Osram ORBEOS OLED Light hands-on

The kind folks over at Osram has sent us one of their new ORBEOS OLED Lighting panel for a review. The ORBEOS is a round (88mm diameter) glass panel that's only 2.1mm thick (it weights 24g). The efficiency is 25lm/W. The brightness of the panels is 1,000cd/m² with power input of less than a watt, and they should last around 5,000 hours. The panels are available now via OSRAM's
site, they cost €240 each. The panels were actually released back in November 2009, and OSRAM say that they are happy with the sales and interest so far.

OSRAM ORBEOS

Read on to see my impressions of this OLED panel, and how it compares to Philips' Lumiblade panels which were the first available OLED panels...

What's in the box

The ORBEOS come in a small box which contains the panel inside the 'development kit'. OSRAM has done a great job at this I think, it's very easy to handle. It has a battery (it even comes charged) and it charges via a USB. So what you basically get is a large OLED flashlight.

The kit contains a dimmer and an on/off switch. You can easily take the panel out (there are four plastic caps on the sides, you just have to remove them). OSRAM say that it's important to return the panel in the right direction - to the minus and plus connectors on the kit. Obviously I didn't read the instructions before playing with it, so I can say that I did return the panel facing the wrong way and tried to switch it off. It didn't work, but it didn't seem to harm the panel. Don't try this at home, anyway.