I love all things high tech.......couldn't resist buying a 2 wattish LED bulb many years ago just to see how well it worked. It had the light of a match......but that's how new things start out sometimes. When we built our home 18 or so years ago, we were pretty much limited to long or circular fluorescent lights with ballast and starter. And when the power dipped to 160 in the evening, as it often did, it might take a few minutes for the light to finally come on.
Then about 15 years ago, the first electronic ballasts came out (here)......and I promptly replaced most all the heavy old style ballasts in our home. Touch the switch and instant light! Sweet.
A few days ago I spotted one of the new style LED circular lights in Global (made by EVE). Since I had one remaining old style ballast in the house, I decided it'd be an opportunity to replace it with an LED. The circular LED is very light, a single piece with 3 strong magnets on the back and two small wires. No ballast, no starter, nothing other than connect the two wires to your power supply.
If you include screws and nuts, ballast, starter, clips, etc, I took off 17 pieces from the old light and replaced it with the single LED light. Instantly on. Very bright. I think it cost 350 baht......but feel certain the price will drop like a rock as there's really not much to the piece. Love it!

I also tried LED's when they first came on the market - used them to replace halogen bulbs in a chandelier because i was changing a bulb every couple of months. That was about 8 years ago when in the UK. I believe the LED's are still going strong - although the 1 watt bulbs back then were miserably dim and uni-directional, had to sit directly below them to actually read at night. Also cost over 200 baht equivalent.

Now you get a bulb for under 50 baht, not glass but plastic and very light. Can also get any colour or even changing colours (got one to amuse my daughter last Xmas, 7 colours). I agree their great. I only buy LED now. There is also potentially no limit to how bright you want - all they have to do is increase the number of LED's in the bulb or make a fitting with multiple LED's in one central fitting - the wattage has increased rapidly the last couple of years and price still declining.

I've just replaced all bulbs in my house after seeing how much the price went down. Should hopefully see leccy bills come down a bit too...if only there was an LED equivalent to air con