request for advice about lightboxes

[baratron]

After a couple of months of feeling blah which hasn't improved, I recognise that the dawn simulator alarm clock I have just isn't enough to deal with my SAD this year. Lying in bed with the full light of it streaming into my eyes barely improves my functionality. I feel like I'm living in perpetual twilight, and have very little inclination to do anything.

But I have a problem with buying a lightbox. I'm very environmentally conscious. Every room in this house, bar the kitchen, is lit with low energy fluorescent bulbs because I want to consume as little electricity as possible. I really don't want to use a lightbox that's running at 200 W for an hour a day, because that's like leaving every light in the house on for an hour a day. And I'm having great trouble finding out the energy consumption of different lightboxes from seller's websites. Some of them mention a 55 W fluorescent tube, or 2 x 80 W bulbs, but others simply say things like "LED lights consume only 1/10 the power of conventional incandescent lights, yet are 10 times brighter". Great, wonderful, white LEDs are lower energy than ordinary lightbulbs - but are they lower energy than a fluorescent tube? And more to the point, are they as good for SAD?

So, uh, if anyone knows someone I can talk to about this, or a retailer that details the energy consumption of every lightbox so I can make a fair comparison, that'd be great. (I simply don't have the energy to visit individual manufacturer's websites to try to take in information :/ )

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

The lightboxes with LEDs in do, in fact, appear to be "loads" (http://www.electronichealing.co.uk/products/litebook_elite_sad.htm) - somewhere between 12 and 17 depending on how many of the bright spots in the picture are LEDs and how many are the reflectors.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

I imagine that each bobble has a bunch of LEDs in it, given how many you get in a traffic light or car headlamp.

That pictured one is only 5 inches across, which strikes me as very small for keeping your head in the beam, and wouldn't necessarily provide the daylight effect. Mine is about 2 foot by 15 inches, which means it shines light at me even while I move about while eating near it. On the other hand, mine has to be plugged in rather than being able to use batteries and be portable.

Have you sat near mine? You're welcome to come over and try it out.

[otterylexa.livejournal.com]

x_mass has an Apollo GoLite P1 (http://www.electronichealing.co.uk/products/sad_golite.htm), which has a 6x11 array of blue LEDs. Don't know much about it.