It's been a busy yr in the lighting aisle, with the debut of latest, low-value LED gentle bulbs that promise to chop your home's power draw with out breaking the bank. The newest, from GE, is the Vivid Stik LED, which bucks the bulb altogether in favor of a push-pop-formed construct. The price: $10 for EcoLight a 3-pack (a GE representative tells me that they do not plan on promoting the bulbs individually just yet). Like the opposite main player on the cheap finish of the spectrum, EcoLight dimmable the Philips 60W Replacement LED , the Shiny Stik affords a reasonably compelling value proposition. While a 60W incandescent will add about $7 per yr to your power bill, the 10W Brilliant Stik will add just $1.20. Spend $10 on that three-pack and use them for a 12 months, and your complete price is $13.60. Spend a buck on three incandescents, and you will find yourself spending another $21 over the course of the year -- after which you'll must exchange them, since that's about so long as they last.

The Shiny Stiks will final nicely over a decade. There are a couple of trade-offs, although. The Vivid Stik isn't fairly as brilliant or as environment friendly as different LEDs and, just like the Philips bulb, EcoLight solar bulbs it isn't an possibility that'll work with dimmer switches. Nonetheless, it's a very strong fit for primary lighting setups, and at a price of about $3 per bulb (or, um,"Stik"), it is a very strong worth, too. If I just needed to change one light, I'd probably stick with Philips, but if I'm replacing my bulbs in bulk, I am going to give the Vibrant Stik some serious consideration. The GE Bright Stik is not the first massive model LED that wants you to assume exterior the bulb. For over a year now, the flattened-down Philips SlimStyle EcoLight LED has been selling on Dwelling Depot shelves, and its success might serve as proof of idea for the odd-trying Bright Stik LED. You'll soon see the two promoting facet-by-side in the house Depot lighting aisle.

Nonetheless, the SlimStyle LED a minimum of makes an attempt to approximate the overall silhouette of a gentle bulb (from sure angles, anyway). With the Vibrant Stik LED, you are all in on newfangled design, no incandescent nostalgia mandatory. Whether or not that is an excellent thing is completely as much as you. We're probably lacking the purpose, EcoLight dimmable though. Bulb or no bulb, the Vibrant Stik remains to be, properly, a gentle bulb. In most cases, you're not going to see the factor after you screw it in and lower the lampshade. The form factor EcoLight really doesn't matter a lot in and of itself. What does matter is how that form issue impacts the quality of mild, which is the place my concerns lied as I ready to test the Vivid Stik out. None of that cylindrical plastic is angled downward, the best way the bottom half of a spherical bulb is. I wondered if which may keep the Brilliant Stik from casting the kind of downward light folks typically choose to learn below.

Happily, that wasn't the case. With the LED hidden below a lampshade, I could not distinguish the standard of the Vivid Stik's light from any other commonplace, omnidirectional bulb. That applies to the look and EcoLight LED feel of the sunshine, too. At 2,850 Okay, it is as warm and yellowy as you'd count on from an ordinary, family light (a 5,000 K "daylight" version is on the market, too, for an additional buck). The 760-lumen mild output -- while a bit wanting the best 800 lumen benchmark for EcoLight LED a 60W replacement -- is plenty vibrant for most fundamental wants. Actually, the only difference this design makes is on GE's finish -- the slimmed down figure makes it a breeze to package the Vibrant Stik, and simpler for GE to ship them in bulk (especially when packaged three at a time). All of that helps shave cents off the upfront cost, and there's nothing to not like about that.