One by one, we are replacing our domestic CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lights) with SMD (surface mount diode) 'corn cobs'. The latest SENCART branded ones we have from dx.com are superb, even better CRI(colour rendering index) and cosiness than old tungsten bulbs and they are full brightness instantly unlike most CFLs.

I don't know why they still make CFL, they should be phased out and replaced with SMDs so they can be made cheaper in greater volumes.

Re. bad caps (TM)

Yes, same problem here. 3 dud lamps, 2 of them had bad capacitors.

One turned on and off when hot, never did find out why but suspect some other component failed on them as the LEDs look fine and work correctly on a DC current limited supply.

Shame, as they are actually quite nice lamps with no significant heating in use and the light quality is good.

If you still have yours unscrew the end and the PCB usually falls out and can be autopsied.

Currently working on an improved bike light using the three "dead" lamps to make a cluster of variable brightness lights that also serve as indicators.

leds for home/office lighting

I'm not convinced they are there yet-- manufacturing variation in chromaticity is very high (that is, three or four units from the same manufacturer of the same nominal color temperature will be visibly different). Producing a pleasant warm light (<4000K) is still a big challenge, and as someone above mentioned, that is a must for US/EU markets.

Fluorescent lighting, which is obviously much more mature, has solved these problems and you can get some very nice CFLs now that can be dimmed or provide instant on as well as high CRI. Factoring in the difference in unit cost vs efficiency (a single LED replacement bulb here in the states was about $50 last I checked) and the value proposition just doesn't make sense. I'm sure that LED lighting will improve over time, and there is a lot of potential, but I'm not about to retrofit my home.

Bootnote

Here in Canada it's estimated that mandating CFLs will add around 500,000 tons of CO2/year to the atmopshere

The electricity in Quebec and BC is hydro but without the extra heating effect of all those 100W electric heaters the thermostats click in and burn more natural gas or oil

Building thermals

A lot of buildings now use heat pumps. These are more efficient at warming buildings than incandescent. But they don't work as well in really cold places.

As someone who works professionally (gaffer, film industry) with all different forms of lighting,( led, tungsten incadescent, hmi, flourencent, carbon arc, hell i even got the philips prototype oled luminblades) let me say this, they all suck but for different reasons.

Led have plenty of suck ... First led droop, ( which last time i looked no one had really figured out) the lost of effeciency as power levels increase mean there's a serious limit on how brite a single source led can be so you are required to stack them, basically stick a bunch together to make the whole brighter this causes tons of issues not only optically, rather than having a basic single source which you can then optically focus you are limited to a multisource array with muliple shadows, rainbowing, and plenty of other artifacts. This also it a major heat issue, while a single led is much more efficent than a incandescent per watt it is also much much smaller so has less surface area to disperse heat. When you start stacking dozens of them closely together this becomes a major problem. I always find it amusing how shocked people are when they see the massive heat sinks on the back of large professional led arrays.

There are even household bulb designs that are using liquid silicon to help deal with this issue.

When you combine this with the circuitry required to run them and the fact that most arrays are built as a single unit, so when you lose indivisual leds you can't replace them and eventually need to replace the entire unit, so while a 50,000 average hour bulb life sounds great when you realise what your really saying is a 50,000 average unit life not so good. I have units on my truck that i use almost daily that are almost as old as i am, i can be pretty certain that none of the led units i have will be functional a decade from now.

Then there is colour, and from reading the above comments almost everyone here need to brush up on their colour theory, lets just say like all non black body emiters leds are a nightmare when it comes to colour. Yes there is no such colour as white but the one thing white is is full spectrum. Led, fluorescents, hmi and other non fullspectrum all have had allot of effort and investment in getting arround the fact that they are naturally missing chunks of the spectrum and most are able to get thier cri (colour rendering index) up to the low 90 in optimum conditions, the thing is optimum conditions don't tend to stay optimum, and when you have a bunch of mixed sources and they all start going off optimum in thier own way on set, well, this is why gaffers tend to nervous wrecks.

Yes led can as a side benifit of having to be stacked have the option of rgb mixing, or for the better arrays rgbcow, but while this may work well as a wash across the back wall the human eye is very atuned to skin tone, especially green and red as its important evolutionarily i suppose to know when a fellow tribe member is about to attack or puke on you, and the limited bandwidth options with the indivusual elements of an rgbled has meant allot of overselling of the usefullness of this option.

Lets not even talk about the nightmares that can happen when dealing with frequency, most led dim by changing freq of on/off cycle rather than brightness which when mixed with the fixed freq. of camera, or the eye of a person who has trained himself to notice freq, can produce incrediblely anoying artifacts.

So yes, .. Led is an useful option, but does not in anyway replace the need and function of incadescent glowing tungsten wires of the basic classic bulb, not in quality or high output, and while led will always have function where it makes the most sense, and we have seen allot of improvements lately as the tech has matured, as we have recently with the more mature fluorescent - the new t5 and t4s are very impressive, it is not the best option in all situations and i actually am very willing to bet that it will not be the unit thats lighting your homes twenty years from now.

Now ... Radio activated plasma bulbs ... That I'm excited about.

Domestic LED bulbs are now good enough and cheap enough to replace CFLs (IMO)

I've had CFLs in my house for years - since the early days when they were made with a fluorescent tube, a iron-cored choke and a little starter in a glass jar. The early electronic ones were expensive and not quite as bright as the tungsten bulbs that they were supposed to replace, but Osrams were very reliable and easily lasted 8 years. More recently I bought a stock of Feit CFLs; they are cheap and very bright but barely last 8 months, and 'recycling' them is a pain. So I am more than ready to change over to LEDs.

I remember early LED lamps as dim and very blue, with terrible colour rendering. But technology improves, and the latest ones seem very good to me. I've bought several 3W GU10 and E24 bulbs from three of the cheaper brands, for £5 to £8 each. They are rated as 3000K, but look less orange than warm white CFLs (which is a good thing in my opinion). I'm been impressed by how much light you get from a 3W bulb. I have replaced 200W of halogen with 15W of LEDs in the kitchen. The room is not as bright as it was, but it is bright enough, and the energy saving is massive.

There are small but visible differences in spectrum and colour rendering between the three types, but none is unacceptable to me and the £5 diffuser bulbs from Lidl are superb. (I've done the resistor colour code test and there's no problem at all.) So far, there have been no failures, although I've only had LEDs for a few months so it's too early to draw any conclusions about lifetime. If you've previously looked at LED lighting and hated it, perhaps it is time to take another look. It may not be perfect, but modern LED technology is not as bad as some Reg commentards like to claim.

home lighting circuits

any reason why we can't have low voltage home lighting circuits that LEDs can plug directly into? Or at least fixtures with two parts, one for the control/transformer circuitry and one for the LED(s)?