Best CFL?

[jeepmor]

I've been using CFLs since they came out.  I bought them at Home Depot and they stated they had a 5 year guarantee so I took a sharpie and wrote the month and year that I installed them on the base.  Sorry, don't recall the brand or Kelvin level or I would share that too.  I think they were all soft white, didn't try any blue ones til the next round.  I've repeatedly gotten ~5 years out of several in a row now.  Some of them 5 years to the month.

The ones installed outdoors and in the garage appear to fail at 3 years consistenly.  I really like them and see the benefit as lower operating cost.  PGE (Portland General Electric) gave out a bunch of incentive coupons about 5 years ago with our power bill statements.  The replacements that are taking the place of this first batch are noticeably better in regards to startup time.  I've never noticed any flicker issue except as an indicator that it's about to fail.

[Perd Hapley]

jeepmor, are you talking about the screw-in type that replace incandescent bulbs, or the push-in type that require a fluorescent fixture with a ballast? 

I've never seen any flickering in the screw-in type, but I've only been using those for a couple of years, and not that many of them.  The push-in type (such as PLs) don't seem to last that long, but probably because I was installing those in old fixtures with old ballasts (transformers).  They can flicker pretty badly, but again, the ballast is probably to blame.  The CFLs (I presume) have their own ballast built into the bulb, and ballasts usually last much, much longer than an incandescent bulb.  So no worries there, I should think.