The best LED tube lights for replacing fluorescent tubes

A fluorescent fixture has a part most people never see: the ballast, a box inside the housing that starts and regulates the tube. LED tubes do not need it, and what you buy depends on what you want to do about it.

Feit, which publishes a compatibility guide for exactly this, splits the options three ways. Type A works with your existing compatible ballast with no rewiring - you swap the tube and you are done. Type B bypasses the ballast: you remove it and wire line voltage directly to the sockets. Type A+B, the hybrid, does either, so it runs on the ballast today and can be rewired the day that ballast dies.

That last option is why hybrids dominate this page. A ballast is the part of an old fixture most likely to fail next, and a hybrid tube means its failure costs you an afternoon rather than another set of tubes.

Before you buy anything, find out what is in the fixture. Feit's guide gives the procedure and it takes five minutes.

1. Turn off the breaker. Not the wall switch - the breaker.
2. Take the tubes out and set them somewhere they will not roll off a bench. Old fluorescent tubes contain mercury and need to be recycled rather than put in a bin.
3. Open the cover over the wiring channel.
4. Read the ballast label and write down the model number.
5. Check that model against the maker's compatibility list. On the list, a Type A tube will work. Not on the list, or no label left to read, and you want a hybrid or a bypass tube.

Two other things to note while the cover is off: whether the fixture takes two tubes or four, and whether the sockets are the usual bi-pin G13. The tubes here are all 4 ft G13, which is what the overwhelming majority of garage and basement fixtures use.

1. Type, stated clearly. A tube that does not say whether it needs the ballast is not a candidate. Every pick here states its type.
2. Published lumens per tube. The number you plan a garage with. These run from 1,800 to 3,200 per tube.
3. Pack size against the fixtures you actually have. This category is sold in trade quantities - 20, 30 and 50 tubes - which is wrong for a two-bay garage. Two of the picks here come in the sizes a house needs.
4. Rated life and warranty. 35,000 to 50,000 hours published, against a fluorescent tube that dims for years before it dies.
5. What the maker publishes at all. One pick has no manufacturer page we could open, and its entry says so.

We did not test these. Every figure is the manufacturer's published specification, or the retailer listing where the maker publishes none, with the page it came from in the sources at the foot of this page.

Sunco T8 hybrid A+B, 10-pack - the pick. 2,400 lumens a tube at 120 lumens per watt, published by Sunco, with 50,000 hours and an ETL listing. It runs on the existing ballast now and can be rewired as a bypass the day that ballast fails, which is the thing you actually want from a tube you are fitting to an old fixture.
Cons: 5000K and 6000K only, so there is no warm option for a space you spend evenings in; not dimmable; ten tubes is more than one fixture needs; and the bypass path, when you take it, means line voltage at the sockets.

Feit T848/840/LEDG2 Type A, 2-pack - the no-wiring option. 1,800 lumens from 18 watts, 35,000 hours and a 5-year warranty, and it is enclosed fixture rated. The real reason it is here is that Feit publishes the ballast compatibility list that tells you in advance whether a straight swap will work - most brands leave you to find out by fitting one.
Cons: instant-start ballasts only, so the label check is not optional; the old ballast stays in the circuit drawing power and can still fail; 4100K only; the least light of the tubes here, and not dimmable.

JESLED T8 A+B, 2-pack - the brightest, in the size one fixture needs. 3,200 lumens a tube, which is a third more than the Sunco and nearly double the Feit, in a two-pack that fits a single twin-tube fixture exactly. The lens is frosted rather than clear, which softens the row of diodes you otherwise see.
Cons: no CRI published and no manufacturer page we could open, so every figure is the listing's; 5000K only; dimmability not published either way; and 24 watts a tube is the highest draw here - that extra output is not free.

Hykolity 4 ft shop light - when the fixture should go instead. 6,500 lumens from one integrated fixture that hangs on a chain and plugs in, with cords and mounting hardware in the box. If the housing is rusty, the sockets are cracked or the ballast is already dead, replacing the whole thing is less work than retrofitting it.
Cons: it is a fixture, so it has to be hung and plugged in; no CRI published; 5000K only; not dimmable. The rest of the category is in garage and shop lights.

The fixture works and the ballast is on the list. The Feit Type A. Ten minutes, no tools, nothing to label.

You do not know what the ballast is, or it is old. The Sunco hybrid. It works either way, so the unknown stops mattering.

One fixture, and you want the most light out of it. The JESLED two-pack at 3,200 lumens a tube.

The ballast is already dead. Bypass it with a hybrid wired as Type B - with an electrician if that is not work you do - or replace the fixture with a shop light and skip the question.

The space is unheated. This is the strongest argument for the swap: fluorescent tubes start dim below about 50F and may not strike at all in the cold, while LEDs come on at full output. More on that in lighting for cold and unheated spaces.

Label the fixture if you bypass the ballast. The next person to open it - possibly you, in five years - needs to know the sockets are wired to line voltage. A strip of tape and a marker is the whole job.

Do the whole fixture at once. One LED tube beside one fluorescent tube in the same fitting looks wrong and, on a shared ballast, can misbehave. Change both.

Recycle the old tubes. Fluorescent tubes contain mercury. Most hardware stores and municipal recycling centers take them; a bin is not the right answer.

Keep one color temperature per space. These tubes are 4100K and 5000K - working whites. If the garage doubles as a room you sit in, that is worth knowing before you buy ten of them, and 4000K vs 5000K covers the difference.

Do not put any of these on a dimmer. None is published as dimmable. A non-dimmable load on a dimmer buzzes, flickers and shortens the life of both - dimmer compatibility explains why.