Viva-Lite 26 W Full Spectrum

The bulb we're testing here is a compact fluorescent, manufactured by Viva-Lite, whose main selling point is its wide coverage of the visible spectrum.

We tested the version with an E27 fitting.  Note that this isn't an LED lamp, but we're testing it here for comparative purposes.

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. The lighting power we measured places this bulb in between a 6-8 W LED lamp and a 60 W incandescent light bulb.



The lighting is even, and the overall colour temperature is generally much higher than what you'll find with Econergyworld's Warm White range.  As a result, our photos look colder and whiter.

Energy Consumption

Viva-Lite's packaging says this bulb uses 26 W, but we measured a slightly higher consumption of 27 W.

Spectrum

The manufacturer is keen to stress the wide area of the spectrum covered by this bulb, and as you can see, no colours of visible light are missing.  We produced these spectra using an i1 Pro sensor from X-Rite.


There are still noticeable peaks though, as well as trough in between violet and blue.  Ideally, theses would be flattened out to leave an even, homogenous result across the whole spectrum.

But why aim for an even spectrum?  According to the Lighting Research Center, gaps in the spectrum can make it hard to correctly identify certain colours.  The better you cover the whole spectrum, the easier it is to distinguish individual colours.  There are a number of applications where that's particularly important, such as in museums and printing.  Light like this is also said to give a psychological boost because it's closer to natural sunlight, although there isn't actually any medical evidence to prove that this is the case.  On the other hand, the claims about health benefits and improved visual performance have been disproved.

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: 81.3
• FSCI: 89.98
• Colour Temperature: 5577 K