Qnuru 6.4W and 9.2W LED Lightbulbs Review: LED Lights Are Coming of Ave [Review]

To paraphrase William Gibson, the longer term of lighting is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Light-emitting diodes (LED) lightbulbs were coming that can be purchased prior to now few years, but their quality varies greatly, from ” almost perfect” to ” horrible.”

I had the opportunity to spend a number of days with two LED lightbulbs from Qnuru , and I’d desire to share my impressions with you.

Photo: Michael Graham Richard

The two LED bulbs that I tested are the Qnuru OPAL and the Qnuru TOPAZ . Listed here are their specs (OPAL on top, TOPAZ below):

Photo: Michael Graham Richard

Qnuru TOPAZ & OPAL Specifications

The Qnuru bulbs use LEDs made by Cree . The versions that I actually have are ” cool white” (6000k temp), but they’re also available in ” warm white” (3000k). They use a regular E26 socket and use respectively 6.4 watts and 9.2 watts, and they’re both rated as replacing 60W incandescents, though the bigger OPAL definitely produces more light and has a much wider beam angle.

They have a 50,000+ hours lifetime, which compares very favorably to about 15,000 hours for compact fluorescent (CFLs) and a pair of,500 hours for incandescent bulbs. It makes more sense to pay extra for quality while you’re going to be potentially keeping these lights around for decades. As a matter of fact, they come with a 3 year warranty, not something you’ll find on any fluorescent!

And obviously, because they may be LEDs, they don’t contain any mercury, and they’re a lot less fragile than CFLs and incandescents.

The heatsinks around the base of the bulbs usually are not there because the bulbs become extremely popular. They truly don’t. It’s just that LEDs are more sensitive to heat than the components of incandescents or CFLs, and so that they are designed to keep heat building up to a minimum.

My LED Experience

My first impression of the Qnuru LEDs after I first got them out of their (stylish) boxes is that they feel very top of the range. I was expecting light, plastic-y bulbs and instead I got heavy, solid ones. The OPAL is quite big compared to most lightbulbs, so in case you’re considering using it in a cramped space, you’ll want to check the scale within the spec sheet above, but the TOPAZ is set a similar size as an incandescent, or even just a tad bigger.

After spending years with CFLs, it was great to have lights that activate instantly. I’ve never really thought that modern CFLs were too slow, but if you compare them to a LED, they seem pretty unhurried.

The light quality is incredibly good, though not quite perfect (maybe there’s a tiny bit of blue or pink inside the white, however it’s adequately subtle that I find myself wondering if I’m making it up or if it’s really there). The most important thing to think about is what style of lights you’re going to have; most of my apartment uses much warmer CFLs, like inside the photo below:

Photo: Michael Graham Richard

This is what the CFL that I was using appears like. I didn’t do any software white balance on that photo or on the single below.

Photo: Michael Graham Richard

And here is the Qnuru OPAL LED. It’s this type of distinction that once I’m moving between rooms, my brain’s automatic color balance has to work overtime to take care of.

This won’t be an issue whenever you remember to match the color of your bulbs, something that I couldn’t do because these are review units (don’t take this color difference as a negative thing against the Qnurus! I’m just mentioning it here as a reminder to check colors).

Photo: Michael Graham Richard

Final Words on Qnuru LED Lightbulbs

After living for a couple of days with the Qnurus , I believe that i’ll live with them indefinitely, that’s probably the simplest endorsement for any product. Not all LED bulbs are good, but these ones are. They use even less power than the CFLs they replace, they give high quality light, they switch on instantly, and they’re sturdy. They do cost more, but they last so long that the ” cost per year” is maybe very low.

The only thing that I wish is that I may also try the 3000k models to look how good their light quality is, how well they blend in with CFLs of similar temps, etc. That’s the single thing it’s missing from this review. If I will get my hands on the warmer models, I’ll update this review with info about them.

Pricing: The bigger OPAL is listed at $55.12 for the traditional mode, and $61.60 for the dimmable one. The TOPAZ is $41.13 standard, and $44.10 dimmable.

Thanks to Qnuru for providing the review units.

More on LED Lights

CREE to provide 10.5W LED Downlights to Home Depot
BoingBoing Looks at LED Lights Through ” Sober Assessment Goggles”
Researchers Make White LED Light Bulbs using Salmon DNA
Quantum Dots Make LED Lightbulbs Emit More Pleasant Light

TreeHugger’s EcoModo column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

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This post is tagged: first impression, incandescent bulbs, matter of fact, michael graham, william gibson