July - August 2006

Life Tests Of 40W Tubelights

• We conducted extended life test on 11 brands of tubelights, in two parts. The first part was up to 3,500 hours and the second was up to 5,000 hours.

• We recommend Osram, ECE, GE and Philips as our Best Buys among the 40 W tubelights. To give our readers a wider choice, we also recommend the 4th highest scorer Anchor Classic with 87, the 5th highest scorer Bajaj with 85, and the 6th highest scorer New Crompton with 84 as our Best Buys.

• Out of the 11 brands, all 10 samples of 9 brands worked satisfactorily up to 3,500 hrs. One sample of Crompton and two samples of Cema stopped working before 3,500 hours.
  
• All the 10 samples in only 6 brands, namely, Philips, Osram, GE, ECE, Bajaj and Anchor worked satisfactorily up to 5,000 hours.
  
• As per the Standards, for a batch to be conforming, the number of non-conforming samples shall not exceed 4. Hence, all 11 brands conformed to the requirements of life and lumen maintenance up to 3,500 hours and, as per the Standards, up to 5,000 hours as well.
  
• Both at 3,500 and 5,000 hours, the average lumen maintenance was found to be highest in Osram and lowest in Bengal Lamps.
  
• Black spots were observed on Bengal Lamps tubelights at the end of 3,500 hours. Signs of blackening were observed in few of the samples of the other brands.
  
• No blackening of ends was observed in Philips, Osram and GE even after the completion of 5,000 hrs.
  
• At both 3,500 and 5,000 hours, the average efficacy of ECE (53.43 and 52.77) was found to be the highest.
  
• The manufacturers of Bajaj, Wipro, GE and Cema claim 5,000 hours of life, while Philips claims 10,000 hours of life. In our test we found out that while all 10 samples of Philips, Bajaj, and GE could continue up to 5,000 hours, in Wipro and Cema, 5 out of 10 samples each stopped working.
  

Details of the test report can be read in INSIGHT

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