Customer Reviews

16 Dimmable Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs.15w=75w

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

These dimmable CFLs work very well with Insteon dimmers. They start up at very low brightness (5-10%) and dim all the way down to the lowest level. Insteon dimmers use high quality electronics that create a clean output signal. Alot of people who complain about buzzing/flickering are likely using cheapo dimmers which use triacs. Triacs and similar circuits do terrible things to the AC waveform, chopping it to pieces instead of reducing the amplitude and retaining a sine wave. Incandescents tend to absorb the noisy output of triacs better, so people don't realize they've bought crappy quality dimmers until they use non-incandescent lights.

Color temperature is good, leaning towards the warm side and not the colder bluish temperatures that some people dislike. I've noticed a pinkish bias as the lights dim down. Under a shade or cover it's not noticeable at all. If you are lighting with the bare bulb it may be more noticeable.

Excellent value @ prices from Amazon sellers. You'd easily pay 4-8x as much per bulb at Lowes or Home Depot which have very limited selection of dimmable CFLs.

I was impressed with the price of these bulbs, and the reviews were mostly favorable. However, I have not been impressed with these bulbs--several have died. Specifically, one was DOA and had to be replaced by the seller. Furthermore, after precisely 8 months of use 3 bulbs in different fixtures all died separately over the course of one week. I have also not been impressed with the consistency of brightness and color temperature--there is marked differences in both among bulbs. In addition, the bulbs do buzz when dimmed, but I have not had problems with flickering bulbs. I would suggest passing on these.

I purchased 20 of these dimmable CFL bulbs and installed them in our ceiling fixtures. About 1/3 failed within the first month. The rest have been working for six months now. All can only be dimmed to (roughly, subjectively) one-half of full brightness. When dimmed, the color remains the same as when full power.

The failure rate was very disappointing, the other aspects are just the way dimmable CFLs are. I won't purchase this brand of dimmable CFLs again, but I will try a better-quality brand someday. In fixtures that I want to be able to dim all the way to "mood lighting" levels (e.g. dining room) I will use standard incandescents or halogens.

These CFLs are quite a bit better than the other CFLs we've been using.

1) Instant on & no warm up time. Not only is there no delay when they're switched on, they start at full brightness as well. Our previous CFLs had a 1-2 second delay before even turning on, then several minutes before they warmed up to normal light output. These bulbs completely eliminate those issues.
2) They're dimmable. Non-dimmable is a big drawback to most CFLs. These seem to work well except if I try to turn them way down, then they will begin to flicker slightly. This may be variable depending on the quality of dimmer switches, I have several different dimmers throughout the house & some seem to work better than others. Eventually I'm going to replace them all with good quality switches (I'm thinking Aspire Desert Sand switches, they're quite stylish too with no visible plate screws).
3) The construction quality seems very good & they don't have the black spot on the end that a lot of our previous CFLs have.
4) The price. I prefer these even in fixtures that I don't use a dimmer with, they're better quality without the typical CFL issues & actually cost slightly less.

They were packaged well & arrived in a reasonable time, being that it was around the holidays.

One thing to be aware of is that they do seem to put off a slightly cold light, kind of like daylight but not extremely cold. Not sure of their actual temperature, but they're not a real soft white like 2700k, perhaps in the 3000-5000k range.

I agree with pretty much all of the reviews here. If you're looking for an incandescent-like experience with dimmable lights, you should look elsewhere since these _will_ flicker. If you keep your "dimmable" lights at full 99% of the time and just want something safe to put in those fixtures, these are a very good deal. They are reasonably small, so you'll be able to fit them in smaller fixtures, too.

The price was right, so I tried them out; I'm now sorry I bought so many. We have quite a few dimmable switches in the house for mood lighting (Dining room, kitchen, family room, bedroom), but the mood is quite altered for the worse when these bulbs are dimmed. I would recommend them for the hard of hearing.

These are pretty good as CFLs and the price is great. I bought these bulbs both for use in photocell / motion sensor applications (where you need a dimmable bulb) and for general dimming. They work fine with my motion detector / photocell applications, but they perform very poorly when dimmed. There is some humming noise, though that didn't bother me, but the biggest problem is the bulbs flicker to the point of unusability. You need to spend more money and buy better dimmable bulbs. THe big box orange store near me finally caries them

These have a short life. Within 6 weeks 5 of them failed and mfg very hard to deal with for replacements.

It appears that there is only one actual type of dimmable 23W CFL from China, and they all have very high failure rates, 6000 hour "warranty".

These have been released as "Greenlite", "Harmony" and as "U Lighting America". They have their own "UL" logo to make it look like they're UL listed.

Overall, myself and others included, there is a 50% failure rate on these bulbs within 3 days. I couldn't get warranty on mine that failed the day they were installed. The company's website just lists the bulb information, but there's on contact information. The phone number for warranty is an answering machine with an old lady saying you've reached U Lighting America, leave a message. Several other people have been told that warranty is only good when purchased in California for use in California.

The seller also wouldn't take them back as DoA without negative feedback. Even then, I'm waiting to see.

For most of those that work, the light is crisp white and very bright at full power. As you turn the dimmer down, the light stays the same for about 30%, but the bulbs begin to hum. Past that point, they begin to dim. Past 50%, they flicker. Past 70%, some of them extinguish, or pulsate off and on with substantial buzzing.

For one of them, the light was markedly more pink, but otherwise operated the same way as the others.

So basically, avoid these bulbs. Go for the Sylvania, Earthmate or GE brands with good reviews.

I was hoping this would dim much like an incandescing light, but it does not. When full power the light gives off a great light and very little heat (something that all CFL's do). However this is billed as a dimmable CFL. Unfortunately you can only dim it about 30% (70% light output) and when dimmed it puts out a small (but noticeable) electronic hum. I have a quality set of dimmers, so I doubt it is that. Great CFL - horrible dimmer function.

As a side note- these can be used as standard CFL's without issue.