Personally, I think the LEDs are much brighter than the old ones. And they give a truer blue/red/yellow/whatever than the old incandesce type.
My only tip would be concerning the white lights. Make sure you know what you want.
The regular white LEDs are VERY white. (My husband says they look like prison yard lights.) I actually like them in some cases.
But if you want something that mimics your old lights, get what is called "soft white" clear lights. They have a bit of a yellowish ting to them.

I am gradually changing over to the LEDs. They are much more expensive, so doing it all at once, wasn't in the cards. They are indestructible!

We bought the LED lights in the white for our tree the past 2 yrs ...added some each yr ... the 1st yr I thought our tree looked naked cause was to use to have hundreds of mini-lights ... now I like them as we add more...I don't know the #, party ... but they are like the old fashioned bulb lights but much smaller ... good on the utility bill, too & no trouble w/them not working yet. Jeanne S.

Thanks for the replies, OA and Jeanne! I have since done a lot of searching and checking reviews. OA, I'm so glad you mentioned the "soft white" lights! That is definitely what I'll want. And, Jeanne, while searching I also found mini LED lights with brown cords for my grapevine trees! They have a choice of 4" or 6" spacing with different length cords, so now I just need to figure out which I want. :)

I also found something called LED wide-angle lights -- they emit light in all directions, so are supposedly brighter than traditional-shaped mini bulbs. Has anyone here tried them? I'm thinking of ordering from 1000bulbs website and the wide-angle LED lights are shown here.

It sure would be easy to spend a lot of money on these LEDs! but if they last a lot longer than the incandescent kind they'd be worth it.

About 4 years ago I converted to leds for the outside lights. Mainly I converted because of the low power consumption. I got tired of having half of my front yard unlit by christmas eve, because I was always blowing circuits because of the incandesant lights outside. DH was never going to let me have an electrician out to upgrade our electrical so the only option was to go led.

I luv, luv, luv the wide angle 5mm lights. They are super bright and since they emit light in all directions, they are great in deciduous trees and shrubs.

When you purchase leds just be careful of the white you buy. The "white" is the old led white which will have a slight blueish tinge. The "pure white" is very white, like ghost white(I accidently did those on an indoor stair bannister one year and all I could think of was halloween). The "warm white" is closest to incandesant lights.

However, I only use leds outside. Even though the warm white comes close to the incandesant glow, I find indoors if you have both, they are different enough to clash. And the blue color inside could blind you, lol.

The wide angle leds that I purchased years ago all have 5" spacing. I have noticed that the spacing is moving to 4" lately, I think that maybe companys are trying to get the prices down by cutting the cost of the wire down.

I have ordered leds from 1000bulbs and they are a good company, also holidayleds.com has good quality.

Sorry for the long entry, but I could talk leds all day. Luv em!!!

By the way, I have hundreds of strings of leds outside and have not yet blown a circuit and in four years I think I have only lost about 2 or 3 strings due to 2 or 3 going out in a sting( I'm a little bit of a perfectionist).

decorcrzy, thank you so much for that info and the info on ordering! I want to switch to LEDs simply because the incandescent minis never seem to last more than 2 years for me, so I like hearing that the LEDs have a good track record. Thanks for the note on mixing light types too! I'd have never thought of that.

I've run like the wind from LED Christmas lights, but it sounds like there are some better options than what I've seen. In our last home, the crazy new neighbors across the street lit up their house with LED lights and those things felt like they were burning holes in my retinas. So bright and painful to look at. Also didn't like the fluorescent look to the white lights...I know it's said that's a true white, but I don't like it.

SO, is there a better option in LED Christmas lights than what I've described above? If so, I may just have to give them a chance.

Thanks!!

This is interesting. We have all kinds of Christmas lights.
The led's are prettier lights in my opinion. I will continue
to replace as need be. I love the big old lights on the eves
and the variety below. As of last year all kinds were
available for sale here.

Punk

I have colored LED strings for my tree inside and warm white strings and icicles for outside. I like the colored LEDs better than the minis they replaced; much brighter and truer colors. Lights will be less expensive at after Christmas sales, of course, but you may not find exactly what you want. I did see some recently at Big Lots...I think that's where I finally found my warm white icicles...

I've had terrible luck with LED strings. The icicle lights we used outside one year were unusable the next due to half string outages. I worked on them for two days trying to find the problem and only got 1 string to work. I guess the mild/humid weather here wreaks havoc.
I actually liked the blue-white color because it looked like moonlight on snow. We moved from the Midwest to the Gulf coast 6 yrs ago and it was a nice reminder of a real winter night.

I watched a presentation on QVC concerning LED lights and they were talking about the improved technology and how angling the bulbs themselves has improved the glow factor. I have some outdoor LED lights that are battery operated and love them. Have used them for 2 years and have had great luck with them.