Thinking of purchasing LED light bulbs for your home or office? This article presents three important facts about household LED bulbs sold on eBay, and could prevent you from making a costly mistake!

The Promise of Energy Savings

It's a light bulb that can stay turned-on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it will last for years... and unlike any other light bulb in existence, it's likely that the electricity required to operate this bulb for its entire life will cost you less than the price of the bulb itself.  This is the promise of LED light bulbs that run on normal household current.  Whether the interest is in "saving the planet" or just saving a few dollars on the household budget, LED bulbs are rapidly growing in popularity.

Unfortunately, some consumers of household voltage LED bulbs, like those currently being sold on eBay, are finding out the hard way that these bulbs are still a long way from being suitable for most household uses.  In some cases, the bulbs simply do not produce the type or level of light that is required for normal room illumination.  In other cases, people find that these bulbs -- most of which are mass-produced in China -- are not built to the quality standards that should be expected of a household product.

This article serves to alert you to three important facts about currently-marketed household LED bulbs.  These are factors that require serious consideration, especially if you're thinking about making an outright changeover from incandescent or compact fluorescent lighting to LED lighting in your home or business.  Please note that this article focuses specifically on household bulbs, not bulbs sold for automotive use, landscaping or other special purposes.

FACT #1: It's not very bright... are you sure it's turned on?

LEDs have a long history of use in various applications as indicators of power, status, signal strength, and the like.  These applications generally do not require a high intensity light source, because the LED is not tasked with providing light to the surrounding area; the LED only needs to be bright enough for the end user to tell whether the LED itself is illuminated or not illuminated.

Household lighting applications attempt to transform the purpose of the LED.  Now, the LEDs utilized in this task must provide sufficient light to be absorbed and reflected from all surrounding walls, furnishings and other items within the illuminated space.

Most current LED bulbs fail miserably in this regard.  An eBay seller who identifies his location as "Brightest LED in USA, United States" sells a PAR30 LED flood light bulb, representing this bulb as having the light output of "about a 45 watt Incandescent bulb."  As an experiment, I placed one of these LED bulbs and a standard 40 watt incandescent flood lamp bulb (since I couldn't locate a 45 watt incandescent bulb for comparison) side-by-side (approximately 3 ft. apart) in a track light fixture, aiming both lights toward a wall, and asked various people to tell me which light they thought was "brightest."  Every person chose the incandescent bulb, without question or hesitation -- the difference in light level was obvious and dramatic.  If good ambient lighting is needed, even the "Brightest LED in USA" is too dim for the purpose.  The best course of action might be to wait for the next generation of LED bulbs to hit the market.

Applications that do NOT require high light levels, on the other hand, could be switched to LED even with the current technology.  For example, a night light fixture sold by eBay user "GoldenGadgets" produces a soothing blue-white light at an illumination level that is slightly brighter than the average incandescent night light fixture.  And considering that the LEDs do not burn out like a standard night light bulb, this fixture is great for small children who depend on a night light to "keep the monsters away."

Fact #2: In The Spotlight

Unlike incandescent or fluorescent technologies that produce light by electrically-charging either a large filament or a large volume of inert gas, LED lighting is produced by several individual and comparatively tiny LED units amassed within a single fixture.  By design, LEDs cast their light in a very directional manner, compared to incandescent and fluorescent bulbs that cast light in all directions.  LED bulb manufacturers attempt to compensate by aiming the individual LEDs in several directions, or by using refractors in an attempt to disperse the light more evenly.

Unfortunately, some of these efforts do not produce the level of light dispersion that home and business consumers are accustomed to seeing in a light bulb.  As a result, many of these bulbs cast their light in a straight-line manner -- in much the same manner as a spotlight bulb -- with very little ambient light in the surrounding area.  This is great if you are looking for a spotlight that produces a very tight beam of light... not so good if you're wanting to replace standard bulbs or floodlight bulbs with LED bulbs.

Fact #3: Buyer Beware

The writer of this article has had mixed experiences as a buyer of household LED bulbs. Some of these bulbs were purchased on eBay, while others were purchased from other web sites or local hardware stores.  As mentioned earlier, a set of LED night lights purchased from eBay seller "GoldenGadgets" was one of the better purchases, both in terms of reliability and suitability for the advertised purpose.  Several PAR38 flood lamp bulbs purchased from another eBay seller have also proven to be reliable, although the light level they produce is nowhere near what one would expect from a flood light bulb.

A purchase of four "PAR30 White 60 LED 110 120Vac Household Down Light Bulb" from this same seller, however, proved disastrous.  Two of the bulbs developed internal electrical problems, causing the bulbs to start flashing erratically, and then went out completely.  A few weeks later, a third bulb developed the same problem.  Days later, the fourth bulb also went out.  While the seller offered to replace the bulbs, he asked for me to pay shipping charges -- and considering the high shipping cost that the seller proposed that I pay, he was most likely asking me to pay for replacing the manufacturer's defective product.  (I have requested a no-shipping-cost replacement, but have received no response to this request and do not expect to.)

All of the bulbs I've purchased so far have apparently been produced by no-name factories in China.  The bulbs have no apparent branding, are shipped in plain boxes, and some models have hand-cut labels glued to the side of the bulb to indicate wattage and/or country of origin.

If you plan on purchasing LED light bulbs from an eBay seller, ONLY buy from sellers who are willing to offer the following assurances.

1. The lights being sold to you are guaranteed to be electrically safe -- preferably UL listed.  Otherwise, you might save a few cents on a utility bill, but lose your entire house to an electrical fire.
2. The seller is willing to guarantee that the lights will work properly for a year, or at least 50% of the amount of time claimed in the eBay ad, whichever is greater.  In other words, if the seller claims "this light will not need to be replaced for 20 years" then he or she should be willing to back-up that claim by a full replacement warranty of at least 10 years.
3. The seller clearly spells-out whether you will be responsible for shipping costs if replacement is necessary -- and how much these shipping costs will be.  This is to ensure that the seller will not charge exorbitant shipping fees for replacements, essentially extracting the cost of the replacement bulb(s) from the buyer on a "free" replacement.

If a seller is not willing to make these assurances, your best bet is to NOT do business with that seller.

Better Times Ahead

Right now, LED light bulbs still represent a "cutting edge" lighting technology.  As the old cliche' says about these technologies, "cutting edge can leave you bleeding."  Those who invest in LED light bulbs now are getting first-generation product that will be considered expensive and obsolete by the next-generation LED bulbs that will be mass-marketed in the near future.  Major manufacturers like Philips are already working to bring a better, brighter, more reliable, UL-listed product to market at a much lower price.  Whereas only a few small eBay sellers are handling the current "cutting edge" LED bulbs, you can expect to see SEVERAL reputable eBay sellers offering these next-generation bulbs in the future.

Unless you're a technophile who must be the first person on your street to have every new technology -- even if this technology is expensive and not yet completely reliable -- consider holding-off on LED bulb purchases for now.  In a few months, the major players will bring superior product to market.  Until that time arrives, compact fluorescent will remain the best energy-saving household lighting product available.