Agreed, the standard (850?) Lumen bulbs really don't put out much light for standard lighting. Still do a great job for ambient, mood or warm temp lighting. I recently bought some of the high lumen bulbs...and for larger rooms or rooms with big shadow casting potential, they are MUCH better!
Ew, only 850 lumens? I recently had a reliability issue with my Meross bulbs being able to connect to HomeKit, one that I just couldn’t resolve. So I swapped them out for LIFX bulbs yesterday, and those connected just fine. But the Meross bulbs are rated at 1300 lumens, and the LIFX bulbs were only 1100 lumens. 200 lumens didn’t seem like it would be too much of a difference (and I couldn’t find any other HomeKit compatible LED bulbs with 1300 lumen output, and there are no smart bulbs putting out 1500 or more lumens), but, once I got them in, I could tell that they’re not as bright as the Meross bulbs were. I do typically prefer having a brighter lit room, so that’s unfortunate. 850 lumens sounds like I’d need to add supplemental lighting to the mix.
When I was a kid, I never liked it when the fixture only had a 40w bulb in it and even 60w was a little dim for doing homework in my bedroom. I typically favored having a 60w paired with a 40w, never was able to get away with installing two 60w bulbs. LED bulbs and cooler color temperatures were a bit of a revelation for me. I use smart bulbs as primary lighting and prefer a daytime light and lighting intensity that emulates sunlight (to be fair, my apartment has north facing windows and is tree and building obscured, so I do need supplemental lighting to make up for it). The 1100 lumens of the LIFX bulb is noticeably dimmer than the 1300 lumens of the Meross bulbs (but having more reliable HomeKit control was more important to me, and the LIFX bulbs have a wider color temperature range of whites), so I couldn’t imagine using 850 lumens Phillips Hue bulbs as primary lighting. As bulbs in lamps on the side of your home theater room? Sure, that makes a ton of sense (and they’ll rarely be driven at max output anyway). As primary lighting for overhead fixtures? Not so much.
What’s the lighting figures for the higher intensity bulbs? I suspect it’s probably around 1000 lumens, as that would be equivalent to a 60w light bulb roughly. I know that running bulbs hotter does cause the LEDs to fail sooner, but, when you consider that a 1300 lumen LED bulb typically only uses around 10 to 15 watts, I’d really like to see some 20 watt LED smart bulbs (which have half the energy usage of 40w incandescent bulbs). Granted, I’d probably never drive them at max intensity, but it would be great for strong, room filling light (though it might make sense to limit them to adjustable whites instead of full RGB, if they’re going to be room filling).