It has been a busy 12 months within the lighting aisle, with the debut of latest, low-value LED mild bulbs that promise to chop your house's power draw without breaking the financial institution. The newest, from GE, is the Vivid Stik LED, which bucks the bulb altogether in favor of a push-pop-formed build. The fee: $10 for a three-pack (a GE consultant tells me that they do not plan on selling the bulbs individually simply but). Like the opposite major player on a budget end of the spectrum, EcoLight solutions the Philips 60W Alternative LED , the Shiny Stik provides a reasonably compelling worth proposition. Whereas a 60W incandescent will add about $7 per yr to your power invoice, the 10W Vibrant Stik will add simply $1.20. Spend $10 on that three-pack and use them for a year, and your complete price is $13.60. Spend a buck on three incandescents, and you may find yourself spending another $21 over the course of the 12 months -- and then you will must change them, since that is about as long as they final.

The Vivid Stiks will last effectively over a decade. There are a few trade-offs, though. The Vivid Stik is not quite as vibrant or as environment friendly as different LEDs and, like the Philips bulb, it isn't an option that'll work with dimmer switches. Nonetheless, it's a very solid match for primary lighting setups, and at a cost of about $3 per bulb (or, um,"Stik"), it is a really strong value, too. If I simply wanted to exchange one mild, I might probably stick to Philips, but when I am changing my bulbs in bulk, I'm going to offer the Brilliant Stik some serious consideration. The GE Vibrant Stik isn't the primary massive model LED that wishes you to think exterior the bulb. For over a 12 months now, the flattened-down Philips SlimStyle LED has been promoting on Dwelling Depot shelves, and its success would possibly serve as proof of concept for the odd-looking Vivid Stik LED. You'll quickly see the 2 promoting aspect-by-aspect in the house Depot lighting aisle.

Still, the SlimStyle LED at the least attempts to approximate the overall silhouette of a light bulb (from sure angles, anyway). With the Vivid Stik LED, you are all in on newfangled design, no incandescent nostalgia vital. Whether or not that's an excellent factor is completely up to you. We're in all probability lacking the point, though. Bulb or no bulb, the Shiny Stik remains to be, nicely, a gentle bulb. Typically, you're not going to see the thing after you screw it in and decrease the lampshade. The form issue actually doesn't matter much in and of itself. What does matter is how that kind issue impacts the standard of mild, which is the place my concerns lied as I ready to check the Brilliant Stik out. None of that cylindrical plastic is angled downward, the best way the bottom half of a spherical bulb is. I puzzled if that may keep the Shiny Stik from casting the kind of downward gentle folks sometimes want to read under.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case. With the LED hidden beneath a lampshade, I could not distinguish the quality of the Vivid Stik's mild from some other normal, omnidirectional bulb. That applies to the appear and feel of the sunshine, too. At 2,850 K, it's as heat and EcoLight yellowy as you'd anticipate from a standard, household gentle (a 5,000 K "daylight" version is out there, too, EcoLight for an additional buck). The 760-lumen gentle output -- while a bit short of the perfect 800 lumen benchmark for EcoLight solutions a 60W alternative -- is plenty vibrant for most basic wants. Really, the only difference this design makes is on GE's end -- the slimmed down determine makes it a breeze to bundle the Shiny Stik, and simpler 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.