an example of how it lights up a room. And this is a terrible placement for it too. I was lazy. :(.

22W Lighting up a room

Looking at the top of the bulb, you can see the array of LEDs used to give off this massive amount of light. The nice thing about using so many LEDs vs. say 10, is that you’re not driving each element so hard that it HAS to give off lots of heat in order to function without overheating. Touch the top translucent plastic cover, and you’ll see its cooler than the back of your LCD monitor that you’re using to view this picture. OVerall, a pretty good design. Unfortunately, this sample I got is not yet in full production yet, or I’d get a crate full of them. Have you seen brighter? Let us know in the comments!

P.S. I’m eventually going to make a video of this bulb too. And it won’t need to be connected to an AC outlet to work. I heart LEDs.

UPDATE 1/25/09: We don’t have that monster in yet, but we do have some nice high powered bulbs (with requisite hefty heatsinks here

Closeup of the monster