# 500+ lumens,5000 hour lamp life, $8.95 we all have one.



## arnold ziffle (Sep 23, 2006)

i was wondering why surefire and others rate their lamp life at 30 hours while my auto headlight lamps last so much longer. i just replaced a lamp that has been 245000 miles in all kinds of weather. half of that has been at night , 100 miles at a stretch from work to home. i think we deserve lamps that are tougher and have longer lives. i am still waiting for an e2e hid.


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## NAW (Sep 23, 2006)

arnold ziffle said:


> i am still waiting for an e2e hid.


 
That I assume will be a very very long time. Or maybe even never. And if its made from surefire you know its gonna be expensive.

Ony time will tell though.


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## ANW (Sep 23, 2006)

I was looking at the cabelas website at the flashlights under the camping section, they have a nice and affordable HID for sale, with decent runtime and output. It around the costs of a U2 or Kroma,maybe a bit more. If I had the funds i'd buy one for camping next year just to see how well it works. I'm not sure how good they are,but they are interesting.


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## cmacclel (Sep 23, 2006)

ANW said:


> I was looking at the cabelas website at the flashlights under the camping section, they have a nice and affordable HID for sale, with decent runtime and output. It around the costs of a U2 or Kroma,maybe a bit more. If I had the funds i'd buy one for camping next year just to see how well it works. I'm not sure how good they are,but they are interesting.




WOW Cabelas sells the AE Powerlights 


Mac


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## Illum (Sep 23, 2006)

arnold ziffle said:


> i was wondering why surefire and others rate their lamp life at 30 hours while my auto headlight lamps last so much longer. i just replaced a lamp that has been 245000 miles in all kinds of weather. half of that has been at night , 100 miles at a stretch from work to home. i think we deserve lamps that are tougher and have longer lives. i am still waiting for an e2e hid.



Surefire underrates the output....and perhaps underrate the lamp life...usually its in the company's best interests to find an average and then minus a couple hours from the average...so they garantee it to run 30 hours, anything higher...you got lucky


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## VWTim (Sep 23, 2006)

But what is the current draw on those Auto headlights? And they're also larger to handle heat better.


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## 270winchester (Sep 23, 2006)

arnold ziffle said:


> i am still waiting for an e2e hid.




A HID that can fit in a E2e? You may be better off getting an L4 and ask CM or someone to drop in a W or X bin LuxV if you can find one. the small size of the E2e makes an HID a challenge to fit(I don't think they make anything lower than 10W ballasts), hard to focus and expensive to replace. IMO the HIDs are best suited for larger handheld applications with better impact protection and better optics to take advantake of the smooth beam. For something you want in a pocket the LuxVs are the way to go.

as for the automotive bulbs, you have the problem of the voltage(12v), the current draw(typically 3-4 amps PER BULB), the size, the difficulty to focus a large filament like that for a small light. There are 6v bulbs available but the output is dismal and not much of an improvement of the SF lamps.


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## Led-Ed (Sep 23, 2006)

You did very well with that headlight bulb.
The H7 bulbs I have for lowbeams in my car are rated for 250 hours.


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## idleprocess (Sep 24, 2006)

Automotive lightbulbs are large and inefficient. In exchange for the inefficiency, you get long(er) life, vibration/environmental resistance, and tolerance for the wildly-varying voltages of an automotive electrical system. You'll notice that headlights don't produce the pencil-thin spotlight beams that everyone seems to love. They have big filaments and special reflectors that take advantage of the "error" that big filaments would introduce to the ideal parabolic reflector.


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## Handlobraesing (Sep 24, 2006)

arnold ziffle said:


> i was wondering why surefire and others rate their lamp life at 30 hours while my auto headlight lamps last so much longer. i just replaced a lamp that has been 245000 miles in all kinds of weather. half of that has been at night , 100 miles at a stretch from work to home. i think we deserve lamps that are tougher and have longer lives. i am still waiting for an e2e hid.



Factory installed headlight lamps are usually the warranty friendly long life type that runs at lower temperature. If you get the higher color temperature bulb, like the Sylvania SilverStar, the life is 150 hours or so. 

Flashlight bulbs run at high filament temperature to maximize limited energy from batteries. If you have a power source that can continuously supply 60 watts, you could make a flashlight with longevity similar to automotive headlight.


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## paulr (Sep 24, 2006)

150 hour headlamp life?! Those must be exotic high performance lamps--if you have a 1 hour commute home from work in the dark every evening, you'd have to replace the headlamps every 8 months or so? I think most headlamps have to last a lot longer.


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## TinderBox (UK) (Sep 24, 2006)

how about motorcycle light, in some states in the US, the light are permanently switched on by law, they must have pretty good burntime.

regards.

john.


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## winny (Sep 24, 2006)

arnold ziffle said:


> i was wondering why surefire and others rate their lamp life at 30 hours while my auto headlight lamps last so much longer. i just replaced a lamp that has been 245000 miles in all kinds of weather. half of that has been at night , 100 miles at a stretch from work to home. i think we deserve lamps that are tougher and have longer lives. i am still waiting for an e2e hid.




There are several reasons.
1. Filament size. In a flashlight with a small reflector such as most SureFires, you need a very small filament in order to focus the light properly. Not being able to use optimal size and shape will limit the life of the bulb.

2. Non-halogen lamps. Because SureFire want to achieve maximum efficiency and very small bulbs, they don't use halogen lamps as you do in automotive lamps. This will seriously reduce the lifetime of the bulb.

3. Impact resistance. Because flashlight filaments is supposed to withstand high amounts of abuse, you have to make sure the filament is properly suspended and stiff enough. This can be done by sacrificing efficiency and lifetime.

4. Money. If they don't last long, SureFire will sell more replacement lamps.


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## nexro (Sep 24, 2006)

winny said:


> There are several reasons.
> 4. Money. If they don't last long, SureFire will sell more replacement lamps.



I like this one the best


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## Size15's (Sep 24, 2006)

winny said:


> 2. Non-halogen lamps. Because SureFire want to achieve maximum efficiency and very small bulbs, they don't use halogen lamps as you do in automotive lamps. This will seriously reduce the lifetime of the bulb.



Most SureFire bulbs are Halogen and all contain Xenon. The mix and the pressure depends on the specific bulb model

Al


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## Alin10123 (Sep 24, 2006)

idleprocess said:


> Automotive lightbulbs are large and inefficient. In exchange for the inefficiency, you get long(er) life, vibration/environmental resistance, and tolerance for the wildly-varying voltages of an automotive electrical system. You'll notice that headlights don't produce the pencil-thin spotlight beams that everyone seems to love. They have big filaments and special reflectors that take advantage of the "error" that big filaments would introduce to the ideal parabolic reflector.



Exactly what he said. Took the words right out of my mouth. Or in this case, eer my fingers.


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## winny (Sep 25, 2006)

Size15's said:


> Most SureFire bulbs are Halogen and all contain Xenon. The mix and the pressure depends on the specific bulb model



Are you sure? I don't mean to imply that you lie in any way, but I read here somewhere (didn't find it) that they used straight xenon fill, and the very small bulbs used by SF would make it hard if not impossible to leave enough room for the halogen cycle to take place.
Does anyone have access to a gas mass-spectrometer and a SF bulb to sacrifice?



idleprocess said:


> Automotive lightbulbs are large and inefficient. In exchange for the inefficiency, you get long(er) life, vibration/environmental resistance, and tolerance for the wildly-varying voltages of an automotive electrical system



What are you comparing with?
An Osram H4 headlamp produces 1650 lumen @ 60 W and 250 hours. Rerated at 100 hours, that's 32 lm/W.
Your average 120 V, 60 W incan bulb produce 850 lumen. Rerated at 100 hours that's 20.3 lm/W.
Compare that with a SF lamp. Take the P60 for instance. 60 output lumen will probably mean about 85 bulb lumen and running at 8 W. That's 10.6 lm/W. I don't know what the lifetime is, but probably lower than 100 hours so the figure should be even less. Crap in other words when it comes to efficiency. Automotive headlamps on the other hand wins this round with a factor of over three compared to the SF lamp.

Did I make my point?


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## Knight Lights (Sep 25, 2006)

Why does everyone think auto lamps are so inefficient?

They actually have some pretty good technology in them!

I'm made flashlights out of everything up to and includinng H4's, 9006's, 9007's, etc.

Driving them at 12 volts they are a little yellow, but at 14.4 volts they are pretty doggone white and at 16-17 volts they are as white as any incan and put out HUGE amounts of light. 

The Surefire's I've played with seem to be very white, and that 10.6 lumen/W figure seems very low, but I can do the math backwards and get the same result, so it must be right!

Bill


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## Size15's (Sep 25, 2006)

winny said:


> Did I make my point?



Not really. For a start I understand the P60 is more like a 5W bulb and it's peak output on fresh SF123As is in excess of 100 lumens (that's out the front of the flashlight with the losses that some say could be as much as 30%) which (and since it's my turn to banter about some figures!) that makes the P60 about 20 lm/W if not more.

As for the exact fill of SureFire bulbs - I don't have the information and SureFire are hardly going to share that sort of detail with the public.

You wonder why the bulbs aren't tougher and last longer in flashlights but the fact is that SureFire bulbs are tougher and last longer that other so-called 'tactical' flashlights. 
There aren't many on CPF who care enough about long-term durability to run quality tests to compare incandescents but I know for a fact that SureFire care and they do run tests. This way they ensure their products are fit for purpose - which is helping those who go into harms way so that I for one can sit around at my PC chatting about flashlights!

Al


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## shoe (Sep 25, 2006)

TinderBox (UK) said:


> how about motorcycle light, in some states in the US, the light are permanently switched on by law, they must have pretty good burntime.
> 
> regards.
> 
> john.



Just my two cents.

Nice try but unless you live in a warm country/state you're not going to put in as much ride time as a car commuter.

BTW, my Cyclops Thor uses an H4 bulb. It was great when I bought it but after a few outtings I found it very heavy and cumbersome.


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## idleprocess (Sep 26, 2006)

The average automotive bulb is not as efficient as some of the better ~12V bulbs out there. It has a big filament that doesn't run as hot as smaller filaments. I've not glanced at an _extensive_ selection of automotive bulbs, but I recall that most produce less than 1000 lumens at 60W. Given that the load of an alternotor isn't too large in an automobile, a headlight that's moderately efficient is acceptable, especially if it lasts a long time. Much like the Surefire lamps that everyone is referencing, the higher-performing automotive lamps don't seem to last as long... probably featuring smaller, hotter-running filaments.


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## batman (Sep 26, 2006)

All i know is, i wish Surefire made headlights!!


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## Knight Lights (Sep 26, 2006)

Some Surefire lamps seem to blacken, like the lamps that don't have any halogen in them, but I have been assured that most, if not all, have at least SOME. At one time, I believed that the A2 lamp did not have any halogen, and was actually told that by someone at Surefire, who believed it was the regulation that allowed them to get away without it. I have since been assured otherwise.

Surefire optimizes the mix for each lamp, and sometimes the output/light quality requires less halogen, so the halogen cycle is not as complete in those lamps, and they blacken over time.

I have been told that it is easier to make a lamp very white without any halogen, running only Xenon. I accepted that for truth, since it came from a lighting engineer, but I have now seen some VERY white lamps that had halogen in them, so I think there may be some variation on that specific truth, especially dependant on how highly driven the lamp is. (Overdrive only applies if the spec says one thing and you push it harder than that. If it is specced at a very high voltage relatively to lamp life, the bulb is being driven at spec, thus NOT overdriven. Some lamps do not tolerate overdrive at all since they are specced right at the edge anyway. Most Surefire lamps fit that category, for instance.)

Bill


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## winny (Sep 26, 2006)

Size15's said:


> Not really. For a start I understand the P60 is more like a 5W bulb and it's peak output on fresh SF123As is in excess of 100 lumens (that's out the front of the flashlight with the losses that some say could be as much as 30%) which (and since it's my turn to banter about some figures!) that makes the P60 about 20 lm/W if not more.



What the initial efficiency is does not matter when you rerate to a certain lifetime and that's the only fair way to compare the efficiency of different lamps.

Just noticed the P60 is rated for 65 lumen, so say 90 bulb lumen instead.
SF123A batteries contains 1.559 Ah according to SilverFox. If you want to drain that in 60 minutes, you have to pull 1.559 A. Say the voltage lags severally to help your numbers, to 2.7 V/cell. Then you have 8.42 W and 90 lumen. I was unable to find how long the P60 is supposed to last, but it doesn't matter. It's already down to 10.7 lm/W and unless it lasts over 100 hours, it will be an even lower number in real life.

Now, to my point. To say that SF bulbs are very efficient is just wrong. What they do are is a decent trade-off between durability (abuse-wise, not time-wise) and efficiency for a flashlight of its type.

I hope I have not stepped on your toes Size15's, but someone have to take to down to earth.  




Size15's said:


> As for the exact fill of SureFire bulbs - I don't have the information and SureFire are hardly going to share that sort of detail with the public.



A bit off-topic, skip unless you have time over to kill:
Of course not, so we will have to make resoable guesses unless we find a gas mass-spectrometer. I have not seen it myself, but if Knight Lights's lamp would have been a properly designed halogen lamp, it would not have blackened at all. Furthermore, halogen sounds cool, so why would they not have marketed their flashlight and bulbs as "xenon filled halogen lamps", if they where?
My biggest reason for not believing they use halogen, is the combination of high color temperature and small bulbs. Although I haven't done any calculations on it, I don't belive you can make a halogen cycle fit in them, as I said earlier.


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## VWTim (Sep 26, 2006)

shoe said:


> Just my two cents.
> 
> Nice try but unless you live in a warm country/state you're not going to put in as much ride time as a car commuter.
> 
> BTW, my Cyclops Thor uses an H4 bulb. It was great when I bought it but after a few outtings I found it very heavy and cumbersome.



Who says it has to be warm to ride daily? We get cold and rain year round and I ride at least 325 days a year.


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## bwaites (Sep 26, 2006)

Winny,

"My biggest reason for not believing they use halogen, is the combination of high color temperature and small bulbs. Although I haven't done any calculations on it, I don't belive you can make a halogen cycle fit in them, as I said earlier."

The 1499 from Carley is signifcantly smaller than any of the Surefire lamps, and Carley produces them for Litho123 with a Xenon/Halogen fill. 

We do know that there are some pretty small lamps with Halogens in them.

Bill


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## winny (Sep 26, 2006)

bwaites,

Thanks for the information! I have to look into this further.


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## David_Web (Sep 27, 2006)

Isn't a H4 a little big to fit in a 6P?
Let alone to power it. (just kidding)

Isn't size linked to durability? I mean, why else would the H4 bulbs be so big.
And just to say it, I would not mind a big filament for a nice floody beam. Why on earth would anyone buy lux v if they did.

And just a question to thows hwo know, Why don't they coat the filament with ceramic material to avoid it to vaporise or melt?


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## winny (Sep 28, 2006)

David_Web,

Another Swede! :rock: 

The size of the bulb has to do with the temperature zones inside it. The glass have to be in the right temperature region, otherwise the halogen process would either not take place or the bulb would blacken. A large filament is very nice when it comes to lifetime because the bulb will break when the filament have evaporated away to other parts of the lamp and if you have lot of material to evaporate, this will take a long time.

The idea of a ceramic shield have stuck me too. Perhaps the incandescent bulb industry is just conservative... Do you want to start a bulb factory with me?


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## Size15's (Sep 28, 2006)

winny said:


> Just noticed the P60 is rated for 65 lumen, so say 90 bulb lumen instead.
> SF123A batteries contains 1.559 Ah according to SilverFox. If you want to drain that in 60 minutes, you have to pull 1.559 A. Say the voltage lags severally to help your numbers, to 2.7 V/cell. Then you have 8.42 W and 90 lumen. I was unable to find how long the P60 is supposed to last, but it doesn't matter. It's already down to 10.7 lm/W and unless it lasts over 100 hours, it will be an even lower number in real life.
> 
> I hope I have not stepped on your toes Size15's, but someone have to take to down to earth.



Quite how you figure the P60 as a 8.42W bulb is still a puzzle for me.
When loaded with the P60 the two SF123A batteries voltage sags to about 4.8 V. The current draw at 4.8 V is about 1.1 A. Both of these can be measured and the figures I'm quoting are actual measurements taken by Brock. Brock calculated the P60 bulb is about 5.3 W based on his measurements. The output of a P60 decreases over time as the SF123A batteries drain and the output at 60 minutes is going to be pretty pathetic compared to the first ten minutes. Peak bulb lumens is in excess of 100 lumens - perhaps as high as 130 for a very short while.
The rating of 65 by SureFire is a realistic output from the flashlight in use and should not be used in calculations. It's an indication of output based on the fact that the output decreases as the batteries drain.

Perhaps you'd care to measure the voltage and current draw of a P60 in a 6P yourself so that your calculations have substance?


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## David_Web (Sep 28, 2006)

Hehe, Yep. Maybe we should create a blackbody lightsource. Ill do some thinking about it later.

Size15 is right. The best bet would probebly be to confirm the current draw and voltage. Maybe Quickbeam(?) of FLR could do it while takeing a lightbox reading to get the lumens somewhat correct.

Regardless, efficiency should be pretty much the same if the temperature is the same. The warmer the more efficient it will get. The only difference should be how much energy is wasted heating up other things that does not help heat up the filament.

So dhe difference is how hot you can go without melting thw wire or any other part of the bulb. Pitty much whiter = more efficient.
The thicker the filament is the more power it's gonna take to keat it up but it will hold better when banged around. The smaller you get the easier it will be to heat it up but it will be more sensetive.
One way to make the bulb more resistant is to curl it up into a feather to even out the vibrations (you also need the length to build up resistance so you don't have to put 10A at .1 volts to get 1 watt)

Not that I actually know what I'm talking about, I'm just guessing.


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## Lucero (Sep 28, 2006)

Speaking of car lights, anybody else catch the Survivorman show on Science Channel where he demonstrates how to survive rising water (Katrina) and goes direct with a Car battery and Car headlight? Put a handle on it and make it waterproof!!


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## winny (Sep 30, 2006)

Size15's said:


> When loaded with the P60 the two SF123A batteries voltage sags to about 4.8 V. The current draw at 4.8 V is about 1.1 A. Both of these can be measured and the figures I'm quoting are actual measurements taken by Brock. Brock calculated the P60 bulb is about 5.3 W based on his measurements.



Jesus! That's severe voltage sag for sure! 20 % of the energy is wasted in the batteries...




Size15's said:


> The output of a P60 decreases over time as the SF123A batteries drain and the output at 60 minutes is going to be pretty pathetic compared to the first ten minutes. Peak bulb lumens is in excess of 100 lumens - perhaps as high as 130 for a very short while.



What the initial brightness is does not matter. The lifetime at that drive point will drop and when rerated to 100 hours or whatever you feel like, it does not make any difference. If you put it the other way round, you could simply overdrive the other bulbs more when doing the comparison, the effect will be the same. The same exponential efficiency increase with voltage applies to all bulbs.

Still, if the P60 is rated for 30 hours and pulls 5.3 W, the rerated efficiency is under 16 lm/W. I don't have my bulb-drive calculator here (in school at the moment) and my internet connection is down at home (that's why I'm in school  ), so I can't rerate it now, but a ball-park figure looking at some graphs, it's down to 13.6 lm/W @ 100 hours, assuming a rated 30 hour lifetime.
I don't know if 30 hour is right or not. I didn't find anything at SureFires website so I used arnold ziffle's number.




Size15's said:


> The rating of 65 by SureFire is a realistic output from the flashlight in use and should not be used in calculations. It's an indication of output based on the fact that the output decreases as the batteries drain.



Of course! And with the same argument the rated life is 30 hours (substitute with whatever if 30 is wrong), taking into account the lifetime increase as the battery drain.




Size15's said:


> Perhaps you'd care to measure the voltage and current draw of a P60 in a 6P yourself so that your calculations have substance?



Of course! I'm not just sitting here in my cave trying to flame as much as possible and don't care about real life. I did measure the current draw for a P60 once and it was 1.09 A IIRC. What I didn't measure was the voltage under load so I did an reasonable assumption. My bad.




David_Web said:


> Regardless, efficiency should be pretty much the same if the temperature is the same. The warmer the more efficient it will get. The only difference should be how much energy is wasted heating up other things that does not help heat up the filament.




You are right about that. If we want to take into account the lifetime as well, and we do want to do that, the geometry has an huge impact on the fixed-lifetime-efficiency. Just look at your normal 60 W, 230 V bulb, producing about 12 lm/W @ 1000 hours. By simply changing the geometry (impedance matching) to 12 V instead, you can easy reach 25 lm/W @ 1000 hours.


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## Handlobraesing (Oct 2, 2006)

winny said:


> You are right about that. If we want to take into account the lifetime as well, and we do want to do that, the geometry has an huge impact on the fixed-lifetime-efficiency. Just look at your normal 60 W, 230 V bulb, producing about 12 lm/W @ 1000 hours. By simply changing the geometry (impedance matching) to 12 V instead, you can easy reach 25 lm/W @ 1000 hours.



230V lamps are actually less efficacious than a 120V equivalent because the filament is thinner and longer. Thicker, higher current filament is more efficient. Most line voltage lamps are double wound, like this:






while low voltage lamps are single wound. 

Flashlight bulbs, particularly lower power ones are very inefficient, because the current isn't high enough to heat up a thick filament and conduction loss becomes a significant part of loss.


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## winny (Oct 2, 2006)

Handlobraesing said:


> 230V lamps are *actually* less efficacious than a 120V equivalent because the filament is thinner and longer. Thicker, higher current filament is more efficient.



Yes, that's my point. Or did I get you wrong? 




Handlobraesing said:


> Flashlight bulbs, particularly lower power ones are very inefficient, because the current isn't high enough to heat up a thick filament and conduction loss becomes a significant part of loss.



Yes, that's bad impedance matching.


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