Buy two LED lightbulbs from Meritline for $9.99 with free shipping, after $5 coupon using code: AC2153315OFF
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I'm not sure how great these bulbs are, but for $5 a pop, I'm gonna order a couple to find out! They'll probably be good enough for a couple of the lamps in my house I have on timers currently using CFLs. Anyone know if LED bulbs will work ok with electronic timers (as opposed to the old mechanical timers I'm currently using w/CFLs)?

Man, I just replaced all the bulbs in my house with cfl bulbs. Now I am going to have to replace those with led bulbs soon.

Review said "Reviewer: tmetro | 2008-08-06: decent night light/pathway lighting: Not particularly bright and the light has a bluish hue, but they do give off enough light to illuminate a medium size room so you can safely walk through it at night (night light). Would work good as outdoor pathway lighting too."

+ for going green though

Yeah.. I saw that review...wish there were more reviews. These will be my first LED bulbs, so I am anxious to see how bright they really are.

Even if they're not that bright, they should suffice for a timer light. Since the timer lights tend to be on more then any other light in my house, it's a perfect application.

OLEDs are almost here too...which use less than LED

These lights are going to be very dim for almost any application.On a good day, each might be the equivalent of a 15 or 20 watt incandescent.I have placed 2 warm white 5 watt bulbs in my kitchen as potential replacement for 50 watt halogens. The light is somewhat dimmer.
I have very expensive electricity and have been using CFL's for years. Other than as a night light or some marker you will probably be disappointed.

Recently I bought Two E27/E26 18 LED 2-Watt Spotlight Light Bulbs from them. That was a waste of money! They are very dim and look like 5-10 watt incandescent. Morever I wouldn't call them "white", they definitely "blue". I can't find any usage of them in my home.

I'm still looking for relatevely inexpensive true white LED lamps to replace CFL and incandescent ones. Please share your experience.

Overzeetop said:About as bright as a night light, I suspect. Today's LEDs are about as efficient as CFLs, which are in turn about 4 times as efficient as incandescent lamps. So this is good for about a 6W incandescent, or very similar to the 7W night light lamps. They'll look brighter since the color is cooler and the beam is not as divergent, but overall the total illumination will be poor. They might be good for particular tasks, though, such as in the utility room; especially if you hook the fixture up to a UPS.


edit: Wow, I didn't realize we were going all negative for truthful statements. Guess I'll be more careful about trying to be helpful in the future.

I can only guess that the negs were because of the statement that "Today's LEDs are about as efficient as CFLs". Today's LEDs are more efficient than CFL's on a lumen/watt basis. See this excellent webpage by Don Klipstein with references.I agree with all your other statements although these are brighter than incandescent night lights. The led's are a more focused beam and more suited to task lighting so the people using them to light rooms will be disappointed with the results. The newer LED's are brighter, more efficient, and unfortunately, more expensive. But because the theoretical efficiency of LED's is so high, the gap between CFL and LED will likely grow with time.

Here is a photo, illustrating what a 3w bulb can do...even 3w does not seem to have the illumination of a 60w incandescent.

Picture of 3w bulb in action

That said, these LED bulbs do have a lot of potential. Someday, for now I think CFLs are the better way to go, brighter and significantly cheaper.

I bought a set of these from Meritline, as well as a set of the "spot-light" models. They are extremely dim, so much so as to be somewhat useless with the possible listed exception of a night light. That is exactly how I finally decided to use mine.

The light is very similar to a led flashlight (no surprise there) and is vaguely blue in hue. It is also quite directional. I put all 4 (2 of each type) into a ceiling fan as an experiment, and while they did not sufficiently light the room, they all emitted a sort of spot-light beam. This might be quite useful in some applications, such as in a display case.

This beam can be somewhat diffused if placed in a traditional lamp with a shade. The shade however can't be kind that that rests on the bulb, because these are much much smaller than a standard bulb.

Much like an led flashlight, these bulbs are unpleasant when shined near or in one's eyes. It's strange that they are so bright when viewed directly, but simply don't put out much ambient light.

On the plus side, these bulbs register as less than 1 watt (fluctuating between 0 and 1, but mostly 0) consumption on my kill-a-watt power tester, as well as less than 0.01 amps (similar fluctuations). The same lamp uses about 10 watts for a CFL and 52 for a 60 watt bulb. So... you could probably run about a hundred of these for a single 60 watt bulb's worth of power, if you had a whole lot of sockets, that might be a little impractical...

Once again, they may be practical in turning preexisting lights into night lights, or when used in display cases or perhaps track lighting. I have to admit that despite their weakness and limited uses, I am going to buy another pack.

For those folks planning to use these outside, they specifically say not to do so on the box.