CFL bulbs Updated: 29 Jun 2011
About our test
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Our test rig
We chose 19 CFLs. All but 2 claimed to be a replacement for a traditional 100W incandescent bulb. 13 were rated at 20W and 6 at 18W. All were warm white.
The CFLs were mainly spiral tubes but there were also 4 “stick” (U-tube) types and two covered globes (the ones that look like a traditional bulb). The spiral shape has pretty much taken over the home-CFL market because it gives a more even distribution of light than the earlier U-tube style, which tends to spray most of the light sideways. The spiral shapes were the best performers in our test.
Light output
We wanted to see if the CFLs were as “bright” as the bulbs they replaced. So we put two samples of all the CFLs into a special test rig and compared the total light output of each model with the averaged light output from 8 different 100W incandescent bulbs. This averaged “incandescent” figure formed our baseline – and the light output of the CFLs is their relative performance against this baseline.
Switching life
We also put 3 samples of 19 of the CFLs into a special rig which switched the bulbs on for 5 minutes and off for 5 minutes 6000 times – nearly 6 weeks of on-off cycling. The bulbs were continuously monitored so that we could tell if and when they failed. We tested only 19 bulbs for this because the Panasonic CFL wasn’t available for the start of the test (see below).
Panasonic
Panasonic bulbs are new to the market and they missed the early part of our “switching life” test. When we published this report they’d completed 5165 on-off cycles without failure. We’re leaving them in the test rig until they reach 10,000 on-off cycles – we’ll report on them then.
We also tested them for light output: they produced 20 percent more light than our baseline.作者: lzh47 时间: 2011-7-25 23:35:25