Verbatim PAR38 19.5 Watt (Replacement for 75 Watt Halogen) Dimmable Review

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program First, let me tell you I know this costs a lot of money, at least at the time of writing. And I almost had to give it four stars just for that, but I assume that it will fall in price fairly quickly and then, certainly, it will deserve five stars. Regardless, I'm giving it five stars for quality, doing what it is meant to do well, and leading the way to the future, skipping CFL entirely.

As a nerd, I can't help but be fascinated by the way prisms were used to help shape the beam of light. Apparently, LEDs are difficult to manipulate on a scale such as this, hence the high cost. Expect that once these become mainstream, costs will plummet.

I compared this to a 65 watt flood light in my otherwise dark basement and noticed the difference immediately. First, there is no start up delay as with CFL. Performance was much better. Yes, this is a remplacement for a 75 watt bulb, but it was more than 10 watts better than the other. You could actually see a broad light pattern on the floor, where you could hardly notice the other was on (from looking at the floor). The light was much more like a natural light than the other bulb, so much so that a few of these could make a basement a much more inviting place.

One great thing that one may not realize immediately, is that LEDs give off little to no heat, so you can touch this all day long and feel nothing, but if you stand under the standard bulb, when in a low ceiling, you fear your hair might catch on fire (seriously). This is even more important if using in a halogen lamp. How often have you burnt yourself terribly when pulling the lamp closer to look under the car or in a dark corner?

Finally, it has a rated life of 40,000 hours. I've heard LEDs never die, but even if there is a limit to its life, think about what that means: If I use it for 40 hours a week (a standard work week), it will last 20 years. If it's in my house, it will most likely outlive me. I've noticed a bunch of other high quality CFL bulbs claim 5000 hours. So...

It's a really neat product, and does what it does very well. I'd love to have a whole house full of these things, and I very well may one day.

Oh, one last thing it is quite a bit heavier than a normal bulb. Not super heavy, but a really weak fixture or one of those pose-able lamps may not be able to hold it. On the plus side, it is much less likely to break should you drop it.

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program This PAR38 LED bulb is meant to replace similar size incandescent or halogen floodlamps. The difference between floodlamps and regular bulbs is the lack of light coming from the back and sides of the bulb; this generally means that you'll find a floodlamp to be unacceptable in a shaded lamp or wall sconce. PAR38s do well in ceiling cans often found in newer construction housing. That said, there are some desk lamps where this type of bulb could be useful. Think of the Pixar logo with the moving desklamp. The problem here is that this particular bulb weighs just about one pound quite heavy for this size lightbulb, and too heavy for a standard moving desklamp. It's too bad because the light from this bulb is wonderful for reading.

Let's talk about the light: after turning on the power switch, there's a split-second delay before the light comes on. It's far less of a delay than CFL, but certainly a delay compared with incandescent. The light then comes up to full brightness within a few tenths of a second. This is a narrow flood I found it perfect for high ceilings in hallways or ceiling mounted (and downward-facing) closet fixtures. The quality of the light is cooler than incandescent and is roughly the same overall hue as halogen lighting. The color on the box indicates "warm white." I'm not sure I'd go quite so far as to call this "warm," but it's certainly better than the very blue quality of earlier white LED bulbs.

The brightness itself is impressive. Directly under the bulb, you clearly have the equivalent of a 75w bulb with only 20w of power being consumed. The beam is rather tight, but not as much as with earlier LED bulbs. You genuinely could use this as a desk light without having a spotlight of bright light surrounded by a dark desk. Overall, Verbatim has brought us a high quality LED floodlight which lives up to expectations in terms of color temperature and light output.

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I'm slowly (Very slowly, given their cost!) replacing the light bulbs in my house with their LED equivalents. So when I was offered the chance to review this bulb, I jumped at it. :>) To make a long story short, I like this bulb. It's expensive, but performs well and generates a lot of light with almost no heat.

A few comments, both pro and con...

This is marketed as a replacement for a 75 watt Halogen bulb, but it's specified as having a 720 lumen light output. A 75 watt Halogen typically puts out closer to 1100 lumen. 60-65 watt halogens are a better benchmark.

Colorwise, they seems to be very close to a Halogen bulb.

Halogens typically last for 2000 hours before they go poof. The package for the Verbatim calls for a 40,000 hour life...but the bulb life isn't defined by when the bulb dies. Instead it defines end-of-life as half of the test bulbs dropping their light output to 70% of the initial output. I don't know if they fade slowly away (and thus could last much longer if you're willing to put up with a dimmer light) or if they reach a certain point and then the light output starts to fall off a cliff. If it's the former, you could have these last much longer than expected.

These are called "narrow flood" lights with a beam angle of 25 degrees. Traditional floods are much broader...I've seen spots spec'ed at 25 degrees. Unless you have very tall ceilings or your fixtures are close together, the narrow beam will create uneven illumination in hallways.

Compared to a conventional bulb, a dimmable LED follows a different brightness profile as you slide the dimmer knob. If you mix LED and regular bulbs on one dimmer, it will look very unbalanced as you dim the system. Also, conventional bulbs turn redder as the voltage drops. These maintain the same color temperature and just put out less light.

Like Halogens, LEDs are virtually instant on. Dimmable CFLs (that I've played with) have a delay starting or take a while to reach full brightness...both of which I find annoying.

Despite the high initial cost, the economics of LED bulbs blow away Halogen bulbs. Not even counting the electricity savings, these cost roughly 12x more than the Halogen equivalent, but last 20x longer. When you factoring in electricity at a (conservative) 40 watts per hour saving, you're also saving 1.6 megawatts over the life of the bulb. Since my marginal electricity rate is $.30+ per kilowatt-hour, that's an additional savings in electricity of roughly $480.

All in all, I really like these bulbs. They're expensive and because this is an evolving product area, you should definitely look around. The cost advantage against CFLs is not as clear, but CFLs contain mercury and these don't. I'm knocking a star off due to the high cost and the overblown comparison against a 75 watt halogen. But it does what it does well and warrants a solid four stars.

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I generally like this light, though I do have a couple of observations:

1. The temperature range of the light, while advertised as "warm" is nowhere near the glowing yellowish color that a typical incandescent sodium bulb provides. The light is an intense phosphorescent white. Great for commercial applications, but in a home, it can be a bit glaring, especially if you have white walls.

2. Overall output and coverage provided by the bulb is excellent. The thing really does illuminate a large space as well as a traditional flood.

3. Delay. When you flip the light switch there's a 1-2 second delay before the light actually flicks on. Not that big of a deal, but it takes getting used to, especially if you switch all of your bulbs. I've noticed that not all LED bulbs do this, but it seems to be a fairly common problem.

Final Recommendation: Commercial & Office settings. For residential settings I'd wait and see if they come out with genuinely softer/warmer bulbs.

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program Talk about robust construction! This bulb is built like a tank, but that also means it is very heavy. Just a rough estimate would be that it weighs in at about the weight of 10-15 incandescent or halogen bulbs of 75W rating. So, one needs to be sure the fixture one is choosing is as robust as the bulb. There are warnings about using this bulb in freestanding, portable lumieres because of the bulb's weight perhaps making them unstable. Also, this bulb is not to be used in enclosed light fixtures, though LEDs do run cool, so that warning is a bit surprising.

It is marketed as a "narrow flood," and that it is. I tried placing it in an in-ceiling fixture in a 9-foot ceiling, and it creates a light-circle on the floor that is just about 8 feet in diameter, and the edges of that light circle are pretty well-defined. Thus, it performs just as advertised, but it would seem to have a fairly limited number of applications -an indoor flood fixture at the top of a stairwell or in a cathedral ceiling. It's a shame this can't be used outside.

It's a fairly bright bulb, though I can't vouch for its claimed 720 lumens output: honestly, I perceive my incandescent 65W can-lights to be significantly brighter, but I can test and vouch for its advertised color temperature! It's "spot"-(pardon the pun)-on at 2700K. I took a series of bracketed white-balance exposures with my Nikon DSLR, and the truest white is dead-on at 2700K. Reaching 3030K, the light source in the image starts to turn yellow, so 2700K it is! Good quality control on that component as well, with uniform color across all the LEDs. Quite a fine design.

Others here have worked out the economics well already, so I won't rehash that, but if you have the cash to invest in these, and if they last as long as advertised, they will easily pay for themselves over the years. They're rated at 40,000 hours and warrantied for 5 years, which is almost 5 years of continuous use, so they should last much longer than that under normal use. Dimmer function works superbly.

Quite a fine, well-made product by Verbatim (Mitsubishi). If you can afford them, need very narrow floods, and have sturdy fixtures, I recommend this to you heartily.