Researchers say that FIPEL lights can be manufactured to produce just about any color of visible light in the solar spectrum. As Carroll told the BBC, FIPEL lights are vastly superior in that regard to CFLs. "[CFLs] have a bluish, harsh tint to them," Carroll explained. "It is not really accommodating to the human eye; people complain of headaches and the reason is the spectral content of that light doesn't match the Sun -- our device can match the solar spectrum perfectly.
"We are brighter than one of these curlicue bulbs and I can give you any tint to that white light that you want," Carroll added [source: McGrath].
Additionally, because they're made of plastic, FIPEL lights can be molded into a wide variety of shapes -- from bulbs that fit into the old sockets designed for incandescent bulbs to large sheets or panels that could fit into the spaces above ceiling tiles and behind walls, so that a soft, unobtrusive light can be evenly spread throughout a room [source: Dillow].
One critic questioned whether in fact FIPEL was actually a breakthrough, since warm white LEDs are already available (without the bluish tint) and CFLs have only a minuscule amount of mercury, too little to be much of an environmental hazard [source: Holloway]. But most of the reaction has been positive. The Web site Engadget, for example, called FIPEL the "super-bulb" [source: Cooper].