jesrf said:I bought a bunch of these (multi-colored LED's) in 2005 after Christmas at COSTCO for $3.97 a set. If you don't need them.... it pays to check, last year they marked them down on Christmas eve, I think they only has red though.....

Costco in South San Francisco

100 LED C6 -$2.00 PG&E $7.39
100 LED mini -$2.00 PG&E $8.99

BTW, for anyone curious, the box claims that the Costco C6 & mini lights (COLORED!!) take 4 watts of electricity. If that's indeed true, it's very impressive. Incandescent minis take 60 watts and regular can take up to 500W!!

The "white" costco (C6 or mini, I think there's only one kind), take 8 watts for whatever reason.

Awesome. However incandescents won't be permanently replaced. Just means I have another piece of arsenal in my toolbelt of lights. I will still use the regular indancesents for the whites, but the color strands will definitely be LED.

Concept is, a normal "light bulb" produces color in ALL spectrums to create white. A colored incandescent christmas bulb simply has a coating that blocks all other colors, but lets a single color out, say blue. The others are disipated as heat.

Now LED's that are colored are single spectrum, say 532nm for green. That LED ONLY produces that one narrow spectrum and nothing else.

Which is why colored LED strands are efficient and their colors are "punchy"

cdhamma said:I personally like the ones at Home Depot better -- they are $6.99 for a string of 50, but when I bought LED lights at Costco 2 years ago I got several bad bulbs in a string, and several strings with bad bulbs (out of 10 strings). Hopefully they have changed their manufacturer.

I've got a Home Depot gift card and would like to spend it on that christmas led set (of 50) for my tree.

Could you help me out? Do you have a model #? Maybe pics?

What lights does everyone recommend for outdoor use on the edge of the roof? I'm looking for something large like C6 or C7? The icicle look is nice but I still like the traditional look from the larger bulbs.

Prncsnyc said:Is this the only design of LED Christmas Lights? They seem pretty ugly to me but I would like some "traditional" looking tiny lights. Are the "smaller" bulbs what I am talking about or are they just smaller versions of the pinecone ones?

The C6 are the bigger bulbs
The "mini" bulbs at Costco are the ones you want. Oddly enough, they're a dollar something more expensive. Still, a great price with Costco warranty

JonesBeach said:It pays to check LED Christmas lights fairly closely to make sure you're getting what you want. LED technology has evolved by Leaps and Bounds in the past year or two, and the reason prices are be dropping so much may be because some manufacturers are using old (read: not so bright) LED technology in light strings. LED light strings should be a lot more durable than incandescent bulb strings.

State-of-the-art LEDs are now so bright in some cases that they're replacing strobe lights in police car roof lights and replacing bulbs in traffic signals. It won't be long before regular household light bulbs start becoming available with LEDs in them instead of wire filaments (which will be great provided the color temperature is OK because they'll last an insanely long time and will use a fraction of the energy of an incandescent bulb).

If this lights use very bright LEDs, you should know that those LEDs consume several watts each, 100 LEDs means 3 to 4 hundreds watts, isn't that too much?
The good for LEDs is they can "blink" many more times than the normal bulbs.

Alright guys.. here's an update

1) The box on Costco's C6 multicolored bulbs says they take 4 watts. I just tested them using a Kill-a-watt AND a UPM EM100.

Here are the results:
Kill-A-Watt: 2 watts
UPM EM100: 2 watts > sometimes at 3 watts > returning to 2 watts

2) The box on Costco's MINI multicolored bulbs says they take 4 watts. I just tested them using a Kill-a-watt.
Here are the results:
Kill-A-Watt: 2-3 watts (3 watts sometimes > 2)

3) The box on Costco's MINI *WHITE* bulbs says they take *8* watts. I just tested them using a Kill-a-watt.
Here are the results:
Kill-A-Watt: 3-4 watts (straight 2 watts)

My favorite is the C6 bulbs. Overall the best performance, best price, with the least electricity.

There you have it. A rundown of all of Costco's LED bulbs. Personally, I'm not a fan of the mini whites. The mini colored are OK, but the colored C6s are my favorite.

AJR said:The most costly color for LED's is pure white. The least costly colors are usually red and blue.

Which in itself is interesting if it holds true in general (not just that one site), since white LEDs are simply blue LEDs with a little phosphorus coating. The white LEDs would only be slightly more expensive, in terms of manufacturing costs. I haven't looked recently, but in the past blue and white were the most expensive and very similar in price, which would make sense given how they are made.

Interesting power analysis stisev, thanks! Care to plug in a regular strand of mini lights for comparison?

lol. I spend the time to review the product and Judfry gives me red. *sigh*