Maybe, but I'm not seeing it. I got these 50-60lm Chinese no-name 1w star led's from ebay and they run on about 320mA. Five of them are powered by a ballast, I got a couple of 24v ones (24-28v or something like that), but you can get 12v ballasts too (10-15v). Ballasts are ~85% efficient, and the five leds draw 0.24A at 25v. 6w (guessing a watt for each led and another for the ballast) all up, they are really bright but very specular (need to be behind a diffusor). The colour is not that bad, I have a fenix torch with a Q5 100lm/w cree led in it and it's a bit more "blue" in comparison. The only downside is these cheap ballasts (I know I should say "constant current regulator" for LEDs) aren't dimmable via PWM. I would hazard a guess these are on a par with a good quality electronic ballasted fluoro for light output--seriously.