Claude 60 W Krypton

To understand how LED lamps work and get an idea of how they compare to traditional incandescent and fluorescent bulbs, we need to step back and look at these 'older' technologies.  Here's what we found when we tested a 60 W incandescent bulb.

We tested a bulb with an E14 fitting.   This small, round bulb spreads light in virtually every direction.

Lighting

This is our photo lab which has a black wall and the light intensity measured in lux in different areas.  The bulb is 1.86 m back from the wall.  It's interesting to compare these results to the Econergyworld 8 W bulb, which is sold as a '60 W equivalent' LED lamp.  It was immediately obvious that that just isn't true: the incandescent bulb was twice as bright as its LED 'equivalent.'



The lighting is generally uniform, with the discrepancy between the central area and the outside relatively small compared to spotlights.  The colours look much colder than with one of Econergyworld's Warm White bulbs.

Energy Consumption

That's the sting in the tail: our equipment measured a peak of 59.8 W.

Spectrum

The colour spectrum produced by this bulb is very distinctive and easily recognisable.  There's no mistaking an incandescent light bulb.  We produced these spectra using an i1 Pro sensor from X-Rite.


The ideal colour spectrum should be even, with even intensity across all of the colours in the spectrum without any peaks and troughs.  In this case, all of the colours are there, but not spread evenly.  For more information on the benefits of a wider, more even spectrum, read our review of the Viva-Lite bulb.

Here are our technical measurements for this lamp.  The closer the CRI (colour rendering index) and the FSCI (full spectrum colour index) are to 100, the better; the colour temperature is a matter of personal taste and depends on the type of light you're looking for.  There are no good or bad values for this figure.  We have more information about these measurements in this news piece.

• CRI: 99.2
• FSCI: 70.83
• Colour Temperature: 2742 K