We love the idea of LED lightbulbs. Like so many technologies, CFLs just started to get good, and adopted by the mainstream when the latest thing comes. LED lightbulbs last over ten times longer, use less electricity, and…are dim. Very very dim.

We can’t even find equivalency on most LED bulb packages we’ve seen. We’re used to CFLs being categorized as the equivalent of a specific watt incandescent. Those stats are suspiciously missing from LED packaging. They use the more accurate lumens…but how many people have a sense of what a lumen is?

We checked the lumens on a  CFL and compared them to the LED and found it…again. DIM.

The New York Times reports that Osram Sylvania’s  Ultra bulb, available in August, and Philips’s EnduraLED, which will be in stores in the fourth quarter, will use just 12 watts of power to equal the light output of a 60-watt bulb. The 60-watt bulb is the standard of light bulbs.

The prices for these bulbs will be $30-$60…and hopefully in 2 or 3 years, down to $20, which is more expensive than a CFL bulb…but it does last ten times longer, uses less electricity, and doesn’t have some of the CFL issues, such as mercury usage.

Perhaps we’re skeptical, but we’ll believe it when we see it. We’ll gladly be early adopters, and hope LED bulbs get to where we’d invest.

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