Best LED Floodlights of 2024

Good question!

First, a little bit about me: I’m not a lighting engineer, but I’ve been testing and reviewing light bulbs for CNET for more than five years. That includes hundreds of hours in our homemade lighting lab, a climate-controlled room with a spectrometer and a integrating sphere which allows us to perform the most scientific and accurate light bulb testing we possibly can. I have also visited and written articles about major North American lighting manufacturers such as Cree and GE to gain a better understanding of their methods and standards. This is one of many LED buying guides and reviews that I try to update as often as possible.

We load each light we test into the center of our integrating sphere — a large, hollow ball with special, reflective paint coating the inside. Our spectrometer peers through a small hole in the side of the sphere, with a “baffle” that prevents it from looking directly at the light. Instead, light from the light bounces around inside, allowing our spectrometer to take reliable, calibrated measurements for things like brightness and color temperature.

We log those brightness measurements every 10 minutes for 90 minutes and then do a final measurement at the end. At that point, I plug the bulb’s power cord into several dimmers and then measure the average maximum and minimum settings for all of those switches, while also paying close attention to any flickering or buzzing.

Once a bulb we test is ready in the lab, we look very closely at things like light distribution, tone, and color quality. Our photography and video team (Tyler Lizenby, Chris Monroe, and Vanessa Salas here in Louisville) are a huge help at this point, with standardized photography that allows us to look at those metrics very closely. They’re also just really good at taking pictures of light bulbs.

That said, what matters most isn’t what I think when I’m taking measurements in our lighting lab — it’s what you and your family think after you’ve screwed those bulbs in and turned them on in your living room or other space. Like I said, LEDs like these are designed to be durable and waterproof and will last for years, so it’s worth buying one that you’ll actually be happy living with. There are a lot of good options out there these days, so you really don’t have to compromise. I’m just here to help you find those “just right” bulbs a little faster — or more efficiently, you might say.