Isn't It About Time to Upgrade the Tube Light Fixture?
In a recent post, I described how to retrofit a fluorescent lighting fixture to support LED tube lights, and in another post I explained in detail why this is necessary. Now, since LED tube lights have been on the market for at least three years now, one might expect that at least one fluorescent lighting fixture manufacturer would have introduced a fixture specifically designed for installation of the new LED tube lights. After all, the product is really a lot simpler, since the most complex and costly element in most of these fixtures, the ballast, is no longer required.
Some vendors have taken steps to deal with this issue. One approach is to eliminate the need to retrofit the fixture at all. Some vendors are introducing tube lights that are designed to work without having to remove the ballast, such as the EverLED-TR from a Virginia-based company called EverLED, but this particular product is priced at least twice the cost of most comparable LED tube lights on the market. I have come across a few examples of what appear to be retrofits of standard fixtures either bundled with LED tubes or marketed as a solution for LED tube lights, but these appear to be one-offs or made-to-order as opposed to an actual purpose-built fixture.
The unique attributes of LED lighting will ultimately lead to the replacement of tube light fixtures with LED lighting panels, but that will likely be a long time in the future. In the near term, the standardized form factors and familiarity that so many have with fluorescent tube fixtures and bulbs would see to suggest a market opportunity for purpose-built fixtures designed specifically for use with LED tube lights.
