According to Sandia National Laboratories recent research, diode lasers could eventually compete with LEDs for home and commercial lighting solutions.

Sandia National Laboratories recently asked participants to rate various LED and diode laser lighting scenarios and found that in some situations consumers preferred the diode lasers.

As we know, LEDs are the most energy-efficient replacements for the incandescent bulbs. But less people know LEDs lose efficiency at currents higher than 0.5 amps. The diode laser actually improves at higher currents, which means it can provide more light than LEDs at higher amps.

Limited with a widespread assumption that the lighting it produced was unpleasant to the human eye, not much research had been done with the diode lasers.

But the studies showed there was a statistically significant preference for the diode-laser-based white light over the warm and cool LED-based white light. There was no statistically significant preference between the diode-laser-based and either the neutral LED-based or incandescent white light.

According to researchers,the results aren't expected to cause an immediate shift to diode lasers, as diodes are more expensive to fabricate and both yellow and green laser diodes have a ways to go. The warm white diode laser light that was preferable to consumers is created by a combination of the four laser beams -- yellow, blue, green and red.