AOC e2243FW LED Monitor Review

Back in the days of my computer building era, I used to only trust one brand of monitor. That brand was Envision. They had the highest quality monitors at an affordable price. Yeah, I could pony up for a Viewsonic or Sony, but the Envision gave me that same great quality at a much lower price point. I remember having a huge 19? flat tube monitor sitting on my desk in San Diego. The advent of the LCD monitor changed everything in the world of ergonomic computing. When I first heard of AOC, I had no idea who they were. I later found out that Envision and AOC were one in the same. I was excited to have the opportunity to review the AOC e2243FW LED monitor. It would be my first experience with an LED and also the first time I would setup a secondary monitor to my system.

The stats of the 2243 are shocking. Firstly, it’s one of the worlds thinnest monitors. It’s about as thin as an OLED or a copy of one of those thick issues of Diehard Gamefan at only 1.29cm. It has a dynamic contrast ration of 50,000,000:1. That means very deep blacks and vibrant colors. It’s a low powered monitor and only consumes 15 watts of power. It uses LED touch buttons on the base to control menu options and cycle power. The 2243 is about 21.5? in viewable size. It also has a 16:9 aspect ratio so will be a tad wider than most LCD monitors and also will allow full edge to edge viewing of widescreen 16:9 films.

Samsung T260	AOC e2243
Samsung T260	AOC e2243

Samsung boosts Explore 3D app for LEDs, plasmas

Samsung has expanded its Explore 3D television app to include a wealth of new, free 3D content, the company announced today.

Samsung’s 3D glasses.

Owners of 3D LED and plasma televisions from the company’s 2010 and 2011 lines will now have access to music videos; full-length television shows, courtesy of small network Wealth TV; and educational programming via the Explore 3D program. The application is available on the sets’ SmartHub interface.

Samsung’s Explore 3D application has been available to owners of those televisions for quite some time. Previously, users only were able to watch 3D movie trailers.

To further bolster its 3D push, Samsung also said today that it plans to add paid content, including 3D films and documentaries, to the Explore 3D application “later this year.” The company has yet to reveal pricing or availability.

The addition of new 3D content to Samsung’s line of televisions is a welcome advancement for consumers. Earlier this month, IHS iSuppli revealed in a study of the 3DTV market that just 80 live sources of 3D content were available in the U.S. and U.K. last year, leaving consumers with very little programming to watch on their sets. However, this year, the research firm believes 3D content will grow via sporting events, films, and prime-time shows.

Philips switches on bright LED bulb

Philips is introducing an LED bulb that gives off as much light as a 75-watt incandescent bulb and consume 17 watts of power.

The lighting giant said today that the EnduraLED A21 will be available in the fourth quarter for a price expected to be between $40 and $45. It will show off the bulb tomorrow at the LightFair lighting conference, where many LED lighting announcements are expected.

The EnduraLED A21 will be the first general-purpose LED bulb to give off as much light as a 75-watt incandescent bulb, according to Philips. It will be rated at 1,100 lumens and an efficiency of almost 65 lumens per watt.

The bulb itself roughly resembles a crown, a design meant to give off light evenly. LED light sources give off directional light, making them very good at downlights or spotlights, but now manufacturers are designing bulbs to disperse light more in all directions.

The bulb will have a rated life of 25,000 hours, or about 17 years with four hours of daily use. The color rendering index, a measure of light quality, is 80 and the color temperature is 2,700, or a warmer yellow light meant to be similar to incandescents.

Philips last year started selling a 60-watt equivalent LED bulb with the same design and LED light sources, which is available through Home Depot for $39.97. It uses 12.5 watts.

Lighting manufacturers are seeking to boost the brightness and light quality of LEDs to make them attractive alternatives to incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs. The prices for LED bulbs are much higher but are expected to drop over time.

Philips said that over its lifetime, an EnduraLED A21 could save a home or business $160. There are about 90 million 75-watt incandescent bulbs sold every year in the U.S., and switching to LEDs would eliminate the carbon emissions of almost 1 million cars, according to Philips.

Android meets LED bulbs in Google smart-home push

By the end of this year, people will be able to buy an LED light bulb controllable from an Android device, part of Google’s move into home automation.

At the Google I/O conference today, Google demonstrated how Android devices, including tablets and smartphones, can act as a hub for controlling multiple devices in the home, including lighting, appliances, thermostats, and music.

Coming to a home network near you: a Lighting Sciences Group A19 LED bulb controllable by Android devices.

Google concocted a lighting demo system with Lighting Sciences Group, which developed an LED bulb that can talk to Android. It uses a new mesh network wireless protocol rather than Wi-Fi, ZigBee, or the other proprietary home automation protocols.

The hope is that software developers will create applications that use the home automation system of connected devices. The demo at Google I/O was of a person playing a shooting video game with the lights turning on and off as shots were fired, said Eric Holland, the director of electrical engineering at Lighting Sciences Group.

“Lighting is very visible and prevalent so it made sense for it to be first foray for the platform,” Holland said. “Every one of the lights has a radio integrated inside the lamp so there’s no additional equipment.”

Many companies are building home automation systems built around connected objects, which give people a way to set up schedules around lighting and heating/cooling. People can also turn plugged-in items on and off from a central point, such as a tablet or small dashboard.

Having many devices communicating using ZigBee or Wi-Fi could create interference problems, one reason why a new protocol is being used, Holland said. Since it is open-source, Google and Lighting Sciences Group hope it will be adopted by other lighting and home automation companies. The networked bulbs will be available by the end of the year at the same cost as their general-purpose LEDs, for which prices range from under $20 to about $35 for a 60-watt equivalent.

Google enters a crowded field of home automation and consumer smart-grid companies that are trying to get a foothold for smart-home products.

Solais Lighting Selected for Final LED Test at Smithsonian American Art Museum

Solais Lighting, Inc., a leading manufacturer of lightweight, specification-grade LED lamps featuring actively-cooled Luxiance® thermal management technology, proudly announces that it has been selected from a wide pool of LED manufacturers for a final LED test installation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Following a preliminary installation at the museum beginning in October 2010 and involving multiple manufacturers, Solais Lighting’s 18 Watt PAR 30 Long-Neck LED lamps with 10°, 25°, and 40° beam spread successfully met performance objectives and were selected from a wide field of competitors to participate in next-tier testing, the outcomes of which will be officially monitored by the Department of Energy through the installation’s appointment as a DOE Solid State Lighting GATEWAY Demonstration Project.

Solais Lighting’s PAR30 LED lamps are currently being evaluated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum for their performance in a permanent collection gallery which displays more than a dozen early modernist artworks and a mural by Thomas Hart Benton. Within the room, which features 15-16 foot ceilings, the museum aims to upgrade to a high quality, long-lasting, and more energy-efficient light source than the technology previously installed and is testing the LED lamps’ ability to light the walls flatly and achieve a broad distribution of light on the floors while spotlighting the artwork precisely.

According to Naomi Miller, Senior Lighting Engineer within the Energy and Environment Division at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, “performance criteria include beam spread, color appearance, light output, and the absence of UV or IR that could damage artwork without providing any visual benefit, as well as how the LED lamps fit into the museum’s existing track heads and deliver the desired effect.” As part of the DOE’s GATEWAY initiative, the lamps’ performance will be tracked and documented at several different points over their lifespan.

Solais Lighting’s PAR30 Long-Neck lamps combine the long life and outstanding energy efficiency of LEDs with the high output and intensity of halogen technology, resulting in a high-performance product ideal for track and recessed applications within commercial, museum, retail, hospitality and residential settings. Delivering a CRI of 82 and sporting a rated average life of 50,000 hours, the lamps are fully dimmable, free of hazardous substances such as lead and mercury, and are ETL-certified (certified to UL Standard 1993) and RoHS-compliant.

“We’re delighted to have been selected to participate in such an elite lighting test within one of the most prestigious and discriminating applications in the world,” said James Leahy, president of Solais Lighting. “Through the unique thermal management capabilities enabled by our Luxiance technology, Solais offers the lightest and best-performing LED lamps on the market, delivering superior light quality and higher light output than passively-cooled LED lamps with bulky metal heat sinks. We’re excited to be recognized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum for our cutting-edge lighting technology and to be in consideration for supporting the lighting performance and environmental goals of this national treasure.”

Conquer the night with an LED grill light

When grilling, it helps to be able to see.

Grilling is all about good times that nobody wants to see come to end. So despite the encroachment of dark, boundaries get pushed as one more item gets thrown on the grill. And then ends up burnt to a crisp because nobody can see when grilling in the dark. Fun in the sun is fun and all, but when the sun goes down, it doesn’t mean the party (or the food) has to end.

The LED Barbeque Grill Light is a heavy-duty model that supplies illumination via 18 LEDs. The 13-inch light mounts horizontally, vertically, or even to angled surfaces up to almost 5 inches thick. The business end of the light is at the end of a flexible gooseneck, allowing for maximum versatility and illumination wherever the light is needed.

Capable of extending the grill session well past the recommended limit (at least as dictated by Mother Nature), the light also features a weatherproof housing. Three D batteries supply the oomph needed to get through the night, and the unit features an automatic shutoff for those who forget. With low heat, bright LEDs supplying the light, and three hefty batteries the power, the oncoming of night doesn’t need to mean the end of the good times–or anymore burnt hot dogs and burgers.

Marvell chip designed to improve LED light quality

Semiconductor company Marvell today is set to introduce a chip geared at improving the light from LED bulbs and connecting them to a network.

The 8801 chip is small–about the size of a penny–and will be about the same price as existing LED lighting electronics. If Marvell signs on light manufacturer customers, it could bring the very good light quality of some commercial LEDs to more affordable consumer products, said Kishore Manghnani, vice president of Marvell’s Communications and Consumer business. He said the chip, which integrates multiple functions on this single controller chip, is being tested by commercial or consumer light fixture makers now and it takes them about six months to introduce products with new chips.

Light quality for consumer LED bulbs has improved over the past few years but the color rending index (CRI), a measure of quality, is still not as high as incandescent bulbs. With the chip, Manghnani said a CRI of 95, higher than most of the consumer LED bulbs available now, is possible.

The chip can control the current and temperature of two types of LED light sources. So a fixture or bulb maker could use the chip and driver to use LEDs with two different colors, such as white and red, to improve color rendering. Until now, the electronics to control different colored LEDs would be too large or expensive for consumer products, Manghnani said.

Green LED TVs and computers ‘a step closer to reality’

WASHINGTON: Scientists have developed a new method for manufacturing green-colored LEDs with greatly enhanced light output, which could likely lead to a new generation of high-performance, energy-efficient display devices.

First discovered in the 1920s, LEDs – light-emitting diodes – are semiconductors that convert electricity into light.

The research team, led by Christian Wetzel, professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, etched a nanoscale pattern at the interface between the LED’s sapphire base and the layer of gallium nitride (GaN) that gives the LED its green color.

Cree LED takes aim at office fluorescent lights

LED lighting company Cree is taking on the overhead fluorescent lights that are a fixture of office buildings with a light source it says will quickly recoup the investment.

The company today announced a new line of “architectural troffers,” or rectangular-shaped fixtures designed for overhead lighting. The troffers use Cree’s LED light sources, which offer a longer life and improved efficiency over fluorescent lights, according to the company.

Cree LED light sources in the overhead fixtures.

The fixtures offer a white light with an efficiency of 110 lumens per watt and a color rendering index, a measure of light quality, of 90. The lights can be dimmed and are designed to last 50,000 hours, which would be more than 10 years at 12 hours a day. The fixtures have a thermal management system designed for long life.

Design services company O’Brien/Atkins Associates said in a statement that the measuring efficiency over the full product life cycle, including sizing, heating and cooling, and disposal, can be cut lighting costs by 60 percent.

Using the national average for electricity prices of 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, Cree calculates that the payoff of office upgrades to LEDs can be less than one year to replace typical fluorescent tubes. Because of the higher upfront cost of LED lighting technology, consumer adoption of LED bulbs is expected to be slower than that of commercial customers.

Lighting Retailer Elemental LED Adds Free Shipping Offer

Elemental LED, a San Francisco Bay Area-based LED lighting company, added a free shipping offer to a growing list of website promotions. Customers who purchase more than $250 now have the option to get free UPS ground shipping for their order by choosing the Free Shipping method on the shopping cart page of the Elemental LED website. This promotion requires no coupon code, and is automatic for every order over $250.

“This is an ideal time to offer free shipping to our customers,” says Elemental LED Marketing Manager Charlotte Dick, “because we know money is tight this year for many families who would like to begin their springtime home projects.”

The new free shipping offer does not have an expiration date and is an addition to a plentiful list of other regular promotions and discounts customers can receive at Elemental LED.

Other promotions that Elemental LED offer include a 10% coupon for new customers and those that sign up for the company’s newsletter at elementalled.com, and a $50 coupon for orders over $400. Plus, current and new customers only need to create a login to participate in the company’s Refer-a-Friend program to receive discounts off future orders.

Details about these promotions, plus others, can be found on the Elemental LED’s profile at RetailMeNot. To take advantage of Elemental LED’s free shipping offer, and to browse their LED lighting catalog, please visit www.elementalled.com.

Elemental LED is founded on the belief that everyone has the right to stylish, energy efficient LED lights. LED lighting technology is the safest, hippest, and most energy efficient way to light our world.