The new age with LED's.

Just thought I would pass along my first experience with the new LED lights. I was recently at Sam's Wholesale Club and noticed a 4' LED shop light. I had seen similar ones at Lowes & Home Depot but the price was a little high IMO at nearly $50 a unit. So Sam's had a Honeywell 4500 lumens, 42W unit for $35. Yep I bit on that just to try one out. I was amazed at the amount of light they gave out. Probably 2-3 time that of a comparable florescent unit. So anyone in the market might want to give them a try. Eventually I plan on changing all of my florescent units over to LEDs.

I haven't seen those yet, this would at least fix the cold temperature issue where the tubes would flicker and be a bit dim until they warm up. That and not having the scratch my head and touch the bulb to get it to "catch". I think the ballast is out of whack on mine...

Speaking of ballast, does the LED bulb require any retrofit? It was my understanding (very probably wrong understanding) that the ballast would provide a high voltage "start-up" pulse to get the fluorescent light to start and then would just regulate the current. I wonder if the LED light goes really bright at first and then dims... I guess they factored that into their design. I sometimes wonder why I speak at all...

Not sure of the ballast on retrofit. These units don't require any. It is my understanding (very limited) that the LED bulbs are basically DC voltage. I would imagine there would have to be something to convert it to AC. I had a discussion with someone the other day about retro fitting a LED into a florescent unit and I thought they said they had to disconnect the ballast. I am sure someone in this forum will put a little light ( no pun intended) onto the subject.

The one that I got in fact I bought another yesterday are instant start. Well within a millisecond anyway. They are constant bright and do not change from when they are turned on.