It's been a busy 12 months in the lighting aisle, with the debut of latest, low-cost LED mild bulbs that promise to cut your own EcoLight home lighting's power draw with out breaking the financial institution. The most recent, from GE, is the Vivid Stik LED, which bucks the bulb altogether in favor of a push-pop-formed build. The associated fee: $10 for a 3-pack (a GE consultant tells me that they do not plan on promoting the bulbs individually just but). Like the other main player on the cheap finish of the spectrum, the Philips 60W Replacement LED , the Vivid Stik offers a pretty compelling value proposition. Whereas a 60W incandescent will add about $7 per year to your energy invoice, the 10W Vibrant Stik will add simply $1.20. Spend $10 on that three-pack and use them for a 12 months, and your whole price is $13.60. Spend a buck on three incandescents, and you may end up spending one other $21 over the course of the 12 months -- and then you'll need to replace them, since that's about as long as they final.

The Vivid Stiks will last effectively over a decade. There are a couple of commerce-offs, though. The Bright Stik isn't fairly as bright or as environment friendly as different LEDs and, just like the Philips bulb, it is not an possibility that'll work with dimmer switches. Still, it is a very strong match for primary lighting setups, EcoLight and at a price of about $3 per bulb (or, EcoLight um,"Stik"), it is a really stable worth, too. If I just wanted to replace one mild, I'd in all probability follow Philips, but if I am replacing my bulbs in bulk, I am going to give the Brilliant Stik some serious consideration. The GE Bright Stik isn't the primary huge model LED that desires you to suppose outside the bulb. For over a year now, the flattened-down Philips SlimStyle LED has been promoting on Home Depot shelves, and its success might function proof of concept for the odd-looking Bright Stik LED. You will soon see the two selling aspect-by-facet in the house Depot lighting aisle.

Nonetheless, the SlimStyle LED not less than attempts to approximate the overall silhouette of a light bulb (from sure angles, EcoLight home lighting anyway). With the Bright Stik LED, you're all in on newfangled design, no incandescent nostalgia crucial. Whether or not or not that's a great factor is entirely as much as you. We're probably missing the point, although. Bulb or no bulb, the Vivid Stik remains to be, effectively, a mild bulb. In most cases, you are not going to see the thing after you screw it in and decrease the lampshade. The kind factor actually would not matter much in and of itself. What does matter is how that form factor impacts the standard of gentle, which is where my concerns lied as I ready to check the Shiny Stik out. None of that cylindrical plastic is angled downward, the best way the underside half of a spherical bulb is. I puzzled if that may keep the Shiny Stik from casting the kind of downward mild folks usually favor to learn beneath.

Thankfully, that wasn't the case. With the LED hidden below a lampshade, I could not distinguish the quality of the Vibrant Stik's light from every other commonplace, omnidirectional bulb. That applies to the feel and appear of the light, too. At 2,850 K, it is as heat and yellowy as you'd count on from a typical, family mild (a 5,000 K "daylight" version is out there, too, for an extra buck). The 760-lumen mild output -- whereas a bit short of the perfect 800 lumen benchmark for a 60W replacement -- is plenty bright for most basic needs. Really, the only difference this design makes is on GE's finish -- the slimmed down determine makes it a breeze to bundle the Shiny Stik, and simpler for GE to ship them in bulk (particularly when packaged three at a time). All of that helps shave cents off the upfront value, and there's nothing to not like about that.