Anyone has up close and personal experience with these LED Retro Trim Kit?

My local Home Depot has this item:

Commercial Electric 4 in. Recessed Brushed Nickel LED Retrofit Trim

Commercial Electric 4 in. Recessed Brushed Nickel LED Retrofit Trim-HCCER473BN at The Home Depot

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It is listed for $40, but on clearance for $24 each. They have 8 of them still in stock. I am wondering how bright these are? I kept hearing LED are much brighter...

These are special integrated kits that converts a normal socket recessed light into this LED light. One unit you can't change the bulb I guess if it goes out you buy another one? It says it may last 20 years...really?

What are pros and cons of using these in the bathroom? Are the light "natural" does it look like regular lights or a bunch of flash lights pointing down?

 

I have not used those exact ones, but have used the 6" version (Ecosmart I think) and have been quite impressed with them. They are not necessarily brighter than a "standard" bulb. You need to look at the lumen output, or the wattage "comparable", listing on the box to get an idea on the brightness.

20 years...really. 20 years at X hours per day. Be sure to read the fine print, but yes, they do last a very long time.

As far as the light being "natural, you need to look at the CRI (Color Rendering Index) chart on the box. That will tell you the color of the light. An incandescent light is about 2700k. Office space lighting is mostly between 3500k - 4100k. The lower the number, the warmer the light. I tell people to keep it below 3500k if they can in a home setting.

They look like a regular light if the color is right. IMO - I would not hesitate to try one. You can always bring it back.

 

Like Tolyn said..... take them home and try them. With lighting sources like LED's it's very important to try them in the actual setting.

 

You've gone and confused color temperature and CRI...

The numbers you named are black body temperature in Kelvin - this is what the color temperature standard is.

CRI is a completely different (and unrelated) system that grades the source's emission gamut, on a scale of -100(usu. biased to zero) to 100. Unfortunately, this grading is not available on most sources individually and you may have to refer to the CRI class for that source. (sometimes the term "Color Accuracy" is used, look out for this)

As a blanket rule, incandescent, halogen and arc lighting have superior CRI over all other sources.

 

Thanks Nick! I see I am confused with the two. I'm off to do some research.

My advice still stands. Choose lamps with a temperature of 3500k or lower.

 

I think I am going to pass.

If I do a set of 3, and if ever one light bulb needs to be changed which means a new kit, say 5 years from now, and if the item or the finish is discontinued, I need to change all three. That is a big problem!

 

Not really. Those should last much longer than five years. By the time they go bad the price on those lamps should have continued to drop to an even more reasonable price.

 

The industry standard is 3 hours per day. Using that, 20 years is almost 22,000 hours.

The interesting thing is that they're actually rated for 50,000 hours. That's 44 years and 8 months at 3 hours/day, or almost 7 hours/day for 20 years.

I couldn't find lumens, color temperature or CRI for these online. That makes it difficult to assess the quality of the light.

Tolyn already addressed the way to determine how "natural" the room will look with any given light source in it. If we could find the relevant specifications for these we could start to answer that question. I'll just add to what he said that I/we prefer lamps with higher color temperatures around here. 5600[SUP]o[/SUP]K or even 6500[SUP]o[/SUP]K sometimes. That's the value of sunlight. It depends, of course, on where we want the light. Really high [SUP]o[/SUP]K in a bathroom would, I think, work really well.

The only other testable claim for these is "saves $265 in cost over its life of 50,000 hours." The "industry standard" is 11 cents per kilowatt hour. These draw 8.3 watts and they are the equivalent of 40W incandescent bulbs. So one of these uses 20.75% as much energy as the bulb it's replacing. It saves 79.25% of the energy, IOW.

A 40W incandescent bulb uses one kilowatt every 25 hours. Burning a series of those for 50,000 hours would consume - and you would be billed for - 2,000 kilowatt hours. One of these will consume 415 kilowatts over the same time (20.75% of 2,000 = 415). The difference, or the savings, is 1,585 kilowatt hours. At 11 cents/kWh, that's $174.35, not $265. For one of these to save you the claimed $265, your POCO would have to be charging you almost 18 cents/kWh. Something doesn't add up here.

And then they want $24 each for them? That's $1.20 per year based on their claim of 20 years. I would wait for the price to drop further, as PJ is noting it is likely to.

 

I think that's a wise decision. Commercial Electric is a HD house brand and made cheaply. If you had a warranty claim within a year or two, they likely could not furnish the same item. Go with a name brand.