It has been a busy year in the lighting aisle, with the debut of new, low-value LED light bulbs that promise to chop your own home's power draw with out breaking the bank. The latest, from GE, is the Brilliant Stik LED, which bucks the bulb altogether in favor of a push-pop-formed construct. The fee: $10 for energy-saving LED bulbs a three-pack (a GE representative tells me that they do not plan on promoting the bulbs individually simply but). Like the other main participant on a budget end of the spectrum, the Philips 60W Alternative LED , the Brilliant Stik gives a pretty compelling worth proposition. Whereas a 60W incandescent will add about $7 per year to your energy bill, the 10W Vibrant Stik will add just $1.20. Spend $10 on that three-pack and use them for EcoLight a yr, and your whole price is $13.60. Spend a buck on three incandescents, and you will find yourself spending another $21 over the course of the yr -- after which you will must exchange them, since that is about as long as they last.

The Shiny Stiks will final nicely over a decade. There are just a few commerce-offs, though. The Vibrant Stik isn't fairly as vibrant or as efficient as different LEDs and, like the Philips bulb, it is not an choice that'll work with dimmer switches. Nonetheless, it's a really strong fit for LED bulbs for home basic lighting setups, and at a value of about $three per bulb (or, um,"Stik"), it is a very solid worth, too. If I just needed to replace one light, EcoLight I'd in all probability stick to Philips, but if I'm replacing my bulbs in bulk, I am going to provide the Bright Stik some serious consideration. The GE Vivid Stik isn't the primary large brand LED that wants you to assume outdoors the bulb. For over a yr now, the flattened-down Philips SlimStyle LED has been selling on House Depot shelves, and EcoLight dimmable its success might serve as proof of idea for the odd-trying Vibrant Stik energy-saving LED bulbs. You will quickly see the two promoting aspect-by-side in the house Depot lighting aisle.

Nonetheless, the SlimStyle LED no less than makes an attempt to approximate the overall silhouette of a gentle bulb (from sure angles, anyway). With the Shiny Stik LED, you're all in on newfangled design, no incandescent nostalgia obligatory. Whether or not that's a superb thing is fully up to you. We're most likely missing the purpose, though. Bulb or no bulb, the Vibrant Stik remains to be, well, a light bulb. Generally, you're not going to see the thing after you screw it in and decrease the lampshade. The type factor actually would not matter a lot in and of itself. What does matter is how that type issue impacts the standard of gentle, which is the place my concerns lied as I ready to test the Bright Stik out. None of that cylindrical plastic is angled downward, the way the underside half of a spherical bulb is. I puzzled if that might keep the Shiny Stik from casting the form of downward light folks sometimes choose to read below.

Fortuitously, that wasn't the case. With the LED hidden under a lampshade, I could not distinguish the quality of the Brilliant Stik's light from any other normal, omnidirectional bulb. That applies to the look and feel of the sunshine, too. At 2,850 Okay, it's as warm and yellowy as you'd count on from an ordinary, family mild (a 5,000 K "daylight" model is on the market, too, for an extra buck). The 760-lumen light output -- while a bit short of the perfect 800 lumen benchmark for a 60W replacement -- is a lot vibrant for most fundamental needs. Really, the only difference this design makes is on GE's finish -- the slimmed down figure makes it a breeze to package deal the Brilliant Stik, and easier for GE to ship them in bulk (particularly when packaged three at a time). All of that helps shave cents off the upfront cost, and there's nothing to not like about that.