Archive for the ‘Switch Bulb Company’ tag
The World’s greatest light bulb
Switch LED lightbulb
I just read a Slate article that was so enthusiastic about a product I thought I was reading the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog.
The World’s greatest light bulb — Dump your fluorescents and incancesdents for this amazing new LED bulb reads the article title.
Wow, that’s a powerful endorsement.
Here’s the key paragraph from the story:
“Switch Lighting claims to have solved all of those problems. When I arrived at Switch, Brett Sharenow, the company’s chief strategy officer, showed me two lamps. Inside one was a standard 75-watt incandescent bulb. Switch’s 75-watt replacement bulb, which uses only 16 watts of power, was plugged into the other. The lampshades prevented me from seeing the bulbs directly—I couldn’t tell which lamp contained which bulb. When Sharenow turned on the lamps, the light from each lamp looked identical. The moment was completely undramatic, and that was the point. Switch has spent years developing bulbs that produce something thoroughly unexceptional—light that looks exactly like what we’re used to.”
Very sadly, there are no pictures of these two side by side shaded bulbs to prove the writer’s point. Perhaps there’s a photo embargo until the bulbs hit stores later this year, in the Fall of 2011.
According the the story, each bulb will cost about USD $20 or so and last 20,000 hours.
The bulbs are made by Switch Bulb Company, and are called SwitchXX where XX is the wattage of an incandescent bulb that puts out the same amount of light as the LED bulb. For example, a Switch100 puts out the same amount of light as a conventional 100 watt incandescent bulb.
I’ve installed dimmable fluorescents in all the can lights in my ceiling, and they are far better than incandescent bulbs, and use far less power. I pay about USD $13 for each bulb, so I can see spending USD $20 a bulb for these LED bulbs, which should last much longer than a CFL bulb.
I hope Switch Bulb Company later offers a reflector flood version of its LED bulb so I can replace my existing ceiling installed reflector CFL bulbs.
I love the last name of the Chief Strategy Officer of Switch — ‘Sharenow.’
