It's been a busy 12 months within the lighting aisle, with the debut of new, low-cost LED gentle EcoLight smart bulbs that promise to cut your own home's power draw with out breaking the financial institution. The latest, from GE, reduce energy consumption is the Shiny Stik LED, which bucks the bulb altogether in favor of a push-pop-formed build. The associated fee: $10 for a three-pack (a GE consultant tells me that they do not plan on promoting the bulbs individually just yet). Like the opposite major participant on the cheap end of the spectrum, the Philips 60W Replacement LED , the Vibrant Stik offers a reasonably compelling value proposition. While a 60W incandescent will add about $7 per year to your power invoice, EcoLight the 10W Bright Stik will add simply $1.20. Spend $10 on that three-pack and use them for a year, and your complete price is $13.60. Spend a buck on three incandescents, and you will find yourself spending another $21 over the course of the yr -- and then you'll have to replace them, since that's about as long as they final.

The Brilliant Stiks will final nicely over a decade. There are just a few commerce-offs, though. The Shiny Stik is not quite as vivid or as environment friendly as different LEDs and, like the Philips bulb, it is not an choice that'll work with dimmer switches. Nonetheless, it's a really solid match for fundamental lighting setups, and at a price of about $three per bulb (or, um,"Stik"), it is a very strong value, too. If I just needed to exchange one gentle, I would probably follow Philips, but when I'm changing my bulbs in bulk, I am going to give the Bright Stik some critical consideration. The GE Vivid Stik is not the primary large brand EcoLight smart bulbs LED that wants you to think exterior the bulb. For over a year now, the flattened-down Philips SlimStyle LED has been promoting on Residence Depot shelves, and its success might function proof of concept for the odd-wanting Vivid Stik LED. You will soon see the two selling side-by-aspect in the home Depot lighting aisle.

Nonetheless, the SlimStyle LED no less than attempts to approximate the overall silhouette of a mild bulb (from certain angles, anyway). With the Vivid Stik LED, you are all in on newfangled design, EcoLight smart bulbs no incandescent nostalgia obligatory. Whether or not that's a very good thing is solely up to you. We're most likely missing the purpose, though. Bulb or no bulb, the Brilliant Stik is still, well, a light bulb. Most often, you are not going to see the thing after you screw it in and decrease the lampshade. The kind factor actually doesn't matter a lot in and of itself. What does matter is how that type factor impacts the quality of gentle, which is the place my concerns lied as I ready to test the Vibrant Stik out. None of that cylindrical plastic is angled downward, the way in which the bottom half of a spherical bulb is. I puzzled if that may keep the Brilliant Stik from casting the type of downward light folks sometimes desire to learn underneath.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case. With the LED hidden under a lampshade, I could not distinguish the standard of the Vivid Stik's gentle from any other standard, omnidirectional bulb. That applies to the appear and feel of the sunshine, too. At 2,850 K, it's as warm and yellowy as you'd count on from a standard, household mild (a 5,000 Okay "daylight" model is out there, too, for an additional buck). The 760-lumen mild output -- while a bit short of the best 800 lumen benchmark for a 60W replacement -- is loads shiny for many fundamental wants. Really, the one distinction this design makes is on GE's finish -- the slimmed down determine makes it a breeze to bundle the Vibrant Stik, and simpler for GE to ship them in bulk (especially when packaged three at a time). All of that helps shave cents off the upfront value, and EcoLight there's nothing to not like about that.