This is an interesting video posted to YouTube by BigClive on different Philips LED bulbs that are made just for sale in Dubai. Do we have anybody here native to Dubai or familiar with Dubai that can explain what makes these bulbs different and why you can't find them anywhere else?
https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4

This is an interesting video posted to YouTube by BigClive on different Philips LED bulbs that are made just for sale in Dubai. Do we have anybody here native to Dubai or familiar with Dubai that can explain what makes these bulbs different and why you can't find them anywhere else?
https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4

Ah, you beat me to it!

Watching this video right now, very interesting

What he said that they are really well made, after seeing the video.

The only differentiator there is the money.
Normal people would never buy them if they had other option for seemingly half price on the same store shelf.
In dubai the government says "A" and whoever voices any other opinion gets prison time at best. So easy to make sure people just have no other option.

In western world people have the freedom to buy cr@p. So once they are put against a choice between a bit more expensive quality or a bit cheaper sticker cr@p, vast majority goes for the cr@p without hesitating even a second. So much so companies are forced to sell cheaper even when it is cr@p, as making the better variant in such low volume is just impossible.

The only differentiator there is the money.
Normal people would never buy them if they had other option for seemingly half price on the same store shelf.
In dubai the government says "A" and whoever voices any other opinion gets prison time at best. So easy to make sure people just have no other option.

In western world people have the freedom to buy cr@p. So once they are put against a choice between a bit more expensive quality or a bit cheaper sticker cr@p, vast majority goes for the cr@p without hesitating even a second. So much so companies are forced to sell cheaper even when it is cr@p, as making the better variant in such low volume is just impossible.

This is all very true!
In the west we have brought these problems upon ourselves in a rush to cheapen everything whilst at the same time killing our own manufacturing industries and costing many jobs.
As always China is the beneficiary.

It would be good to get hold of one of these but it looks like they are going to be tricky to get hold of without going to Dubai, which I have no desire to do.

Back in 2017 I bought a couple of dozen of these via some colleagues in my company's Dubai sales office, to check their performance and perform a more detailed teardown (right to the semiconductor chip analysis, phosphor composition and gas fill analysis etc).  They are still burning 33,000 hours later and most of them with better than 95% lumen maintenance, aside from one which suffered gas leakage via the glass-to-metal seals of the stem and dropped below 70% of initial lumens (i.e. failure) by 15,000 hours.

What BigClive says is partly true, but that is not the whole story.  Simply under-running a standard LED filament is not enough to hit 200lm/W for a complete lamp, including driver losses which according to my measurements were rather more significant than what he noted.

NB the Cool White lamps really did achieve an average of 200.5 lm/W, but the warm white types (3000K rather than the usual 2600-2700K) make use of allowed tolerances : the luminous flux is lower, and the actual power is towards the upper end of the allowed tolerance.  They achieved a still pretty good 183 lm/W vs the 200 lm/W claim.

After extracting the filaments and carrying out power curve measurements of both these and standard filaments, you soon realise that under-running an LED filament is not helpful because fairly quickly, their efficacy actually starts to decrease again as power is reduced.  This is a phenomenon that is only rarely seen in LEDs, because usually for cost reasons nobody runs them anywhere near so low in power.  But it is inherent to the design of all LED filaments that the power density in the chips is much lower than other standard lamps.  In best case by under-running you can get up to about 175-180 lm/W with filaments of the era when these were introduced, but no higher (and certainly not the ca.225 lm/W needed to offset the losses of the driver).  Further analysis revealed that the chips themselves are also highly optimised so as to have their peak of the power vs efficacy curve close to the actual operating power in the lamp, and the phosphor blend is also rather well optimised.  Surprisingly the usual tricks that are known to improve the gas filling were not present in these lamps - but they were developed some 5 years ago so that was perhaps not surprising.

This all results in a very nice lamp from the technical standpoint, however in any other country they are absolutely not commercially viable.  They only succeed in Dubai thanks to the state subsidies, which have had questionable impacts on actual system efficacy for the lighting industry as a whole.  These E27/E14 lamps themselves may be very efficient, but the typical fixtures in which they are used are often very far from being efficient in terms of light output ratio or light control performance.

That multi-filament design looks really cool. Most of LED filament lamps today have "boring" quad-filament setup regardless on the wattage except low power lamps with dual-filament. I've recently spotted a 100W equivalent Osram six filament though.



Saving watts to a few tens of watts on lighting at home with other appliances like fridges, dishwashers, irons, computers, TVs, wifi routers running is irrelevant. A bit more interesting area is street lighting. With a retrofit lamp already optimised by lowering CRI to get 180 lm/W, this enhancement could possibly reach a really great efficacy. And with thousands of streetlights in a city this could mean some more relevant savings.

This is all very true!
In the west we have brought these problems upon ourselves in a rush to cheapen everything whilst at the same time killing our own manufacturing industries and costing many jobs.
As always China is the beneficiary.

It would be good to get hold of one of these but it looks like they are going to be tricky to get hold of without going to Dubai, which I have no desire to do.

You can get them in the UK now, more efficient than the Dubai lamps!, watch his other video 

This looks like a tactical promotion which can be misleading.
Like Medved, I don't think they really have ~200lm/w, but just the usual ~100lm/w of most LED lamps.

This looks like a tactical promotion which can be misleading.
Like Medved, I don't think they really have ~200lm/w, but just the usual ~100lm/w of most LED lamps.

Congratulation, you win the most retarded LG post of 2022 (and the bar was quite low already)...

Hello,
I am not sure but I remember reading in a brochure or was tolled that the high efficiency lamps offered in Europe by Signify and Ledvance are different, than the original Dubai lamps made by Signify. More like a second generation. However while I got a Signify high efficiency lamp - which actually cost double the cost of a normal signify filament lamp - I was not able to source a real Dubai lamp, as non of the people I asked were willing to bring me one with them back from there.

As much as I am concerned, the lamps perform at around 200lm/w. Exactly I cannot measure it as I lack the test equipment, but visually thats what I determined.

Again I may say it again, and in different wording then Max, I encourage every member to think about what they write, and if they are unsure of their statement to formulate it as question, instead of formulating it as more wrong then right statement.

Best regards,

Alex

Indeed the European lamps are an improved version of the old Dubai model.  The main difference is that the red phosphor in the filaments was changed from the usual SCASN chemistry to PFS or KSIF phosphor from GE.  That relatively new narrowband red phosphor wastes much less energy at deeper red wavelengths to which the human eye is less sensitive.  The improvement is analogous to the shift with mercury lamps from MFG to YPV phosphor in the 1960s.  Even though YPV is less red than MFG the red output increases because it is at a wavelength to which the human eye is more sensitive.

The driver in the EU lamps is also a more efficient linear design.  Despite the reduction from 12 to 8 filaments (by increasing their length from 38mm to 52mm) the real measured operating efficacy for the 3000K model has risen to 210 lm/W and the 4000K to 225lm/W.  The rated life claim was also increased to 50,000 hours - although the Dubai lamps I have on test look well set to surpass that as well.

Alex, I am sure I can miss a Dubai lamp for your collection next time we meet.  They have been burning since 2017 but are basically still as good as new with 93% lumen maintenance!

"That relatively new narrowband red phosphor wastes much less energy at deeper red wavelengths to which the human eye is less sensitive."

Not that much sensitive, but still contributing to the overall color rendering, mainly in the deeper red part. Maybe not much difference for most of the practical uses, but at least side-by-side the difference in color rendering would be noticeable.

Indeed the European lamps are an improved version of the old Dubai model.  The main difference is that the red phosphor in the filaments was changed from the usual SCASN chemistry to PFS or KSIF phosphor from GE.  That relatively new narrowband red phosphor wastes much less energy at deeper red wavelengths to which the human eye is less sensitive.  The improvement is analogous to the shift with mercury lamps from MFG to YPV phosphor in the 1960s.  Even though YPV is less red than MFG the red output increases because it is at a wavelength to which the human eye is more sensitive.

The driver in the EU lamps is also a more efficient linear design.  Despite the reduction from 12 to 8 filaments (by increasing their length from 38mm to 52mm) the real measured operating efficacy for the 3000K model has risen to 210 lm/W and the 4000K to 225lm/W.  The rated life claim was also increased to 50,000 hours - although the Dubai lamps I have on test look well set to surpass that as well.

Alex, I am sure I can miss a Dubai lamp for your collection next time we meet.  They have been burning since 2017 but are basically still as good as new with 93% lumen maintenance!

I have to say that 210 lm/W and 50 000 hrs is just.... brilliant. LES has really come a long way from those first drop-in replacements that were awfull.

Indeed the European lamps are an improved version of the old Dubai model.  The main difference is that the red phosphor in the filaments was changed from the usual SCASN chemistry to PFS or KSIF phosphor from GE.  That relatively new narrowband red phosphor wastes much less energy at deeper red wavelengths to which the human eye is less sensitive.  The improvement is analogous to the shift with mercury lamps from MFG to YPV phosphor in the 1960s.  Even though YPV is less red than MFG the red output increases because it is at a wavelength to which the human eye is more sensitive.

The driver in the EU lamps is also a more efficient linear design.  Despite the reduction from 12 to 8 filaments (by increasing their length from 38mm to 52mm) the real measured operating efficacy for the 3000K model has risen to 210 lm/W and the 4000K to 225lm/W.  The rated life claim was also increased to 50,000 hours - although the Dubai lamps I have on test look well set to surpass that as well.

Alex, I am sure I can miss a Dubai lamp for your collection next time we meet.  They have been burning since 2017 but are basically still as good as new with 93% lumen maintenance!

I'm using the 2.3w/3000k version from dusk to dawn over the front door of my house. The efficiency is impressive but the light color is quite ugly with a strong greenish hue. I would never use them inside the house.

I find that Ikea has some excellent lamps, almost all with Ra>90:
For example they have a 40w equivalent(470lm) filament lamp which consume only 2.9W with an impressive efficiency of 162 lm/w, especially if we consider the color temperature of 2700k and the Ra>90:
https://www.ikea.com/ch/en/p/solhetta-led-bulb-e27-470-lumen-globe-clear-00498660/
I have some of these and they have a very pleasant light color and they are half the price of the Philips.