How to choose your LED products

Indian consumers are transitioning from conventional light sources to LED lighting technology given its benefits such as energy efficiency, long life and controllability etc. While LED adoption is on a rise in India, consumers need to be extremely careful while choosing the correct LED. Unfortunately, the market for LED lighting is currently swamped with unbranded cheap imports that do not always satisfy energy efficiency and safety norms.

Till the time such products exist, it is important for consumers to know the critical components that make a high-quality LED light and set it apart from an inferior one. While selecting LED products, one should always make comparison based on the following parameters – Brightness or Lumens –Lumen is the measurement of brightness or light output.

Lumen output of all LED products degrades over time. While some products have initial higher luminous flux (parameter used to describe the brightness of a projector& calculated in lumens) than others, within some days of operation, their output degrades. The actual lifetime of an LED lamp is the time for which it provides highlight output.

A good LED should have a lumen (brightness) depreciation of less than 70 per cent of the quoted lifetime. The more lumens, the brighter is the light. The number of lumens is different for different bulbs. While branded lights always have this information on their boxes, the low-quality ones don’t.

Useful Life – A combination of various integrated components (chips), ultimately forms a final LED product. If any one component fails, the LED product will not work and hence this parameter too should be compared based on globally accepted standards.

Light quality – Since LED lights contain several small LED chips which emit light, light coming out of these chips in a source should be of the same colour. It is known as color rendering index (CRI), which is an important point to be considered when buying LEDs. A product with a high CRI value will be better in terms of rendering colours as close to the real. Cheap LED lights generally don’t have a good CRI as it requires high quality phosphor, which is expensive.

Color consistency – It is very important that light coming out of all the LED chips that form an LED, omit light of a similar colour. Also same products should give light of same color or else they will appear different. Validation – LED lights should be tested under all conditions to ensure they will withstand Indian climate conditions. Like other conventional light sources, LEDs cannot convert all the consumed power in light but they do not emit heat.

This waste heat is rejected through the heat sink. The heat dissipation rate of a heat sink to the ambient depends upon the ambient conditions. Hence, LED products should be thoroughly tested at various temperatures. Low-quality LEDs neither have the right heat sinks and capacitors nor are they tested extensively to ensure product quality.

Voltage – The operating voltage range of the LED products should always be compared as it will give guide how a product will sustain the voltage fluctuations. A quality LED should also have the operating voltage range of the product printed on the box.