GE BrightStik led

yuandrew

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Some may know of a cheap fluorescent light fixture with a permanently installed tube made years ago by GE that was sold as the Bright Stik™.

The GE Bright Stik™ name is back in the form of a low cost general purpose LED lamp. GE decided to use a cylindrical design versus mimicking the traditional incandescent "bulb" shape while still maintaining an omnidirectional light distribution. They will be available in Home Depot as a 3-pack for around 10$.

Cnet Review
http://www.cnet.com/products/ge-bright-stik-led-3-pack/

Recently listed on HomeDepot's website
http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-60W-E...t-Stik-light-bulb-3-Pack-LED10S3-96/205783754
 
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PhotonWrangler

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Thanks Yuandrew. At 3 for $10 it will be interesting to see where they compromised to keep the costs down. Hopefully we'll see a teardown review from ElectronUpdate. :popcorn:
 

poiihy

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Ooh. Very interesting. Only $3.33 per bulb. Not bad. Hopefully it lasts long.
Cant wait for electronupdate's teardown, and I hope he does a flicker test! Sometimes he doesn't do a flicker test.

Oh it's only 760 lumens. 76 lumens per watt. That sucks. I think Philips still beats them all with their basic bulb.
 
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SemiMan

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Some may know of a cheap fluorescent light fixture with a permanently installed tube made years ago by GE that was sold as the Bright Stik™.

The GE Bright Stik™ name is back in the form of a low cost general purpose LED lamp. GE decided to use a cylindrical design versus mimicking the traditional incandescent "bulb" shape while still maintaining an omnidirectional light distribution. They will be available in Home Depot as a 3-pack for around 10$.

Cnet Review
http://www.cnet.com/products/ge-bright-stik-led-3-pack/

Recently listed on HomeDepot's website
http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-60W-E...t-Stik-light-bulb-3-Pack-LED10S3-96/205783754

"Omnidirectional" .... with a huge base the size of the light source ...... I remember when CNET was good ....
 

jason 77

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The HD by me says they are getting their shipment of these bulbs on 6/28. So I guess I have to wait until July to check them out.....
 

BLH

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They are available on line now. So I suspect the local stores will be getting them shortly.
 

poiihy

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Heh, after Philips released their "basic bulb", now all these other competitors are popping up. This, and just yesterday I saw LSG's new 4-pack of their "basic" bulbs. about $4-$5 per bulb, so the 4-pack is about $17.
Philips still wins.
 

BLH

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I recently bought a three pack but don't have as much equipment like ElectronUpdate has to do a thorough review.
The color temperature is 2850K.
760 lumens.
I use a old solar cell from a pathway light and scope to look flicker. I did not see any with the GE Bright Stik. That I do see with many other LED bulbs.
 

Anders Hoveland

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The color temperature is 2850K.
Yes, GE decided to go with 2850K for the warm white version of their Bright Stik LED bulb, halfway between the usual 2700K and 3000K common to other LED bulbs. This is a rather unusual offering, but I believe it was a good design decision. 2850K is actually closer to the real color temperature of a "normal" incandescent bulb, and is what I believe most people would feel most comfortable with.

Some might say this is slicing hairs, but there really is a substantial difference going from 2700K to 3000K. Towards the lower range of color temperatures, a smaller numerical shift makes much more of a difference, because as the value goes below about 3000K, the light begins to shift to orange very rapidly. (conversely, there's not much difference between 7000K and 8000K)

In my personal opinion, 2700K is too orange, while on the other hand 3000K can, in some situations, feel just a little more bright white than is ideal, and is not as "soft". The fact that LEDengin also made a 2850K version, in addition to 2700K and 3000K options, of their Gallery White emitter for museum use lends credence to the notion that 2850K really is the optimal target color temperature for replicating the feel of incandescent lighting. 3000K has a different color/feel, that's really more the territory of halogen MR16 reflector bulbs, such as one might find in lively upscale urban restaurants.

Of course, color temperature is just one aspect of the light, there's also color tint; the color tint of the light from some of these cheap LED bulbs, while not terrible, can still have a slightly unnatural "pinkish" tinge, just feels a little off.
 
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markr6

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I saw these at Home Depot last night and I was tempted, but passed. I like the design better than standard bulbs, though.
 

jason 77

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Just bought a 3 pack today, and tore one open to see inside.


The box
f_n6mgAKkwuAcunp_TqVYGa3mwYbrsHIrrFqgrx7CCU=w719-h958-no

The "bulb"
qr1dpwb6J-rEBIqRQtn_FkoFu4liYLiNV9TxiKMhWrU=w719-h958-no


Got the plastic top off, looks like it was snapped/glued in, and the LEDs are what I thought chip on board smds.
w43Hlu_gH7WMrbQPUFrXmJ3raKPAVyit2Csx8YEnmpQ=w1278-h958-no


I thought the way they connected the LED board to the driver was rather clever.

raQ0IvCp-vxxS0l3zSbaRB-5rY-Pw7F9AxK-k2Z8cRo=w1278-h958-no


I had to destroy the light to get the driver out :(

hEjuDXhF3gNfZRTj_KxtiG0DwF8wTJ2mlUoiFBDH2K4=w719-h958-no


Looks like a really simple circuit, I like it has a fuse where the AC comes in, from there on it looks like a bunch of smoothing caps, inductor, and bits and pieces.

87N0l6YmolarHzURvklq_RS2COzsYzzymr4ixxXt_Fw=w1278-h958-no


Looks like a IC to control the voltage and current going to the LEDs.

CFmrgdfllaIBm7rOrSvN9EGGnnIoKdxDXvI3dWBZJow=w1278-h958-no
 

PhotonWrangler

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Thanks for the teardown report! I agree, that's an interesting wat to connect the LED assembly to the driver.

I aimed my phone's camera at one of these lamps and I didn't see any hum bars at all, so those smoothing caps are doing a good job.
 

BLH

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Thank you for the teardown information.
I had taken the top off of one of mine and did find the small socket on the LED assembly different.
I measured 44.8 VDC on the small socket when it was running. With no AC ripple and a True RMS Meter.
A photocell and scope also did not show any AC ripple.
 

PhotonWrangler

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It looks like these GE lamps are right up there with the better Philips lamps in terms of no flicker. And from the 105c temperature rating of the greenish electrolytic in the pic, it's good to see they're using at least a medium-grade part. :thumbsup:
 
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poiihy

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I've seen these in the store. They are smaller than I thought! They are quite slim :p
I like how they are cylindrical so they fit in many spaces where the fat philips bulb doesn't. These are perfect replacements for tubular incandescent bulbs like in piano lamps and painting lamps.

Thanks jason77 for the teardown! Very interesting.


Quite silly how these "cheap crap" bulbs don't flicker and are the most efficient, whereas the "god almighty" expensive bulbs often do flicker and are quite inefficient (in the realm of LED bulbs, not CFLs).

Look at all the benefits you get of dropping the dimmability. Most sockets aren't on a dimmer so it makes no sense to have the majority of LED bulbs be dimmable. And also we are used to non-dimmable bulbs because we already survived with CFLs for years.
I'll bet that the majority of "dimmable" LED bulbs aren't on a dimmer. :p



Well, I think Philips still wins with their basic bulb. It outputs 800 lumens using only 8.5 watts... and also it has that amazing diffuser. I don't think this bulb has an amazing diffuser like the Philips does.
But GE got very close.

LightingScienceGroup just utterly failed... I saw some of their comebacks to Philips's basic bulb in the store. They sell them in four-packs, but each pack is around $17 and each bulb is around $4-$5 and probably not as good as Philips's. They haven't lasted very long at all and nobody bought them.

I'd like to see a teardown and review of the LSG basic bulbs, and also of the TCP basic bulbs, as well as the BrightStick basic bulbs.
 
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poiihy

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These lamps are really unpopular! The shelves are always nearly full with only a few purchased.

When I first saw the Philips basic bulb for sale, they were nearly all gone every time! Only 3 or 4 left! Later this slowed down and there were more left, but still they were quite popular!

Then after the Basic bulbs, TCP bulbs appeared but they weren't popular and very little were bought. Now these, and these aren't popular either.

Philips clearly won the market (for now).
 

CoveAxe

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Look at all the benefits you get of dropping the dimmability. Most sockets aren't on a dimmer so it makes no sense to have the majority of LED bulbs be dimmable. And also we are used to non-dimmable bulbs because we already survived with CFLs for years.

This is true, but the problem is that the average consumer who doesn't know anything about lighting just wants to get something that works. They may not know that you need a specific bulb for their dimmer at home, and they'll buy something like this and it won't work. The same can be said of enclosed fixtures: you need to get special LED bulbs that can handle this and the average person doesn't know this or care.

Unfortunately right now if you want a bulb that can act as a drop-in replacement, you're going to pay $15-$20 for it.
 

jason 77

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These lamps are really unpopular! The shelves are always nearly full with only a few purchased.

When I first saw the Philips basic bulb for sale, they were nearly all gone every time! Only 3 or 4 left! Later this slowed down and there were more left, but still they were quite popular!

Then after the Basic bulbs, TCP bulbs appeared but they weren't popular and very little were bought. Now these, and these aren't popular either.

Philips clearly won the market (for now).

I don't know about the philips bulbs, but when I went back to the HD it bought mine from just a week later all the GE brighstik bulbs were gone..
 

RCM

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I am actually using an A19 shape GE LED right now in a table lamp, not a brightstik, they would look weird in here. Recall these things and change the name to maybe light cylinder??? As that's what it looks like! It doesn't look like a stick..it's too short!
 
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