At Polar-Ray, we love to hear this kind of news as it means that the industry is evolving to become more mainstream and that LED lighting products are not only matching the specifications of incandescent bulbs but exceeding them. The L Prize bulb puts out 910 lumens of light while using only 9.7 watts and lasting 25,000 hours. That's an incredible 94 lumens per watt, and it makes the inefficient 60 watt incandescent bulb look like what it really is...a space heater (if your curious the incandescent efficiency is about 13.5 lumens per watt). That's a whopping 85% reduction in energy usage, 20-25 fewer bulb changes over the life of one LED bulb and a whole lot of extra cash in your pocket to spend on something other than electricity.

The 18 month long testing process put over 1300 samples through various tests which included field testing and running the bulbs in the lab for 6,000 continuous hours to determine lumen depreciation and lifetime. So kudos to Philips for helping to take LED lighting to the next level.