Toshiba E-Core LED Fixture
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.18.07
Toshiba has introduced a 265 lumen output potlight (comparable to the output of a 40 watt incandescent) that gets 50 lumens per watt and uses only 5.3 watts of power. It looks good, has good colour balance and costs under two hundred bucks, which is great for a built-in fixture with a projected 40,000 hour lifespan. It is designed at 3" in diameter so that it can retrofit into traditional potlight holes. Available in Japan this summer.
Watch a movie about it from ::diginfo and the translated page at ::Toshiba
I sure appreciate LED's but this pricing (as seen frequently on TH) is quite insane.
Once they drop down to 30 bucks or less, let me know....
RideTheFuture- they are cheaper in the long run when you factor in the electricity saved!
40,000 hours is essentially forever,so no expense of replacing CFL's, and no mercury to boot.
I'm sure they will come down in price if they ramp up the volumes, but in the meantime slowly upgrade your most used lights one by one as budget sees fit. I've already done it this way with the CFL's, so when they start burning out will do the same to switch to LED (hopefully this won't be for a while, since CFL's have pretty long life also)
this is old news. permlight has been making LED potlights for a couple years now. they are also local for anyone in los angeles or orange county. http://www.permlight.com i think?
The pricing is insane, and I'm not sure why Toshiba would even announce pricing that's so whachy -- just make a few unit available until the price starts to come down out of the stratosphere.
A bigger issue is the brightness of these lamps (or lack thereof). I don't know what kind of 40watt incandescents Toshia is using for comparison, but the typical 40-watters here in the US is 500lumens -- and this lamp is *half* that. So basically, the energy use is about the same as compact fluorescent, without all that pesky affordability.
You need 2 of them to equal the brightness of a single 40-watt incandescent. That'a 2x$200=$400, with energy consumption of 2x5.3=10.6 watts, vs. about 2 bucks and 40 watts for the incandescent, or $5 and 10watts for the CFL..