We are still in the dark ages, though. Just consider: this "bulb" has to plug into the standard 110/230V AC electrical sockets. Powering an LED is nothing like powering an incandescent bulb: you need a constant current driver delivering a precisely measured DC current that, depending on the LED, is between 300mA and (say) 1.5A. The voltage you need depends on the number of LEDs in series, but assume 3.2V per LED. If you want dimming, you need to do PWM (pulse-width modulation).
This means that inside every "bulb" like this there is a small switching power supply. And small switching power supplies that can take you from 110/230V AC to 3-24V DC are a) expensive, b) not very efficient.
Even more amusing is the "dimmable" bulb: traditional dimmers in AC circuits use triacs to effectively cut out (e.g. cut to zero) a part of the sinusoidal AC waveform. Meaning you get a chopped-up sine waveform behind the dimmer. Any switching PSU won't really notice, as long as there is enough (let's use a technical term) "oomph" left in the waveform. So, what the "dimmable" solutions do, is look at the AC waveform coming in, notice that it isn't really a sine and a part of it has been cut out, estimate how much has been cut out, and provide a PWM dimming signal to the LED driver.
Sure, it's all still better than the incandescent bulb, but it's very costly and inefficient. It also generates a lot of waste: if you throw out an incandescent bulb, it's really just some glass and a little metal. The LED "bulb" contains at least 20 electronic components and a PCB apart from the LED itself.
I think that sooner or later we will need an additional electrical standard, 24 or 48V DC with an overlaid control signal for dimming and a new standard for sockets. 110/230V simply doesn't make sense for powering single bulbs anymore.
How about power over Ethernet? I'm only half-joking here.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, you can get 14 watts from some implementations, 25 from others, and supposedly up to 51 from still others. That seems like more than enough for these new bulbs. I think the last CFL I bought from Ikea was in the neighborhood of 15 watts.
The control interface would hopefully evolve naturally from this. :-)
(Also, bonus points for figuring out how to make all of your light bulbs into boosters for your wireless network. They're already in all the places where people go in a house.)
Unfortunately PoE as currently implemented is probably not the solution, as there's a non-negligible amount of power lost along the thin wires in a Cat5e cable and in the power converters at each end.
With PoE you lose the power three times instead of just once. You have an AC-to-DC brick for the PoE injector (or similar inside of a PoE-enabled switch), then resistive loss on the cable (about 2.4W lost for every 12.5W that reaches the device[0]), then another DC-to-DC converter at the device itself.
Now, don't get me wrong. I really like PoE, and would love to have something similar for lighting, but PoE itself can't handle the current required for primary lighting.
How much power is lost with all of those dumb little DC bricks all over the place right now?
According to http://what-if.xkcd.com/35/, as a rule of thumb, any DC transformer that's not warm to the touch is wasting less than a penny of electricity per day, and a cellphone charger, if not warm to the touch, less than a penny per year.
24V is just fine for a string of up to 6 LEDs. Your comment leads me to think you haven't designed many switching regulators. You can drive up to six LEDs from 24V at 92% efficiency with 6 components (I have a device I've designed in front of me that proves it): one IC, an inductor, a resistor, a diode and two tiny capacitors.
I agree that we need a closed-circuit DC solution for households. One efficient step-down, and then we plug rechargeable (phones, laptops, etc) in, and power LED lights off it. We still need AC to transmit power to the house, and power high-juice devices, obviously.
Presumably this already exists? Any home-hackers know who's making them?
The amount of lead in an incandescent light bulb is absolutely minuscule - if there is any there at all.
I doubt there are any facilities at all that try to separate out the lead. All the metal is just melted together and the lead (if any) is diluted among it.
can the switching power supply and other electronics not be combined into a part the screws into the light bulb socket, into which the 'bulb' part attaches? That way in 10 years when your light burns out you wouldn't replace the base part anyway, just the LED lights.
Problem is that the driver electronics need to be tuned to the LEDs being used. So you can't mix and match the LEDs and drivers without some adjustment.
Another problem is the lifetime of the driver electronics is limited too. So the benefits of having separately replaceable driver would be fairly limited.
Agreed. Since when did scrolling become a page navigation? If I'd clicked a title, then sure do a hash change, but otherwise leave my URL alone.
On top of that, clicking an anchor (which on any normal website would take me _instantly_ to that point in the page) scrolls slowly from top to bottom. Do that a couple of times and watch what happens when you hit the back button a few times... shoot me now.
Sadly I only have one up-vote to give. I compulsively scroll up-down and the page keeps scrolling me back to the viewport it thinks i want. While this take over the user's scroll thing is a neat trick it reminds me of when much of the internet was flash. It's my fcking browser, let me control the fcking scroll.
You also wouldn't have noticed much of the content and interactivity you missed out on. Pages such as Comparison, and History are blank without javascript. Noscript is like leaving your TV on VHF even when digital works fine.
Ok, so anyway, people complaining about bad design should blame the bad design rather than the platform it uses. Happened with Flash when people said "let's say no to annoying ads on websites, and poorly made multimedia sites with intro screens, by hating on the technology they're made with!"
Actually this is one of the reasons I use noscript. A lot of web site interactivity is completely annoying, so I only turn it on when the site is interesting enough - which is not the case here.
Yes, this is going to far. And I am not blaming the web designer for this, I am blaming the html standard that still hasn't decided whether web pages are documents or applications.
Why does it even have a scroll bar if the behavior can be redefined at will.
You can redefine the scrolling behavior in other applications as well. The same thing as this page exists on an excel sheet scroll which adjusts to rows. Conclusion: I still blame the designer.
chrome console: window.onscroll is null, so it's probably buried somewhere in a setInterval. Couldn't work out how to stop it, so I just closed the darn tab.
to whoever wrote this: let me decide the vertical position of your paragraph of text on my screen! :p
Definitely not off topic for a site full of engineers and designers. It is a huge pain to navigate, especially when you get to the 3 bulb types near the bottom and as you scroll you accidentally hover over one of the bulbs.
Not just you, it's annoying to have scrolling behaviour taken over by the website. Also, scrolling down != changing page, but their js is treating it as changing pages, so the back button is broken.
I think it's that annoying because there is a mismatch between your intention (scrolling the page incrementally) and its reaction (moving to the next "slide"). It acts out of your control.
This is huge if only because a LED bulb company finally put its warranty where its mouth is.
Every other bulb, ie. the expensive Phillips bulb, only gives a 3-4 year warranty
I'd definitely give this a try @ $10
It's also dimmer compatible which is a big plus for me with X10 control, CFL cannot dim.
If this bulb does not operate for 10 years (based on 6 hours per day / 7 days per week of normal consumer use) from date of purchase when used as directed, return the bulb [...] Cree will send you a replacement or at Cree’s option refund the original purchase price.
ps. you can use ebates.com to get a $5 off $50 Home Depot coupon and 3% cashback which will reduce the cost on these
I wonder what the expected warrantee redemption rate is for these things, for all of them that fail. Say you had it for 5 years and it failed. If it was me, I'd just go out and buy another one. Perhaps a different brand, but I probably wouldn't think that far ahead. For something at this price point, does anybody really USE the warrantee?
And that's exactly where they're going here; offer a long warranty and easy returns, while producing a product that's cheap enough (definitely in 5 - 10 years) that people won't actually bother with it. It's what happens with mainstream consumer electronics; 3 years warranty, sure, but would you return a $30 machine to the webshop you got it the cheapest to claim that three years later?
I know some people who write the date on their light bulbs (incandescent, no less) and switch brands if the bulbs burn out too quickly. For $10/bulb, those people would likely get their refunds, but I agree - for bulbs lasting five years, not a lot of People are going to be redeeming this warranty. The good news, is that Cree probably has a very good idea what the failure rate will be, and it's likely that the vast majority of these Lightbulbs are going to last more than 10 years.
For $10, I would return it for the next ten years. Problem is it costs $1.70 to send via USPS mail, but maybe you could wait until you had a couple to send back.
All LED bulbs I've seen say dimmer compatible, but most really aren't. I have comparably-priced LED bulbs from Home Depot already, and any less than 90% power they buzz loudly.
Heh, that's completely the opposite of my experience.
I've seen extremely few LED bulbs that say they are "dimmable" and I've been looking around a fair bit as I'm transferring all the lights in the house over to LED if on-time matters and CFL if it doesn't.
Apologies, but: pet peeve alert! The Dutch electronics multinational is actually called "Philips", with a single 'L' in the middle. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips.
I often see it written with two 'L':s, I think it's mainly due to pronunciation by English speakers.
I agree. I bought a Sylvania and while I like it, specially the 75W equiv, it's a bit pricey ($35). I'll be on the lookout for these next time I'm at a home improvement store. Also hope they come out with 75W equivs. Love the crees in torches as well.
Yes, but the point was that it would be far more optimal to have the control signals go directly to the LED driver circuitry instead of chopping up the mains voltage and hoping that the LED driver will handle it.
Computer analogy: Imagine you would like to adjust the performance/power of your computer. You could plug the computer to a dimmer and then engineer the computer to adjust itself according to the dimmed mains voltage. Or you could route the X10 signal to the computer and use it to adjust the power profile. Which solution seems more reasonable to you?
Personally I think PLC based system would make most sense for home automation, considering that a large portion of the devices are mains-powered anyways. And if you design the system really cleverly then having the same network extend wirelessly to those nodes where PLC is unsuitable.
Powerline control is fine, but X10 is simply too slow to handle the demands of a modern house with advanced automation. My own system uses DMX-512 and Philips Hue lights (which use Zigbee Light Link). Some of my customers use X10, but the performance is not nearly as good since it can only transmit 20 bits per second.
Most dimmers, X10 based or directly controlled, are based on chopping the voltage not completely unlike PWM. They are called "triac dimmers". But irregardless how the dimming is implemented, the effective (RMS) voltage is changed. But in addition to lowering the voltage standard triac dimmers also create problems as the dimmed voltage waveform isn't sinewave anymore.
The bulb will probably operate in 10 years, but most likely it will loose its brightness over the years, because I doubt that it can be properly cooled..
$10 seems like actually a very good price for LED bulbs, especially if they work as advertised. Add in a 10yr warranty and it seems like a no brainer. Cree isn't a little startup or anything either, it's an established LED manufacturer.
-How many HN readers does it take to change the light bulb?-
6 to discuss the efficiency of the new light bulb, 10 to propose alternative designs to the light bulb components, 15 to point out various health and environmental concerns of old and proposed new light bulb components, and 25 to criticize the design of the webpage promoting the new light bulb.
Am I the only one not impressed by these 60 watt bulb replacements? 60 watt bulbs leave my entire place looking dim and depressing, sure good colors are nice, but if I can't see anything, what does it matter?
My light fixtures were designed for a few 100 watts, replacing them with these 60 watt LEDs may save me power, but at the cost of my eyesight!
I am more interested in true 100, or even better, 150 watt, replacement bulbs. Get those in a good package size with some energy savings!
It's amazing how widely people vary on light. It's observable across major cultures, or even different families.
A Japanese IKEA I went through recently had a display which would allow you to switch between 'Japanese' style lighting' and 'Western' style, with western style being dimmer, and with warmer color temperature.
I immediately found the Western one more comforting, relaxing, while my wife (Japanese) prefers the brighter one. Internal lighting in Japan is almost uniformly overhead neon, without the baffles you'll see in many North American offices.
I've grown used to it, but would rather work in the dark.
I'm sure there are many people that, like you, feel that these LED bulbs are too dim. If you're at all curious though, I'd recommend that you find one and give it a shot, many of them /feel/ brighter than the numbers would lead you to expect when compared to an incandescent.
It might be better to compare on the basis of Lumens, as watt's are a measure of power instead of brightness[1].
I grew up in Korea and moved to the West (USA & Canada) in my late teens. I found the lighting very annoying almost as soon as I stepped foot in my first dorm room. Even when I rented my own place later on, I could never make my living room look "proper", since none of the apartments I've lived in had any lighting fixtures in the living room. No amount of indirect lighting can compensate for the lack of several thousand lumens, daylight color, right in the middle of the ceiling. I can see why other people find 2700K 60W "relaxing", but to me it feels like perpetual twilight, some sort of reenactment of Rembrandt's paintings.
Ditto for "desk lamps" that can't evenly illuminate two Letter-sized sheets of paper side by side (the typical dimensions of an open textbook), let alone the whole desk. To this day I still don't understand why students buy those. Maybe they just put them on their bedside tables in case they need to find their way to the bathroom at night.
On the other hand, everyone's computer screen is too bright for me. My screens are usually set to 25%-40% brightness unless I'm using it outside on a sunny day. So I suppose people do have varying tastes about illumination.
There was an interesting article in the NY Times recently about the meaning of comfort and specifically compared the difference between cold overhead lighting in Japan and warm side lighting in Norway.
I actually threw out all my flourescent bulbs and bought a truckload of incandescents while they were still available because the flourescent light was too dim and "hollow" to feel comfortable.
I am not sure LEDs are any better, I believe the cheaper ones have huge spectrum gaps.
I can't find any information on the CRI (color rendering index) of these particular bulbs, but Cree was making a bulb a couple years ago that was rated over 90, which is generally considered excellent. If these are comparable, they're a fantastic deal, particularly given the warranty.
Hmm, actually beats a CFL - although not by much, the CFL uses 11 watts, this uses 9.5.
But the CFL costs $1, this costs $13.
It lasts 3 times as long, but still - unless you really need great color accuracy (i.e. CRI), I can't see myself buying this. (I'm comparing to a CFL with the same warm color temperature.)
Edit: CRI of 80! That's worse than the CFL I'm comparing it to!
Why would anyone want to buy this? The small boost in energy efficiency is not worth the $10.
LEDs go to 100% brightness instantly, unlike CFLs, which is very convenient for many applications (closets, corridor, garage, etc.).
But at this price point it's already about different convenience - not having to deal with replacement. Regular lamps go out and then you have to replace it, it's a hassle - stockpiling different nominations, opening fixtures, disposing old lamps. With LEDs you just put them in and forget about it. I basically replace all bulbs that go out with leds if fixture allows it because of this.
All the CFLs I have (except for 6 very very bad ones) go to full brightness instantly (or close enough that I can't tell the difference). (I use those bad ones in a bedroom fixture where the slow start is actually a feature. Made by Feit Electric - don't buy that brand.)
So if your CFLs are slow buy better ones. Walmart has good ones.
A CFL will last about 8,000 to 10,000 hours - I have to replace maybe 1 bulb a year in my house.
In my entire life I've broken exactly 1 CFL - and I was a kid at the time.
And you don't have to vent your house, that's an urban legend. The mercury is elemental mercury which isn't very toxic, and extremely poorly absorbed on top of that.
(The toxic mercury is organic mercury. Some elemental mercury will be converted, which is why people worry about it - but it won't be converted in your house.)
MERCURY IS TOXIC. DO NOT TELL PEOPLE THAT IT IS NOT TOXIC.
Both elemental mercury and "organic" mercury are toxic (I assume you mean "organic mercury compounds", since mercury is never "organic"). The relative toxicity of mercury does depend on the compound. Dimethylmercury is exceptionally poisonous: it will go right through latex gloves, skin, and the blood-brain barrier; minute concentrations will kill you. Metallic mercury is much less toxic, but when you inhale mercury vapors it gets absorbed rather well into your circulatory system.
The amount of mercury in a CFL is very low. If I broke a CFL, I would make sure to ventilate the room for a few hours, but I would not be worried. However, it is downright irresponsible to tell people that elemental mercury is not toxic.
I did not say "is not toxic". I said "not very toxic".
The OSHA limit is 0.1 mg/m^3. A CFL has 5mg of mercury - so even if every bit of the CFL mercury stayed in a room 13x13x10 feet (which it won't since most gets absorbed by the wall of the CFL) you would still be legal. And that's for continuous exposure! Not a single event.
I can't seem to find good data on the LD50 of elemental mercury, everything is for compounds of it, but compared to everyday compounds, it's toxic - but not very.
> Chronic exposure by inhalation, even at low concentrations in the range 0.7–42 μg/m3, has been shown in case control studies to cause effects such as tremors, impaired cognitive skills, and sleep disturbance in workers.
CFLs are not the only source of mercury. Some barometers and thermometers have significant quantities of the stuff. So if you tell people, "not very toxic", I am worried that these people will think that it is okay not to clean it up.
> MERCURY IS TOXIC. DO NOT TELL PEOPLE THAT IT IS NOT TOXIC.
I don't see why this has capitals?
The point was valid it's urban legend / vaccinations cause autism style rubbish about breaking light bulbs being bad.
When do we get exposed to mercury in real life that we need to highlight mercury is bad in capitals? To stop people breaking light bulbs and licking them? We all know not to drink from a thermometer. I though the point of HN is we didn't have to talk at grade school/reddit level.
> Poses a health hazard because it is volatile and can be absorbed through the skin. As a vapor, penetrates the central nervous system, where it is ionized and trapped, attributing to its extremely toxic effects. Is not well absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract; therefore, when ingested, it is only mildly toxic. Mercury metal and mercury compounds are highly hazardous if inhaled or if they remain on the skin for more than a short period of time.
Saying that CFLs are safe is different from saying that mercury isn't very toxic. There are plenty of compounds which are toxic and found in minute quantities in everyday objects. I'd rather educate people of the dangers.
Where have you deducted the expected ROI on the money you've invested on the asset?
Also the numbers are to high, not many rooms are on 6 hours a day.
Electricity is actually a fairly insignificant for lighting/ power use by consumers in general. People like these things because they are easy fixes, not because they achieve much.
But I'd say the real benefits is in business and cost reductions in labour replacing light bulbs. It's the longevity not the reduced power use that has the value in commerce.
The electricity hour rate will probably vary in the next 10 years. In some parts of Europe the cost will go up by more than 25% in the next 2 years.
There is also the long term benefit of lowering global consumption of electricity: probably less CO₂ rejected in atmosphere, and decreasing power outage risk in regions badly interconnected with the grid.
Hah... the light bulbs today are the biggest scam ever.
Light bulbs made 100 years ago are still working today, because the materials used, more precisely, the filament, was made out of a lot more durable materials. However, companies quickly realized that if ligh bulbs lasted so long, no one would buy new light bulbs.
If you have not seen the light bulb conspiracy, please watch it on youtube.
You can trade long life for energy efficiency. That's all.
After some tweaking and market testing people settled on the current balance.
The old stuff is just not very efficient, that's why it lasts so long - nothing stops you from doing that today, just derate the bulb, use a bulb intended for a higher voltage (or put a dimmer on it).
> After some tweaking and market testing people settled on the current balance.
FWIW, old style incandescent lightbulbs have effectively been banned in europe, australia, brazil and other places for years, and will be such in the US next year, IIRC.
While I think that is overall a good thing it's not exactly an invisible hand thingy.
> Light bulbs made 100 years ago are still working today
This is a bit of an urban legend. There is indeed a lightbulb that has been running for >100 years I think, but it is nearly never cycled. And that's what kills filaments, not continuous running.
I'm just saying. Plus, I still don't understand why people care about light bulbs saving energy. The majority of electricity consumed in a houses and apartments comes from the AC unit, refrigerators, heaters, TVs, and computers.
Implying that this light bulb will save you money would imply that you're terrible at keeping your lights off, and thus you should save money by continuing to exercise bad habits that cost you money.
The way I see it is, the problem with energy consumption in households usually stems from the consumer' habits, and not so much from the equipment used. People are terrible at turning the lights off. Just like my roommates. If I don't turn the lights off, no one else does.
bingo! You've hit the nail on the head on all fronts. But light blubs and the act of turning on and off lights are very tangible to the average person, compared to thermostat programming. Awareness itself is a big step, sadly.
Disclosure: I work for an energy efficiency company and basically telling people to do turn off / lower the settings is our business: opower.com.
However, we aren't buying a car here. Nice that Cree's 60 watt replacement which actually produces 800 lumens, compared to other bulbs that claim to replace 60 watt lightbulbs that actually produce 400 lumens. Amazing that they managed to produce that amount of lumens with such little amount of energy - has anyone tested this bulb here? Also, very affordable compared to most manufacturers!!
Disclaimer - I use to work for Pharox. They were leading for a while but seem to have been overtaken.
These are probably available everywhere, but since moving to Japan I found some motion-detecting LED light bulbs. Now when coming home or walking down the hall at night the light turns on automagically. Saves both time and energy.
You said "at night", so it's not only motion-detecting but also comes with a light sensor to avoid to turn on in bright day light, isn't it ? Do you have an URL or a name to provide ?
"the biggest thing since the light bulb". Keep reading their marketing, and you get "it's a bulb that lasts longer than a normal light bulb, and consumes less energy".
So let me get this straight — the light bulb took us from expensive, unreliable, dangerous light (candles) to instant, cheap, reliable, safe light. The light bulb is one of the greatest inventions of humanity. You made it a little more efficient, and you invented the biggest thing since the light bulb? Gotcha.
Are there any lightbulb engineers on HN that can confirm that lightbulbs are indeed, so to speak, "made to fail"? Or is it actually really difficult to make a long-lasting lightbulb?
A standard 100 Watt lightbulb gets about 16 lumens/watt.
The 9.5 Watt lightbulb here can get ~ 84 lumens/watt.
The 9 Watt (more blue) lightbulb gets almost 89 lumens/watt
The above project can get about 90 lumens/watt.
.. but higher efficiencies and cooler temperatures are possible ..
e.g: this one spaces out the LEDs and claims to get 133 lumens/watt: - I don't know if they are from CREE or from a competitor:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/619878070/nanolight-the-...
Higher efficiencies are coming from Cree and others in the future - so it's going to get better. In the lab they're sometimes getting even in the realm of 200 lumens/watt.
The comparison is shit, because it compares shit (LED) with shit (fluorescent).
The website does not tell if Cree is using two band LEDs of a blue LED with yellow dotation, or a 3 band UV LEDs with R, G, and B dotations. Its likely only two band, because those are much cheaper. So they are worse than any 5 band fluorescent lamp. And not comparable in light quality with a good old light bulb or tungsten halogen lamp.
They are not suited for sewing, when you need to match the color of the thread to the cloth, and they are badly suited for electronics, when you need to read the color code of a resistor.
I got my parents a Switch[1] bulb for Christmas. If the Cree bulb is anything like it, I'll be swapping out the CFLs I use the most right away--$13 at Home Depot is better than the ~$45 I paid for the Switch. It puts out great light and "feels" better than a CFL bulb. Not sure if it's the ballast frequency, color temp, or the spiky emission spectrum, but CFLs bother me.
Except for those outdoor pictures at the bottom, because all I see is a massive amount of light pollution. Does a Burger King really need to be lit like that?
No-one is there, perhaps the lights should dim dramatically and sensors should make them come on depending on movement.
For indoors these bulbs are great, but for outdoors I care more about the excessive light pollution than the power usage.
So quick question... I noticed that when this site was posted to Facebook, FB rendered the title of the link as "New Site" above the URL instead of "Cree LED Bulb" but I am not seeing anything in the metadata that should cause this. What am I missing here?
That's nice and all, but a 60 Watt bulb is still not bright enough for my taste.
I have never used old 60W bulbs exactly for this reason. I always feel like I'm struggling to see things with those bulbs.
This might be obvious, but its not that this is something new. Lightbulb makers want to sell lightbulbs to you forever, so they wont give you ones that will never need to be replaced!
i use one of these to walk my dog. it's ridiculously bright and it's laughable when you see someone using a 'normal' flash light which basically just looks like someone using a zippo lighter to light their way.
bought 2 for the office and 1 for the car too. mine use regular AA batteries not the expensive high voltage rechargeable ones.
edit: this comment is about the same cree LEDs except in flashlight form.
It's not all that off-topic. Cree does make LED flashlights, presumably with closely related technology. If they do a good job there, that's a good indicator that they might do household LED bulbs well also.
personally i think you are being an asshole... he just forgot to mention he was talking about something else in their product range. It is in that context, still on topic.
A light bulb is the biggest thing since the light bulb? The light bulb was the greatest invention of the 20th century, but the story is about to an energy saving light bulb sold at Home Depot?
The light bulb was invented in the 19th century. A patent was granted for an incandescent lamp in England in 1841 but the first commercially viable design was by Edison in 1879.
I think the story itself, however, is a demonstration of an extremely annoying web site design.
The light bulb was invented in the 19th century, but did not become important until a massive electricity infrastructure was built in the 20th century.
If the joke was about the horrific web design (and it was horrific), I didn't get it.
"Important" is a relative matter of course, and surely light bulbs were not as ubiquitous in 19th century as they were later, but e.g. London had 2.5 million light bulbs at the end of 19th century. That is not insignificant.
This means that inside every "bulb" like this there is a small switching power supply. And small switching power supplies that can take you from 110/230V AC to 3-24V DC are a) expensive, b) not very efficient.
Even more amusing is the "dimmable" bulb: traditional dimmers in AC circuits use triacs to effectively cut out (e.g. cut to zero) a part of the sinusoidal AC waveform. Meaning you get a chopped-up sine waveform behind the dimmer. Any switching PSU won't really notice, as long as there is enough (let's use a technical term) "oomph" left in the waveform. So, what the "dimmable" solutions do, is look at the AC waveform coming in, notice that it isn't really a sine and a part of it has been cut out, estimate how much has been cut out, and provide a PWM dimming signal to the LED driver.
Sure, it's all still better than the incandescent bulb, but it's very costly and inefficient. It also generates a lot of waste: if you throw out an incandescent bulb, it's really just some glass and a little metal. The LED "bulb" contains at least 20 electronic components and a PCB apart from the LED itself.
I think that sooner or later we will need an additional electrical standard, 24 or 48V DC with an overlaid control signal for dimming and a new standard for sockets. 110/230V simply doesn't make sense for powering single bulbs anymore.