PhotonWrangler
Flashaholic
The other day I was looking at some LED nightlight bulbs from Feit. They had red, green and blue ones. The clear bulb reveals a wafer with the LEDs mounted on them. The blue LED had just the bare wafer-mounted LEDs, while the red and green ones had the wafer and a blob of phosphor on top of them. The phosphor blobs were glowing dimly under the store's lighting.
So all three colors are using the same blue LED chips, and the phosphor converts blue to either red or green. What bugs me about this is that it would be more efficient (and probably a little brighter) to use native red or green LEDs instead of the phosphor-downconverted blue ones.
I get it that this method reduces the number of components they need to stock at the manufacturer, but it adds one step to the manufacturing process - adding that dollop of phosphor to the non-blue bulbs - but it also introduces another point of failure in addition to the efficiency loss.
I've seen the same thing in a line of larger colored LED filament bulbs from the same manufacturer. Does this bug anyone else or am I just being pedantic?
So all three colors are using the same blue LED chips, and the phosphor converts blue to either red or green. What bugs me about this is that it would be more efficient (and probably a little brighter) to use native red or green LEDs instead of the phosphor-downconverted blue ones.
I get it that this method reduces the number of components they need to stock at the manufacturer, but it adds one step to the manufacturing process - adding that dollop of phosphor to the non-blue bulbs - but it also introduces another point of failure in addition to the efficiency loss.
I've seen the same thing in a line of larger colored LED filament bulbs from the same manufacturer. Does this bug anyone else or am I just being pedantic?