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Uploaded:2008-12-10
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Comment at http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2375/74/ to get a chance at a free Evolux S!

EcoGeek.org shows the difference between incandescent, CFL and LED light bulbs in light quality, brightness and (of course) energy use.
Hello, my name is Hank Green. I am the chief editor of EcoGeek.org and today I am bringing you light bulbs. Light bulbs!!!! I've been getting all these light bulbs for sample posts and now that I have it all, I can actually do a comparison between CFLs and LEDs and regular incandescents and other LEDs. That's what we're going to do today. 

Beginning with your traditional incandescent light bulb. Here we have a 40 Watt incandescent light bulb, pulling 39-38 Watts, as to be expected. I can already feel this starting to get quite hot in my hand, it's a little space heater if you're ever cold, you just put one of them in your shirt pocket and it will burn your shirt. This is a 40 Watt rated CFL. They look pretty much the exact same, except this one is a little bit brighter and the light is coming off a little bit warmer coming off this thing [the right] than this thing [the left].

This [the right] one was coming off at 39 Watts, and this is pulling 14. So yes, CFLs are better for you and for the environment. Hurray!

Ow, I know what you're thinking. You're the chief editor of EcoGeek, why do you have an incandescent light bulb in your house. Well, I went out and bought one so that I could do this test, okay? And I'm never gonna use it again, so that was very efficient of me.

Now, we have a very exciting light bulb. This is the Earth-LED, CL-3, it is one of the most compact, most efficient, and best LED light bulbs out there from Earth-LED, one of the greatest companies currently making these things right now. This is a 21 equivalent, so this isn't going to be exactly the same, as you can tell. So, this one [right bulb], as I told you before, is pulling about 14 Watts. 3 [left bulb]. Between 2 and 3 is how much this is pulling. So that's just amazing. 

So obviously one of the big problems is with the LED light bulb is that they're not always quite as bright as you'd like them to be and they have to stay cool. So when you start to make LED light bulbs that are really bright, they get too hot and their life is decreased. One of the greatest things about this guy is that it's probably still going to be working when I'm 50 or 60 years old. 

I also have for you the cheapest LED option that you could possibly find. I bought this, the decor LED accent at Ace Hardware, for $4.99. It's actually just a bunch of LEDs stuck together like you would find in normal equipment. They're high brightness of course, but they're the same technology basically. No crap is being pulled off my kilowatt, 0 Watts which means that less than 0.5 Watts is how much this is eating up right now. That's not very bright, the equivalent of a 10 Watt incandescent light bulb but it's pretty fantastic for the price if you want to put it in a walk in closet or somewhere where you're not going to use it a lot, because CFLs don't like to be turned on and off a lot. 


Obviously, not a 40 Watt equivalent. "Heat free technology, lights up faster. You'll never change your bulbs again." I don't know what they're basing that on. "Statement based on the minimum amount of times the LED bulb needs to be changed." Whatever. Not very honest. 

This is the Earth-LED ZetaLux warm white bulb. You will see that this [left bulb], is a little bit warmer than this [left bulb]. The light quality coming off of this, as you can see, is pretty warm. I'm not turning into a pasty white cubicle drone or anything. 

So this actually uses cooling elements all along the outside, and that keeps the LED cool. This 41 equivalent bulb, right now, pulling 5 Watts. This, again, like 15. This is [right bulb] 3 times more efficient than a CFL, oh my God! That's so cool!

This bad boy is a $50 but it's worth every penny because it will pretty much last forever, is three times more efficient than a CFL and the ladies love it. Totally cool to the touch. 

Finally, we have the most expensive light bulb I have ever touched in my life. It's the $79.99 EvoLux S, which is a warm light bulb. I think it's a 60 ot 70 Watt equivalent. I can't look at it without hurting my eyes. And because it is producing so much light, the people at Earth-LED had to come up with a way to keep it cool enough so that it wouldn't overheat and decrease the lifespan, which is over 50,000 hours. The way that they've done that is that they put a little bit bitty tiny fan in here, which I don't know if you can hear. It's the tiny fan in here, which is basically a processor fan like you would have for your CPU that keeps the LED chip cool, so that it doesn't overheat and it will continue to last forever.

Because it is using the fan and it is such a bright bulb, it uses significantly more energy than the ZetaLux, but still significantly less energy than the CFL. This is a 10 Watt bulb, oh my God it is so cool. It is so cool that I'm sure that someone out there is going to want it and so I'm going to be giving it away to someone who comments on this video at Ecogeek.org. Just put your email address in the email address place and I will have access to that. You will be the proud owner of one of the world's most advanced light bulbs. It's an $80 light bulb, but I promise that it's worth it. 50,000 hours of 10 Watts is a lot of saved money. Rock on LEDs, this is Hank Green for Ecogeek.org.