Philips TLED lamp prototype combines efficiency, brightness and warmth

We know what you're thinking: "light bulbs? Yawwwwn." But we'll say this, Philips has done something pretty impressive and interesting with its TLED prototype lamp. Generally LED bulbs use either a combination red, green and blue LEDs to create white light, or they use a phosphor coating (more common) in combination with a blue LED. The problem with the latter is that it tends to generate a very cool light with a blue tinge, while the former is less energy efficient because of their reliance on green LEDs. Philips' solution is to combine two blue and one red element, but use a green phosphor filter to convert one of the blue LEDs to green. The result is a relatively warm light, between 3,000 and 4,000 kelvin, that generates more than twice as many lumens per-watt as Philips' current LED bulbs. In theory, a 7.5-watt TLED could generate as much light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb. With any luck the tech should hit the market sometime during 2015, but it'll be primarily for office and industrial application at first -- so don't start tossing your CFLs just yet.
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