................... if you are thinking of upgrading from fluorescent to LED. In the end, it comes down to what you are prepared to accept for a quality of light. The current LED's just don't make the grade for illumination. Great for indicator lights (lights to be seen) such as anchor lights and running lights but not for illumination within the cabin.
I've been looking at LED's for years. Each time a new ground breaking model appears, I jump up and buy one as a sample to see how they look in use. Haven't found one yet that satisfies for full spectrum.
I have two overhead light fixtures (about 24" apart) in the galley which both have incandescents. For testing, I replace one of the incandescents with the latest LED and can then switch them back and forth to compare. The latest LED's are certainly much brighter than the older models but always have a hollow look to them. I can only attribute this to the lack of full spectrum light. The latest one I've tried is the Sensibulb and I'm still not convinced to change over. In fact, I recently plugged in a small, warm white fluorescent tube in the galley and found it to emit a much warmer light than the LED.
There is always hope as I understand the next generation of LED is the organic LED and should bear looking into once it gets into the illumination market. LG has just come out with an organic LED television screen which will be released soon.
Our experience with LED has been drastically different than Ralphs. Our entire boat, except for one Alpenglow fluorescent in the galley, is LED and we love it.
My defining moment for LED was this past summer when a customer asked me to convert his overhead dome lights on his boat to LED interior lights from Halogen.
I ordered them from Sailors Solutions at about 3:00 on one day and they were here the next. I went to his boat and replaced them before the weekend, when I promised him they'd be installed. Before I could send him an invoice the weekend had come and I got a text asking when the LED bulbs would be installed. I texted back for him to look at his battery monitor. The next text was simply
"Holy $hit I thought they were still the old bulbs".. This guy is a pretty picky customer and quite observant so it made me realize LED had come a long way..
Our Alpenglow fluorescent draws 3X more power than a single Sensibulb and puts out about the same light. We can run three Sensibulbs to the one fluorescent and have a lot more light for the same energy used. We dropped our overnight consumption so much that we now use just 8-10% of our bank capacity/day. We use lots of on-board lights so for us the payback was a huge reduction in used energy. Not everyone uses as much on-board light as we do so it may not be as big a pay back.
About a month ago I converted the can lights in our kitchen at home and the bulbs, while expensive @ $35.00 each are not discernible from our 65W incandescent bulbs. They also dim with a standard Lutron. When the prices come down we'll do more.
I've seen some pretty reasonably priced LED's with constant current that have a nice warm color so I don't think you necessarily need to spend the $35.00 per bulb like you used to. I'm not a huge fan of the new color temp of the latest Sensibulbs but the beam is wide and they are very bright for a single emitter. The older ones were actually warmer than halogens and the new ones are close to the same color temp.
