GE Energy Smart Spiral CFL 26 Watt T3 Spiral 1-Pack

These CFL dim but not to the extent of a halogen or incandescent bulb. On a standard 15 amp switch wall dimmer, the lever can be moved to three quarters dimmed (1/4 power) and the bulb diminishes to about half luminosity. I do not know what it means electrically, the bulb can be dimmed 3/4 and the light down to 1/2. At less then 3/4 dimmed, the bulb extinguishes. To rejuvenate the light again, the lever must be stationed at 100 percent on to re-activate the bulb. What this means in energy savings remains unknown. These bulbs replaced LED dimmable bulbs that are not intense enough for the overhead track lighting eight feet up. I will note the difference on the electric bill next month.

With a poor description offered, I bought these to replace incandescent bulbs that are hooked to dimmer switches. While these do sort of dim down, it is very little and IF you dim them down more than at at the same settings as your incandescent bulbs, they turn off at about the 80% level...so buyer beware. These are the only CFL bulbs you can use with a dimmer circuit, so in that venue, they sort of work, but IF you want to dim them down to some romantic level, forget it. Since these are a transitional light source in between incandescent and LED bulbs, I am waiting for LED bulbs to come down drastically in price to replace these CFL bulbs which aren't environmentally friendly and which require special care in recycling them. At about $4 per bulb, these are too spendy, so consider temporarily replacing your dimmer switch with a standard 'on/off' variety, and get the regular CFL bulbs for under $2 each...until the LED bulbs that you can dim are at a price of around $1 to $2 each! I don't know even IF these will last anywhere close to the manufacturer's hype, but that may add to or diminish my ratings depending on how long these last. Stay tuned!