Product Review - Sensibulb !!!

[Maine Sail]

Hi All,

Those of you who know me know that I will only tout or support a product that I have; #1 put through the paces, and #2 feel works and actually lives up to and goes beyond my expectations and the companies claims.

It's actually quite rare that I come across these products in the marine industry.

For a long while I have been experimenting with interior LED lights. Basically, they suck, and I've tried many, many bulbs from many, many manufacturers such as Super-Brite LED and others including some eBay junk.

A few years ago I purchased one Sensibulb. My initial thought was "holy crap these are expensive" but once I got it installed my entire thought process changed! that original bulb had six LED's in it. The folks at SS/SCAD have since pushed the envelope and the new bulb has only two LED's but is considerably brighter than my original with six. The warm incandescent color though has not changed and these bulbs are a pleasure!

In short these bulbs ROCK!! They are the ONLY LED bulb that has a color spectrum that compares to an incandescent. They are also brighter than my 10W halogen bulbs that are/were in my ABI lighting fixtures.

Every time I'd install a "cheap" LED bulb my wife would complain and bitch that she couldn't read, hated the color and it was like a spot light, no beam width etc. so I'd switch back to halogens.

To make a long story short I ponied up and bought a bunch of Sensibulbs and WOW! I can run FIVE Sensibulb lights and not even break 1 AH of draw per HOUR!!

In contrast five of my ABI overhead lights, running 20 Watts of halogens, was burning close to 10 amps per hour!!!!! My wife and I are big readers and often run cabin lights from 8:00 p.m. until 1:00 am. Five of my ABI's running for five hours was burning almost 50 amp hours of my battery bank. I now burn five amp hours for the SAME amount of light output!!

My wife never noticed the change over from Halogen to SensiBulb and fortunately never saw the credit card bill!

Alternator upgrades and battery bank upgrades are far more costly than a few Sensibulbs! think about upgrading your bulbs first as they can be a BIG draw!


I honestly can't speak highly enough of this technology and Sensibulbs. NO ONE else has it and Sailor's Solutions/SCAD developed it. Yes they are pricey at $39.95 each but sooooo worth every penny!!!

http://www.sailorssolutions.com/

[Troy Scott]

Maine Sail,

I absolutely agree that Sailor's Solutions is a class act, especially
Nick Cancro. I also agree that the Sensibulb is a fine product.

LEDs didn't seem to change much for a long time, but the last couple of years has been amazing. LIGHTING FOR HUMAN SPACES is changing faster than any subject except maybe small computer based devices. By the time the incandescent to compact fluorescent changeover gets into full swing, the compact fluorescents will be obsolete. LED lighting is evolving very fast, and the prices are beginning to get reasonable. Before long, $40 to replace a $.70 halogen will be a thing of the past. Already there are cheaper options.

I've been following this for a while, so I've been added to several mailing lists. A few days ago I got an email from a company which is about to market some new, LED-based replacements for the common 12 volt G4 halogen. They were distributing samples. I ordered 10 at less that $7 each. According to the description, they should provide light about like a Sensibulb. I'll let you all know what they're like when I get them. There are already on the market some choices for around $15 that provide the same color and almost as much light. And of course there are Chinese and Korean copies of those on ebay for even less. Most of these have built in regulators and will run on 8-32 volts.

If you need to do the lighting change right now, the Sensibulbs are the best, but expensive. If you can wait even a few months, I expect there will be several more options, all less expensive.

The thing that needs to catch up is our boat electrical systems.....

[Joe CD MS 300]

I have four wall fixtures using the Sensibulb plug in lights with the socket adapters and 4 of their dome lights. They are all great. There are two more dome lights that I need to replace but with those over $100 a piece I was replacing those a couple at a time. The nice feature with the dome lights is the two level dimmer. The dome light in my pilot house has both a white and red bulb. Both are infinitely dimmable. Also have one of the LED anchor lights that they sell. It has a photo cell that turns it off at dawn. All in all I am much less concerned about running down the batter bank at anchor.

[Troy Scott]

Maine Sail,

I was just looking at your

http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/wire_termination

article on marine wire termination. On looking at the first photo, I did a double take. It looks exactly like the contents of my toolbox! I mean exactly.

[Bob Emmons]

Hello everyone,
I too purchased the sensibulb also after comparing it to Dr. LED and Anchor products. The sensibulb got my vote with brightness, the color of the light, and the broad spread of light emitted from the fixture. The device does look a bit ugly, with it being a circuit board, but it is well worth it. So I spoke with Nick, the owner of the company, and he mentioned that he will give CDSOA members a 10 percent discount. These lights are quite advanced compared to other products, and yes I feel that this area will be changing a bit every year with advances, but at present this bulb is at the top!
Bob

[Troy Scott]

I have a handful of these:

http://www.arraylighting.com/products/s ... _V2.02.pdf

that I bought for about $7 each. They directly replace a G4 halogen. They are tiny, and they plug directly into a G4 socket. The light is excellent and bright. I recommend ordering WARM WHITE. I also have Sensibulbs, which are very nice, but much more expensive and much larger.

While the light color and quality of both the Sensibulb and the Array G4 is excellent, I will have to say that varnished teak still looks nicer at night when lit by an old fashioned incandescent bulb.

[Bill Cochrane]

The current issue of Practical Sailor rates a couple others above Sensibulb. One is Alpenglow's new reading light fixture with integral LEDs. The LEDs look a lot like the ones used in Sensibulb's adapter, but there are 3 and they are mounted much further back in the reflector so the reflector is more efficient. Not cheap, though, around $100 IIRC. If your brass fixtures are getting tarnished/ugly, it's cheaper to replace them through Defender, if you're going to go with sensibulb.

The article also mentions the weak point of the sensibulbs...the plug-in / mount is not very secure.

I have Sensibulbs in most of my fixtures, and have had a couple of them vibrate out of the reading light style holders. Anyone found a cure for this?