Sharp Corp announced new products of LED ceiling lights and LED light bulbs with enhanced efficiencies, etc Aug 5, 2011.

The company will release the LED ceiling lights and E17-base small LED light bulbs Aug 27, 2011, and E26-base LED light bulbs Sept 23, 2011.

Improved efficiencies of LED ceiling lights

Sharp announced three types of LED ceiling lights, and their input powers and installed fluxes are 73W and 5,750lm (up to a 12-mat (19.44m2) room), 48W and 3,750lm (up to an eight-mat room) and 32W and 2,600lm (up to a six-mat room).

The luminous efficiency of the six-mat type is 81.3lm/W, which is about 1.6 times higher than that of the company's existing product. And the efficiencies of the other LED ceiling lights are ones of the highest in the industry, the company said.

Though there are no manufacturer's suggested retail prices, the 12-, eight- and six-mat products are expected to be priced at ¥55,000 (approx US$705), ¥45,000 and ¥35,000, respectively.

All of the new LED ceiling lights have a function to adjust both light intensity and color intensity in 10 levels, making it possible to emit 100 different lights. Also, they are equipped with a night-light whose brightness can be adjusted in three levels.

Like Sharp's existing LED ceiling lights having the function to adjust light intensity and color intensity, the new products feature a function to adjust brightness in accordance with the brightness of the ambient light by using an illuminance sensor as well as the "Eco Dimming" function, which slowly reduces brightness over time after the light is turned on so that power can be saved without making people feel that the brightness is lowered.

Furthermore, Sharp added a new function called "Oyasumi (good night) Rhythm" to the new LED ceiling lights. When the "Oyasumi" button on the remote is pressed, the color of the LED ceiling light is turned to a warm color, and the brightness is reduced by half. Then, the brightness continues to be reduced over about 30 minutes until it is completely turned off (it is possible to turn on the night-light instead).

With this function, Sharp aims to let the users fall asleep naturally by increasing their melatonin level, said Tsunehiro Momoi, division deputy general manager & department general manager of the Product Planning Department, LED Lighting Business Promotion Center, Health and Environment Systems Group of the company.

Sharp realized the high luminous efficiencies by employing a method of arraying LEDs on the whole surface to directly illuminate the room, which Sharp calls "direct illumination method." The light emitted by the LEDs is diffused by the cover on the surface of an LED ceiling light so that light spreads widely and the "spotty" quality of LED light is removed. Sharp said that this method uses its technology developed for the direct-lit LED backlight of LCD TVs.

In the existing LED ceiling lights, Sharp arranges LEDs near the center of a ceiling light and uses a reflecting plate to illuminate the entire room. And the light from LEDs goes through a lens, reflecting plate and light diffusion cover until it illuminates the room, causing light loss through each of them.

This time, however, light loss was reduced because the direct illumination method does not use a lens or a reflecting plate, improving the efficiencies of the entire products. Because of the improved efficiencies, it became possible to reduce the number of white LEDs used for a ceiling light compared with Sharp's existing products. The company uses both daylight color and incandescent color white LEDs for the new ceiling lights.

E17-base LED light bulb has efficiency of 100lm/W

For both of the E26- and E17-base LED light bulbs, Sharp will release daylight-color and incandescent-color products.

E26-base LED light bulbs

The input power of the E26-base products is 9.2W. And their total luminous fluxes are 820lm (daylight color product) and 690lm (incandescent color product).

This time, Sharp improved brightness and increased light distribution angle to 180° or wider. The angle was widened by covering a fingertip-size white LED package with a light diffusion lens. And, by slimming down the heatsink to make the maximum diameter of the light bulb's cover larger than the diameter of the heatsink, it became possible to send more light in the direction of the base.

E17-base LED light bulbs

The most distinctive feature of the E17-base LED light bulb is that it has a high luminous efficiency. Sharp realized it by employing the company's own white LED with a high luminous efficiency.

With an input power of 4.6W, the daylight color product has a total luminous flux of 460lm and a luminous efficiency of 100lm/W. And those of the incandescent color product are 390lm and 84.8lm/W.

Moreover, as in the case of the E26-base LED light bulbs, Sharp slimmed down the heatsink of the E17-base products. It reduced the external diameter near the base by 1mm and increased the number of instruments that can be attached such as hermetically sealed instruments.

The company made improvements to the thermal design so that it becomes possible to efficiently release heat from each component of the power supply circuit inside the heatsink. As a result, it became possible to use the slimmer heatsink. The radiation performance of each component of the power supply circuit was improved by closely attaching radiation sheets to it.

There are no manufactured suggested retail prices. But the expected retail prices of the E26-base products and the E17-base products are ¥4,500 (approx US$57.8) and ¥3,000, respectively.