I think the right word is disappointed, but I could use many others. NIRA isn’t a bad product per se, but its marketing is full of lies and misleading claims.
Since I’ve been asked a few times now, let’s examine the science of NIRA in depth.
What is NIRA?
NIRA is a new lighting company that mainly sells “Near-infrared enhanced” LEDs, but it also sells DC-powered lights.
Since NIRA’s main selling point is its light spectrum, I’m going to examine a couple of its normal light bulbs.
Let’s Examine NIRA’s Spectrum
Let’s start with the biggest lie I’ve ever seen in the lighting industry: NIRA emits full-spectrum light all the way out to 3000nm! Here is their marketing promo, which can be seen on this page.
When I first saw this, I about fainted, lol. This is such a blatant lie I couldn’t believe anyone would attempt it. There are only two possibilities here:
- Whoever made this is clueless as to how impossible this spectrum is to achieve in a light bulb.
- Whoever made this is being purposefully deceptive, which is worse.
The sun spectrum graphic is accurate, and to some extent, so is the middle graphic (although childishly simplistic).
The main issue is with the claimed “NIRA spectrum”, which is completely made up… I mean 3000nm? That’s far into infrared-C territory, which isn’t even remotely useful or desired.
Here’s a preview though of the actual spectrum from NIRA (in white):
But let’s show you through our spectrometer.
Testing the Spectrum
I placed both the A19 and BR30 from NIRA inside of our integration sphere to see what exactly they we’re putting out.
We’re going to examine lumen output, the visible light quality, and how much infrared these are actually producing.
Total Output and Lumens
First let’s examine total light output in lumens.
You can see that the A19 drops from an initial 450 lumens to a steady 400. This is of course lower than the advertised 600 lumens (surprise). The BR30 is steady but equally dim, however there isn’t a stated lumen value for the BR30 so we can’t verify any claims on that one.
In either case, these are pretty dim lights.
As for the actual spectral outputs, my spectrometer allows me to measure up to 950nm, so here are those graphs:
Here you can see that NIRA is using two different visible light diodes, which is odd. The A19 is using Red boosting phosphors as you can see from the spikes at 615 and 630nm.
There’s also definitely some infrared coming out of these! We’ll explore later wether or not this is of any significance however.
Visible Spectrum and Color Rendering
So let’s take a closer look at the visible light, as these NIRA bulbs claim to output super realistic full spectrum light just like nature and all that.
Well, they’re not. Here’s the visible light spectrums:
The visible diodes chosen for these bulbs are pretty average. The increased red/infrared helps them to perform well on color tests, but the lack of violet light compared to something like Yuji or Sunsy as well as the average blue pump phosphor design, means these lights aren’t going to make things “pop” the same way.
Comparing NIRA to a Full Spectrum LED
To give you an idea, here’s the NIRA bulbs compared to a 4000K Sunsy bulb:
A real full spectrum bulb like Sunsy just puts out a much higher quality visible light.
NIRA is still putting out some infrared, but is this worth the tradeoff for lower quality, dimmer visible light?
Let’s see.
Comparing NIRA to a Halogen Light
It’s getting harder and harder to find halogens, but they’re still around! This is usually what I recommend for people looking to increase their infrared exposure indoors.
So how does a NIRA bulb compare to a standard halogen? Let’s see:
So clearly a 53W halogen is putting out WAY more infrared A than the NIRAs… But here’s a graph showing the totals more clearly.
So yes, the 53W Halogen in this example is using… 53W, but you’d need about 11 NIRA A19s to match the infrared output, which would then put you at 107W, so maybe it’s not the most efficient way to get infrared?
At $28 per bulb, this also means it would cost you around $300 to match the infrared output of a normal $5 halogen bulb.
Testing Flicker
NIRA also claims to be flicker-free. It’s right there on the box!
So let’s actually test them and see if they are…
Here are the flicker results:
As you can see, both bulbs flicker well into the high risk range in every scenario. Although the A19 does much better until it’s dimmed.
It’s almost as if they didn’t test their own lights and just made random claims, very strange.
Let’s tear these apart and find out why it would be impossible for these to be flicker free and any qualified person would’ve known this during the design process.
NIRA Teardown and Lifespan Lies
One more ridiculous claim in that these bulbs will last 45 years based on a 3 hours per day usage. I’m sorry but these light will never last that long.
Weight
These bulbs are built very cheaply which can be determined from weight alone. Sunsy and Yuji bulbs utilize thicker aluminum heatsinks and thermal potting silicone which increases the weight of the bulb.
- NIRA: 29g
- Sunsy: 122g
- Yuji: 120g
Since these are the components that draw heat away from the electronics, lacking these will significantly reduce NIRAs lifespan.
The Lights
So let’s open these up, first up is the A19!
Looks like two kinds of diodes and some mini incandescents, how cute!
The BR30 has different diodes as you can see. It’s also very poorly bonded to its meager heatsink…
We’ll see the negative effect this has on cooling later.
Driver
Let’s take these apart to see what kind of driver they’re using…
Oh, none! Neither bulb has a dedicated driver, just some onboard capacitors! Well that explains the crappy flicker.
Not only are on-board driver solutions more likely to prematurely die due to heat stress, they’re all but impossible to create flicker-free as there’s no room for the components needed to eliminate the AC flicker.
These are cheap.
Heat
I left these bulbs on for about an hour to see what the temperature was getting to, and no surprise, it’s very high.
As you can see the A19 is doing a much better job of offloading its heat to the heatsink than the BR30.
The main issue with these bulbs however is the combo incandescent design and poor heatsinks.
They get VERY hot under the hood, and none of that heat is being offloaded efficiently.
It would be very difficult to create a bulb like this designed to last, as incandescents are notorious for creating HEAT, which is also an LEDs worst nightmare when it comes to longevity.
I don’t expect these to last long given this combo and the fact that these are not designed for optimal heat dissipation.
Conclusion
The NIRA bulbs themselves aren’t bad per-se, I mean they’re kinda crappy for the price, but it’s a novel idea and one worth exploring.
The main issue with NIRA is the blatant marketing lies present throughout the product, from the spectrum that’s not true, to the flicker that’s clearly present, to the poor build quality and lifespan lies.
Just skip these until they get their act together. Or just skip them because they’ve sullied their name… up to you.
