Review of Kobi Electric LED 26-watt (120 watt) R40 Cool White Light Bulb

Customer Ratings:

I have used this bulb for over a 2 months now. As the review title suggests, all important aspects of an LED flood light are just perfect. It replaced a CFL which was bright enough for my application, but had a lag from turning on to full brightness. Needless to say, LED bulbs don't have this drawback. At 26W, this is a very powerful LED bulb, which just happens to be perfectly suited for the location I'm using it in. It is placed over a staircase of my condo, illuminating the stairs, the upstairs hallway, the laundry area, and also adding some brightness to the living room downstairs. One thing that yet to remains to be seen is the life span of this bulb; but should it expire prematurely I'll be sure to update my review. Over all could not be happier.

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fast retrofit with E27 base.

the most powerful retrofit flood available

superior to all others I tried.

widest lighted cone

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First of all, this review is about LED lights with 5000K color temperature.

The 5000K color temperature is the closest to daylight color. Anything less than 5000K, like the old incandescent lights that have around 2700K-3000K, will produce distorted muddy colors. You can find some pictures on the web comparing lights of different color temperatures.

In any case, once you try good 5000K bulb you may not want to go back to 2700K.

Just as a joke, I refer to 2700K bulbs as mud lights. You can find great article about color temperature on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature.

Note that 5000K color temperature bulbs are less common and harder to find. This is mainly due to industry catering to poorly informed consumers. They are selling lower temperature bulbs as having "warm" color as if that is good or better. The "warm" terminology was coined long time ago by marketing people in order to help selling bulbs that could not produce better (higher) color temperatures than 2500K-3000K.

Now lets look at the 5000K Kobi Electric LED-R40-26W1600-50ND bulb:

The Kobi Electric R40 LED bulb rated at 1600 lumen and 5000K is one of the the best flood bulbs in PAR38 size class that you can buy in 2013.

The only close competitor is Philips PAR38 flood bulb (Philips 425280 19.5-Watt (75-Watt) PAR38 LED 5000K Indoor Flood Light Bulb). However, Philips bulb has lower light output of 1300 lumen and narrower beam angle. The wider angle of Kobi R40 is more suitable for recessed lighting in rooms with standard ceiling height.

The Kobi R40 bulb fits in 6" recessed light fixture. However, adjust the height of bulb socket in the fixture before tightening the bulb or you may not be able to remove the bulb.

The Kobi R40 bulb has excellent light color of 5000K and very good color rendition index (CRI).

Also, at $30 it was less expensive than the Philips PAR38 bulb at $44.

By the way, marketing people are trying to sell LED's based on power consumption in Watts. That is not very important specification. More important is the light output in Lumens. Just compare the light bulbs with same power rating and you will find out that the light output may vary widely.