At Home Depot, I noticed they have 4 foot LED bulbs to replace T18s in existing fixtures. The box states that they work with the ballast. Any experience in the hive?

This is a great upgrade. I replaced all my garage fluorescent fixtures with 4' LED tubes from Costco. Great light output, no flickering or wait, and no heat generation. I didn't have to change anything, they were plug and play. Also, if they fail at any point I can replace them instead of changing the whole fixture.

Most are direct replacement. Just pop them in fixture with working ballast. Ballast must be T8 electronic (instant start).

I've used Phillips brand with success. 1% or less failure rate.

Same as Marc, replaced mine in the garage with Costco LED bulbs made to go in existing fixtures, didn't have to remove the ballast, rewire anything, change end tombstones, just pop them in and they work, much more light, cleaner, come on immediately.

quote:

At Home Depot, I noticed they have 4 foot LED bulbs to replace T18s in existing fixtures. The box states that they work with the ballast. Any experience in the hive?

So I just replaced my 5 4-foot Fluorescent dual tube fixtures with a 5000K LED fixture from Amazon. Not much more to replace the entire fixture and it doubled the bright light in my garage. I have one 4000K LED and it is noticeably dimmer next to my 5000K fixtures. I bought these LED Fixtures for $159 for 4 fixtures.

Another important consideration with LED's vs fluorescent, LED's send all of their light downwards.
A tube fluorescent bulb sends some directly down and the top half from the reflected light. So even if they are rated to produce the same light, the LED's are brighter.

I've used a bunch of the Philips instant fit and have been very happy with them.

What I'm not getting is that the old electronic ballast that ran the old tubes is still consuming power.

I think I'd rather have tubes that plugged directly into sockets that are fed with 120 volts and eliminate the old ballast.

quote:

Originally posted by yanici:
What I'm not getting is that the old electronic ballast that ran the old tubes is still consuming power.

I think I'd rather have tubes that plugged directly into sockets that are fed with 120 volts and eliminate the old ballast.

There are options to do it that way too. We don't use them for safety reason because most times it's retail space and those lamps are changed with the power on. At home that is not a concern.

Either way ballast driven or self driven lamps will all lose some power to heat, not much. Electronic ballasts are very efficient, unlike magnetic ones that get hot when in use.

Thanks! I was curious about how the ballast may negatively affect the life of the LED and it looks like from y'alls experience that the answer would be nil.