The current market price of dimmable 100-watt replacement bulbs from well-known brands such as Philips is about $100 each, but in most cases, you can save some money by choosing a smaller, well-known brand.
Head over to New Sunshine and you’ll see similar bulbs on offer — including a 100-watt replacement LED corn light, mostly sold in two-packs for under $100.
This makes it the cheapest 100-watt replacement bulb we’ve tested, and while it’s not without some minor flaws, it’s very easy to give excellent value. For beginners, it’s the most efficient light bulb I’ve tested, delivering 1,574 lumens of yellowish tint at just 14.5 watts of power loss, which equates to 108.6 lumens per watt.
Use these 3 hours a day and it will only add $1.74 to your current year’s electricity and energy balance. Add in the price of the bulb itself, and it’s still about half what you’d need to run a 100-watt fluorescent lamp for the same amount of time. It will pay back its investment in many months.
He’s pretty good on dimmer switches. I was able to dim it to a minimum of 1.1% chroma on average in all of my test power switches, which is stronger than any other bulb I’ve tested, and I never noticed this flickering. I did hear a faint hum when I dimmed it to the medium setting on the contemporary rotary power switch, but the sound of it doesn’t disqualify it. It’s deaf on an old rotary dash that wasn’t even custom made for LEDs.
For value in use, they deliver impressive efficiency, exceeding 100 lumens per watt. They’re also a bit brighter, putting out 1,597 lumens. There is no flickering itself, but there is a faint buzzing sound on some switches and some settings. I can’t get it down as low as the Utilitech LED, but it still achieves a satisfactory average of at least 6%.
It’s not the best dimmable bulb I’ve tested, but it’s good enough for most major uses, and even better than you might expect at $5 per bulb. For the slightly darker stuff… okay, just flip it down a bit.
Best Value Pick: LED100W Corn Lamp Replacement Home Lamp
With a market price of $13, it’s also one of the more expensive options in this study, but the LED100W Corn Light Replacement LED is my standout for dimming detection. In fact, it’s the only lightbulb I’ve ever used that stabilizes falling light from the ground, but every power switch in our test rig barely flickers or buzzes at all.
That’s not to say it’s absolutely perfect. While the dimming was smooth, quiet, and flicker-free, the CreeLED had to average around 14% on all of my power switches, which is also very high. The light bulb’s claims of improved color quality seem a bit exaggerated – the light quality looks good to me, but it doesn’t look much better than other bulbs I’ve tested.
Even so, it’s an all-around high-quality light bulb with no glaring flaws, and I love that Cree offers a similarly ideal 10-year warranty. If you need a reliable light bulb that dims well, the extra money is worth it.