Every year, our team of judges pick the Top 10 Best Products (or Services) from the too-many trade shows in our industry.
This year we chose products from LightFair (7), CES (1), Strategies in Light(1) and for the first time, the LED Specifier Summit (1). Receiving detailed access to much of the technology that powers our industry’s future is one of the most gratifying benefits of being your humble editor.
In no specific order, we chose the Top 10 products launched in 2019:
Acuity Brands/Peerless: Renna luminaires are flexible, scalable and include emergency lighting support options. Renna provides a minimalist design with profiles 4 inches wide by 1 inch high. It can deliver desired lighting levels while providing a combination of independent uplight, downlight, task and wall washing illumination. (LightFair)
LEDVANCE/SYLVANIA. The SYLVANIA UltraLED Marathon™ Linear High Bay has an industry leading 15 year warranty due to its driverless technology and LED Mesh design and provides beautiful, long-lasting illumination for grocery stores, manufacturing facilities, big box retail, gymnasiums and warehouses. As a replacement for 320W metal halide fixtures, the direct AC LED fixture reduces energy consumption up to 72 percent. This unique DLC Premium LED fixture offers a lumen output of up to 19,000 lumens and a high efficacy of 160 LPW, and has an internal 22kA surge suppression. (LightFair)
Eaton/Cooper Lighting Solutions demonstrated LightARchitect, a tool incorporating Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in lighting design. VR provides a fully immersive experience as it takes users into an interactive computer generated virtual world. AR blends the virtual world with the real one. It lets people remain aware of their surroundings while also seeing virtual objects (think “holograms”). The user will scan the real world using sensors and cameras on either a headset or a mobile device like an iPhone/iPad, and the digital objects are merged with the real world. The user can see his or her space with the fixtures installed. In addition, the user can instantly see the foot-candles. The first release of the AR app named, ‘Light ARchitect’, is already available on the App Store. (LED Specifier Summit)
Signify. LiFi is a two-way, high-speed wireless technology similar to WiFi but uses light waves instead of radio waves to transmit data. Philips Lighting’s office luminaires enabled with LiFi technology provide broadband connection with a speed of 30 Mb per second (Mb/s) without compromising lighting quality. With 30Mb/s a user can stream simultaneously several HD quality videos while having video calls. EDITOR’s NOTE: Since this product was publicly launched at LightFair, Signify has dramatically improved their speeds up to 150 Mbps for the downlink and the uplink. That’s fast enough to stream simultaneously 30 1080p HDTV movies. (LightFair)
Hubbell/KIM Lighting. KIM Lighting has combined RGBW configurations that utilize multi die chips under a single optic to provide homogenized color mixing inside the KFL Flood Series. It offers consistent and precise color without the “rainbow” effect of color separation on a target surface. A one-piece back housing has internal sealing compartments and decorative vents to allow for air flow without the appearance of bulky external fins. In a world of increasing complex controls, KIM Lighting offers the ability for full DMX capabilities as well as a simple and cost-effective Bluetooth control via smartphone app. (LightFair)
BIOS. The SkyBlue Bio-dimming system takes all the guesswork and expense out of circadian lighting. This module is an LED board and current steering module that works with any single channel driver and any dimming protocol (i.e. 0-10v, ELV, DALI, etc.) to create brighter days and darker nights via a single dial. The system is offered to the public via OEM partners. Partners include Axis, Bartco, Lumenwerx, Pinnacle, and Spectrum Lighting, with more to come by LIGHTFAIR and shortly thereafter. (Strategies in Light)
GE Lighting GE has a partnership with Google giving them certain strategic advantages. The beauty of the new C-Life Smart Bulb is that, in most instances, no hub is required—and it uses the Google Home app, so I don’t have to go try to remember my App store password and download and learn a new app. During a demonstration at CES, I screwed in their bulb which the Google Home app immediately recognized as it was already pre-paired. It was the simplest smart bulb I every installed. GE is selling the world’s first “Made for Google” bulbs. They are available in many bulb types including the popular A-19 lamp that will easily fit in all of our lamps at home. I recall the days when so-called A LED lamps were flat and looked like weapons! (CES)
Nichia. The Color Tunable COB provides an innovative CCT tuning solution for human centric lighting applications. Where others use a combination of individual LED’s, or multi-cavity phosphor to achieve Color Tunability, Nichia uses a single cavity phosphor technique eliminating the “Tiger stripe” seen in other COB designs. Available in two sizes, and a CCT range from 2700K to 5000K, Nichia’s color tunable COB provides a smaller LES and better color mixing than other options on the market. (LightFair)
Lumenart, The X-Series is a group of 3D printed lighting diffusers. These shades are printed with a renewable biodegradable biopolymer. 3D printing allows for scalable designs, so most fixtures are available in three sizes ranging from 11″ to 55″ tall and 8″ to 16″ diameter.Using a neutral translucent white, the fixtures take on the color temperature of the LED source inside. Lumenart offers 2700, 3000, 3500 and 4000k LED sources.The complex and unique window pattern would require expensive tooling for injection molding but is not needed for the printing process. Lumenart can create custom designs for small quantities without expensive upfront tooling costs. (LightFair)
OSRAM Opto Semiconductors’
3030 LED boosts CRI 90 performance with its novel Quantum Dot conversion technology. The white mid-power LED features a unique Quantum Dot material with a narrow band red emission. Its spectral purity enables excellent light quality with a minimum CRI of 90 while delivering market leading efficacy (typ. 174 lm/W @3000K, 65mA, 25°C). The QD material is uniquely encapsulated, enabling a reliable on-chip operation and ensuring long lifetimes.