News For LED: 2013 A19 Technology in Review

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

2013 A19 Technology in Review

While prognostication is rather fun, it's never as accurate as a good old retrospective.

Whether it's to laud or to pan, these are the coordinates of the earth's solar orbit where we do it. With that, let's take a look at a sampling of some of the more memorable A19 LED bulb innovations that were introduced in 2013.

Nanolight/Nanoleaf/Frankenbulb

Also a candidate for the All LEDs 2013 Whipping Boy of the Year Award, the Nanoleaf demonstrated that you can be Chinese and you can pull in almost $275K with cute videos and grandiose claims on a crowdfunding site whose rules did not allow campaigns from anywhere other than the USA and UK at the time. Funded in March, Nanowhatever's wall plug efficacy claims of 160 lumens per watt are still being debated by experts, and have yet to be verified by an accredited and independent testing lab as far as we know. Looking at the comments in their Kickstarter campaign, and despite the faceted design that blows out of the maximum diameter specified by ANSI standards, it appears most supporters are satisfied with the perks they've received, with the major complaints being that the light is "too white" and the deliveries are late, though by some crowdfunded projects' standards, three months is not horrible. It's unclear whether the shipped units meet UL or FCC requirements or how well these perform in enclosed, and in parabolic, fixtures. The 1200-lumen variant lists for $35 on Amazon -- at $29/kLumen, it's 66 percent higher in $/kLumen cost than the Infinia, and 130 percent more than the SlimStyle.

NliteN 2D-Light LED Disk

This was also a crowdfunded light bulb effort, with claims of being the first 60W LED replacement that was dimmable and under $10, as the only point source LED A19 in the market and as having the lowest cost using a patent-pending flat substrate that serves as a cooling means, component mount, and low-cost, automated assembly platform. The early September Indiegogo campaign has fizzled, raising only $3K, and was not a finalist in the Philips Innovation Challenge contest there (in which a plastic bag appears to have won the $60,000 first prize). A month later, Walmart announced a $10 dimmable bulb, with GE (Walmart's "partner") announcing the availability "in four months" of an $11 offering. The 2D-Light appears to be poised for a second incarnation in coming months, hopefully more than just a rendering this time, according to their Indiegogo campaign updates page.

Disclaimer: I have made contributions to the 2D-Light project and have a financial interest in it.

Philips SlimStyle

Philips has recently jumped into the fray with a $9.97 flat LED disk, announced a few weeks ago but available January 2, 2014, which, like the 2D-Light and unlike prior Philips A19 offerings, also doesn't have an aluminum heatsink. A teardown of the Philips SlimStyle clearly show the cooling is also being done with conductive traces on the disk itself, though the LEDs are arranged peripherally, rather than centrally on both sides of the disk, as with the 2D-Light. This one may wind up taking appreciable market share with its low cost if some of the possible shortcomings in its light pattern, in the disk plane, can be overlooked.

Switch Lighting Infinia

Introduced this past April at LightFair, Switch's Infinia bulb uses a liquid silicone oil for their patented "LQD" cooling scheme, likely helping out in UL creepage distances for circuit traces, perhaps even being exploited as a dielectric for ray shaping. It's no surprise, being full of liquid, that it has a curb weight of 6.2 oz. That makes it the "Ford Expedition" among the current crop of "Leaf" bulbs, weighing 2.82 times as much as the 2.2-oz SlimStyle. One has to question how well the Infinia will work in horizontal ceiling fixtures that have that flimsy sheet metal tab to hold the lamp socket horizontal. At $14, this light bulb also carries a 40 percent premium over the SlimStyle and Walmart's TCP Snocone offerings. Ron Lenk seems enamored of this one, nonetheless.

Cree LED Bulb

Like the Infinia, Cree's bulb's primary innovation is hidden from view. Introduced in March, the $12.97 bulb features Cree's LED Filament Tower Technology, which, DesigniningWithLEDs.com's teardown reveals is a stalk that mounts pairs of MPCB-affixed quad-LED packages onto a die-cast aluminum decagon about the vertical axis. Electrical connections to the stalk are made by clips. Cree, like Philips, has the advantage of a captive LED fab, so stacked margins do not come into play in costing out the BOM. The low price, coupled with decent optical characteristics, have made this LED bulb quite successful, though its days are likely numbered as the sub-$10 crowd moves into the market. Cree's strategic move into the California market with its TW series, featuring a neodymium-doped glass envelope to filter light to higher CRI, may keep the cash flowing for a little while longer.

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