A Buyer’s Guide to choosing the right LED bulb

If you have been a regular follower of The Sheerled blog, you will know that we are huge supporters of the LED lighting revolution.

Not only do LED lights offer up to 90% energy savings compared to traditional halogen or incandescent bulbs, they also have a vastly superior life span – lasting 10,000s of hours compared to a traditional bulb which may last only 1,000 hours.
Even comparing LED bulbs with the older style CFL low energy lighting there are clear advantages – as you flick on the light switch an LED light will instantly offer full illumination, while the CFL would still be warming up. LED lighting can also be manufactured to produce a range of different colour temperatures and quality of light (known as colour rendering).
Now while the benefits of LED lighting are now fairly well recognised, what a lot of consumers don’t understand is that LED lights vary massively in quality.
The majority of LED lighting manufactures all promise unparalleled performance, in terms of lifespan and the quality of the light the bulb produces, but they can’t all be right can they?

Heat Dissipation

One of the most telling aspects to a LED bulb when it comes to quality is how well the bulb dissipates heat.
A common misconception is that LED bulbs don’t get warm, however this just isn’t the case. They don’t get nearly as hot as incandescent bulbs, but since power goes into the LEDs, they do produce heat and this must be drawn away from the LEDs.
Unfortunately LEDs can’t radiate this heat away in the same way as an incandescent bulb – instead, the heat needs to be drawn away from the LEDs by a heat sink normally located in the bottom of the bulb. The heat sink absorbs the heat produced and then dissipates into the surrounding environment.
If the heat sink doesn’t fulfil its job correctly, the LED will overheat and most likely burn out. So a badly designed heat sink will be detrimental to the lifespan of the LED bulb, and efficient thermal management is really important to ensure that the LED bulbs last as promised!
There are lots of different designs for heat sinks, which is why the appearance of LED bulbs changes so much between brands. You may be familiar with the metal fins on some LEDs – higher end LEDs will have aluminium fins or ceramic heat sinks. The ceramic fins in many cases can be more effective than any metal heat sink, since they possess lots of tiny pores, which provide an even greater surface area to dissipate the heat from compared to metals. Ceramic heat sinks have a very low thermal capacity, but the highest surface area to maximise heat loss into the surrounding environment.
So in our experience better LED bulbs will utilise ceramics or aluminium, but this alone does not make them a market leader!

Chip Set

Whilst heat dissipation is important – the chip used to convert electricity to light is also really important.
A poor chip will generate more heat, and will therefore not last as long. Better bulbs will use chips from better manufacturers, which generate less heat and convert more energy to light – it kind of goes with out saying you get way you pay for, and this is 100% true with LED lighting, if you buy a GU10 for £3, you should probably question the quality of the chip set used.
Bridgelux for example are world renowned for producing extremely high quality chip sets having worked with the might of Toshiba’s R&D department – and these are found within the Philips Masterspot LED bulbs, which are considered some of the best LED bulbs available in the market.