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G50-21SMD 110v Warm White

Photo courtesy everbulb.com

First, the story: I ordered several bulbs from this company, and there was a slight "glitch" in the process. The company EverBulb.com went above and beyond the call, but they did not "call": due to a backorder on one of the bulbs I had ordered, they went out of their way and upgraded my order when they found they couldn't get me what I'd ordered at their expense. Now THAT'S customer service! The glitch was, they didn't update me as to why it was taking so long. Within a couple of emails it was resolved, and my package arrived. Good company, and I'll do business with them again soon.

Now to the review:
The G50-21SMD Warm White bulb (currently $19.95) is EVERYTHING they claim - it's a great direct replacement for a 40W incandescent bulb, you can replace your 13W CFL with a noticeable difference: no warm-up time! CFL's can take a couple of minutes to get up to full brightness, where this one comes right up. The base is it's heatsink, as are many of the LED bulbs out there, and it gets warm after being on for eight hours, but not so hot that you can't hold it.

The size of the G50-21SMD is small enough to fit into any place incandescents fit - which helps especially when you're trying to put them into tight areas. In fact, it's smaller diameter allows you to put them into tighter places without compromising the output. The only problem you might encounter is if you have a clip on shade that fits over a standard sized bulb, but adjusting or replacing the shade should not be an issue.

The Technology:
The bulb uses 21 "SMD" (Surface Mounted Device) LED's - if you were to buy them in bulk, they have no leads like most LED's out there, they solder directly onto the surface of the board. I was a little leery of this, actually, having several multi-LED bulbs that have died on me, but they were mainly due to the power supply, not the LED's (every contact point and component in a circuit is a potential point of failure). If you look inside your computer, you'll find most of the components are SMD, and their failure rates are extremely low, so as long as the power conversion (from 110v AC to DC) circuits are robust, there shouldn't be any problems with this bulb.

Cost Savings:
at 8 hours/day, using only 3 watts, will cost me about $51 over 20 years, at $0.20/KWH. I'm not paying that much yet, but we're talking 20 years. As a round figure, that's $2.55 per year in electricity.

A CFL (Compact Fluorescent Light), which many people have switched to, would cost me $5.25 per year in electricity, a savings of $2.70 per year. So it will "pay for itself" in 7.3 years, now counting replacing the CFL every two to three years. Compare that to a photovoltaic system would "pay for itself" around here in about 18 years, with a cash outlay into the tens of thousands.

An incandescent bulb would cost me $23.35 per year, replacing on of those I'd save $20.80 every year. This bulb will "pay for itself" in about a year. Nice.