Now, I know what you're thinking – well, unless it's hey, I wonder where I put the remote…
Switch Lighting has come out with an absolutely beautiful series of lamps that are being tested right now in "several distinct hospitality properties." This thing is absolutely beautiful, as are Switch Lighting's other LED A-lamp designs, holy crap – it's got panache, it's got beautiful design, and this cooling liquid inside the dome with the LEDs. Oh, just check it out – this particular flavor of Switch lamp is the Switch75 (which is a 75W LED lamp, of course, and you can tell from its blue collar!)
Ok, this thing is pretty beautiful, to be sure! I love the design; just alone, the design is fairly similar to most of the LED A-lamp replacements out there with regards to form. Heat sink on the bottom, LED dome and some kind of diffuser or magnifier on top, but this one just looks different. I love how the heat sink continues up into the LED dome, which is filled with a liquid of some sort – I am guessing a mineral oil or some kind of paraffin oil, possibly? We'll find out when Switch makes that public! Something to note is how the LED structure wraps around and attaches to the heat sink – it's almost as if they used such little material to get the most efficient heat dissipation possible. If you work with LEDs, you know that heat that they generate is an enemy of their output and life.
More beautiful photos:
Here's the Switch60 – you can tell it's 60W because it's got a red collar:
That thing is just sexy, there are no if's, and's, or but's about it. I originally saw this post at a great blog called Jetson Green – and I remembered that, wait a minute, somebody tried this before, I wrote about it! Now, all things aside, the Switch Lighting lamps and the one I wrote about in 2009 are completely different lamps in every regard. Check it out – this is the EternaLEDs Hydralux-4 liquid-cooled LED lamp. It's only 25W, it's MUCH different than the Switch lamps, and it's sitting now in my big box o' lamps:
It's just a different lamp, completely – fully glass, the liquid is similar to paraffin oil, and there is no heat sink. It has a frosted top diffuser either formed or blasted into the envelope of the lamp around the LED element. The only differences are the liquid and the LED parts, really, but I think it is important to see an early version of the liquid-cooled LED technology. These lamps are no longer offered at EternaLEDs; I did find an old blog post of theirs though that talks a bit about the old Hydralux-4. It was also featured in a 2009 issue of Popular Mechanics as one of the Top 12 Must-Have Products. Crazy, huh?
I for one am pretty excited to see how Switch does liquid-cooled LED lamps. The nerd in me wants to know info on output and efficacy! Here's where I kick and scream and beat my fists until no one gives me the info I need.