Review of the GE Reveal LED HD+ bulb

JoakimFlorence

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From the exterior this LED bulb looks almost identical to a conventional incandescent bulb. The bulb is opaque, and it's made out of glass, which I consider a plus. It's not quite a filament bulb but there is a thin stand inside holding the LED emitters (so it's mostly empty space inside). I think it is just using ordinary LEDs but the bulb covering it is slightly blue-tinted neodymium glass, which has a modifying effect on the spectrum.

Exterior appearance: opaque frosted slightly bluish tinted glass, but not as bluish as conventional GE Reveal incandescent bulbs. The glass is a nice feature, I find that frosted glass does a better job at diffusing light than opaque plastic, and that also means the plastic isn't going to eventually crack or discolor if it's in outside lamp fixture exposed to the sun. Of course the downside is the glass could shatter if jarred or dropped. One small thing I don't like so much is there's a lot of lettering stamp printed onto the very top of the bulb, which I suppose doesn't matter so much if it's behind a lampshade. Inside the bulb the support for holding the emitter board appears to be clear (a glass stand in fact, like in a conventional light bulb), if you hold the bulb up against the light.

Distribution of light: The bulb is pretty omnidirectional, more so than a half-dome LED bulb, so it's good to use behind a lampshade or anywhere where you need the light to come out horizontally from the sides. Does a fairly good job at sending light downwards, but not quite as perfect as a conventional or filament bulb.

One down side when turned on, the very base of the bulb doesn't appear to be really illuminated, so in some sense the light appearance of the actual bulb itself isn't fully even, but this doesn't affect the overall directional distribution of light so much, so this makes no difference if it's behind a lampshade. Might only be a slight cosmetic issue if the bulb is going to be bare. (probably not worth mentioning, but I wanted to write a thorough review)

There does not appear to be any flicker.

There is no buzzing or slight noise given off from the bulb. Some people are really sensitive to that, so that's a big plus for me.
Edit: There's a very slight buzzing sound. You'd have to put your head within two feet of the bulb to even hear it, and that's if the surroundings are completely silent. I say it's only about half as loud as a dimmable Ikea bulb, which isn't very noticeable either.

Color temperature: Due, I believe, to the use of neodymium glass, the color temperature is 2850K, which is a less common offering intermediate between 2700K and 3000K. This is an ideal color temperature I believe, not too bright white but not too orange.

Tint: Due to the neodymium glass, the light does not feel too "yellowish" and the light is white with an ever so slight magenta tint, which is typical for Reveal. Overall good color tint.

Color rendering index & light quality: Color rendering is probably a little better than the average LED bulb but does not appear to be particularly high. (The fact that the LED light is filtered a little bit through neodymium glass leads to some slightly peculiar color rendering properties) The light itself appears like it has some warmth, and it does make warm colors and wood colors in a room feel warm (more so than standard LED light), yet at the same time these red-hued wood colors can look pretty orange-hued, and red colors do not look very saturated. Basically the colors are just as bad as a regular LED bulb but at least it does make warm colors look warm. An Ikea bulb (90-92 CRI) appears to have slightly better color rendering, in comparison.
Skin tones appear fair, somewhere in between regular and high CRI LED, just a tad orangish, not unlike how skin tones appear under the Feit "high CRI" LED downlight par bulbs, probably adequate for residential lighting purposes.

The packaging claims they're dimmable. I haven't tested that.

Note: This seems to be the latest model of the GE Reveal HD+, completely reworked design from the previous one. It's practically a different bulb with the same name.
 
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markr6

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Good review, you nailed it!

I love these!!! Worth the $8 IMO. I was even lucky to get a "buy one get one 50% off" not too long ago. I would pay a little more, but with some hesitation. The color is just perfect. Not so much the 2850 vs whatever, but the overall tint. Just like when so much of us talk about the Nichia 219B and the "pinkish" neutral tint. That's what I'm seeing here. Just an absence of any tint, white, less yellow that other LEDs.

And I just picked up my first 3-way Reveal LED yesterday. The same great light, but the order is Low>High>Medium which is strange. No big deal though. The 850lm vs 1140lm isn't huge, so I think it's more attractive to someone who really wants a lower mode as well.

Right now I have these Reveal bulbs in all my table lamps and some ceiling lamps. The rest are older Cree TW bulbs, which will likely get replaced when they go. But those are nice too, so I'm not in a hurry.
 

JoakimFlorence

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I was a bit disappointed with the CRI, but I do have high standards. I was expecting these to make colors in the room look more vibrant than they did. Instead it sucked all the color out of the room like an ordinary LED bulb. The light just looks good, but the CRI isn't that good. Might be more appropriate in the house in a spot where all the colors are white or black, I'm thinking. Again, the light doesn't have a sickly yellowish feel and, despite the mediocre/poor CRI it does at least bring out the warmth in warm colors and is moderately good at rendering skin tones.

Actually, white/yellow colored woods (like pine or maple) look just fine under this light, but I wouldn't use it for cherry-stained or mahogany color woods, for anyone who really cares about the display appearance. Definitely wouldn't use this light to display artwork.

I really wrote this entire review because I wanted to talk about the subtleties of CRI. The effect of combining an LED with neodymium glass is kind of intriguing, something we hadn't really seen since the older version of the Cree TW. Definitely eliminates the issue of lower CRI LEDs feeling like they have an unnatural "yellowish" faux white appearance.
I personally don't really care for magenta tint, although the glass on this bulb isn't very strongly blue tinted and so correspondingly the magenta tint is pretty light and definitely not in any way excessive.

Overall I'd say they did a good job designing this bulb, although it could have been better if they had used just slightly higher CRI emitters.

Also something else to keep in mind, the indicated wattage (60, 75, 100) is designed to be equivalent to a tinted Reveal bulb, not an ordinary conventional incandescent bulb, so it may put out a slightly lower amount of light than some people are expecting. (The "75W" will put out somewhere between the light level of a "60" to "75W" standard LED bulb, for example)
 
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markr6

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They do suffer from lower output. The "100w" setting on the 3-way is 1140lm vs. the "usual" 1600lm of a 100W.

And the 60w is an odd one. Over the years these have been 570lm, 680lm and 800lm, usually in different packaging but not always. All using 11w. I have all 3 and they're closer than it seems on paper.

The newest ones I bought don't seem to have any of the blue coating. Or maybe it's inside and I can't see it?
 

JoakimFlorence

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They do suffer from lower output. The "100w" setting on the 3-way is 1140lm vs. the "usual" 1600lm of a 100W.
And I don't believe it's all due to the color filtering glass. I think the company may have been being a little cheap and found an excuse to cut costs.
For one thing, the glass on this really isn't that strongly tinted. Someone realized they didn't have to have the full lumen output of a 100w, they just had to make it equivalent to the lumen output of a 100w Reveal, which has considerably less lumens because the light is being filtered through tinted glass.
The actual wattage on these LED Reveal bulbs is a tiny bit lower than other comparable LED bulbs.


The newest ones I bought don't seem to have any of the blue coating. Or maybe it's inside and I can't see it?
Maybe you bought a different version. Confusingly, some of these versions have different designs but were marketed under the exact same product trademark name.
The glass is pretty lightly tinted so maybe the fact it is slightly blue-tinged is not obvious to you?
 

markr6

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The glass is pretty lightly tinted so maybe the fact it is slightly blue-tinged is not obvious to you?

That's probably it. It's a newer version. I remember the older ones being more obvious like the Cree TW. But I think even those changed to a less-blue dome towards the end.
 

PrpSymbol

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Jul 17, 2018
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Hi All,

About six months ago I purchased several Reveal HD A19 100W equivalent bulbs (although they are only 1150lm), marked 2850K at Lowe's. Now I'd like a few more and I can't find them anywhere, not in stores or on the web. The only alternative is an A21 bulb, which I can't use. Any idea what happened to these? Incidentally, this morning one of the bulbs burned out - maybe that's part of the reason they are no longer available.

-Paul
 
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