Philips 98CRI vs 90 with newer "ALTO" bulbs

  • The Philips TL950 has an older model with 98 CRI and a newer model with 90 CRI. I've also looked at Philips supplied PDF files and none of their other bulbs are as good as the 98 CRI TL950 bulb--even the TL965 seems to only be 90 CRI and the color spectrum is not as complete or smooth.

    I'm wondering if you have access to both the non alto bulbs with 98CRI such as the one on fluxometer and the newer alto bulb. I'd be very interested in the differences because I could buy a 25 bulb case for just over $50 on 1000 bulbs vs over $200 for the 98 CRI variety!

  • For most things I think 90CRI is enough (especially if you have some daylighting - which pushes the effective CRI higher).

    Also there are some 90-95 CRI LEDs which use less energy - not sure if you prefer fluorescent for some reason? If you use LED, try to keep a T8 ballast in place, because the "direct-wire" T8 tubes have terrible flicker.

    We have some older 80 CRI Altos around - maybe will do another round of measurement some day. But most people are thinking about LED retrofits these days.

  • @herf said in Philips 98CRI vs 90 with newer "ALTO" bulbs:


    Thanks for that tidbit especially!! As I've mentioned before (Lorna has too) I can see flicker very very well even on most cheaper a19 LED bulbs and terribly on T12s.

    I am getting into fluorescent as I figured it would be cheaper and there are still more options, more variety to custom ideas like Philips Activiva or 460nm "wavepoint" aquarium bulbs--I don't think I'll find that in an led bulb any time soon. It just puts out a large hill of blue light spanning aqua to violet.

    I'll look into t8 / t5 LED bulbs but currently fluorescent has the edge on brightness like 54w tubes with 4000+ lumens of light, hopefully that's usually closer to 5000. I havent looked for high output led bulbs but I'll look around. From the website "designing with leds" I've seen some LED T8 tubes that are decent but the blue light cuts short of violet and there is a strong dip in aqua with 4000K (too low color temp for what I want( according to these charts (same website) if you want office style t8 data, I believe it comes with comma separated values files!

    I'm ecstatic about what I've seen from waveform lighting led strips but their tubes do not use the same chips and also they're not bright enough for me so that makes them too expensive.

    I'd be O.K. with something like waveform tubes if you're aware of similar bulbs I'm all eyes.

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