[SoftTalker]

I buy the "warm" light LEDs, which look (to my eye) closer to incandescents.

Standard LEDs bulbs are bright white, almost bluish, and yes "bright but not illuminating" describes them well. I feel many modern car headlights have the same issue.

The human eye doesn't focus the blue end of the spectrum very well.

[quickthrowman]

There is no such thing as a “standard LED lamp”. LED lamps come in a huge variety of shapes, various bases, power usage/lumen output, color rendering index, and color temperature.

Lots of companies sell cheap crappy A19 E26 base 5000K lamps, that doesn’t make them the ‘standard’.