While nearly 50 percent of American households display artificial Christmas trees during the holiday season -- in comparison to the 20 percent to 25 percent with real trees -- not all of these artificial trees feature branches with built-in lights. Fewer still incorporate light emitting diode, or LED, lights as their primary lighting sources. In comparison to traditional, incandescent artificial Christmas tree lights; LED lights last longer, have better energy efficiency and are impervious to shattering. In addition, LED lights are always cool to the touch.
The artificial tree company Tree Classics manufactures the Cascade Fir artificial Christmas tree, which features distinctive, star-shaped LED lights. According to Galt Technology, the tree has a highly realistic appearance due to its tiered layers and high-quality needles that -- like natural pine needles -- take on varying shades of green. Sixty percent of these needles consist of injection-molded polyethylene plastic, or PE, the other 40 percent consist of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC. The Tree Classics Cascade Fir comes in three different versions: a 5-foot tree with 410 multicolored LED lights, a 5-foot tree with 410 clear LED lights and a 15-foot tree with 4,000 multicolored LED lights. The 5-foot Cascade Fir artificial trees each have 2,210 branch tips and maximum widths of 49 inches, and the 15-foot version has 20,108 branch tips and a maximum width of 90 inches. Tree Classics also manufactures a slim version of its Cascade Fir, which is 7-1/2 feet tall and comes with clear or multicolored LED lights. The slim Cascade Fir has 3,209 branch tips and a maximum width of 51 inches.
In a search for "pre-lit LED Christmas trees" on the consumer resource website Buzzillions, the Crestwood Spruce Slim artificial Christmas trees appears as the top-ranked product. The 5-foot tall tree comes with 150 built-in LED lights available in multicolored and soft white color options. At the bottom of the artificial tree is a metallic, urn-like container with a square base that provides aesthetic value as well as stability. The Crestwood Spruce Slim has a maximum width of 26 inches and offers 296 branch tips. Its needles are PVC.
The Branson Pine Slim ranks second in a Buzzillions search for "pre-lit LED Christmas trees." At 7 feet tall and 36 inches wide, the tree is larger than the Crestwood Spruce Slim and has a considerably greater number of branch tips, at 800. The Branson Pine Slim comes with 250 LED lights in clear or multicolored options. A stand-out feature of the tree is its hinged or collapsible branches, which help simplify storage and assembly. The needles of the artificial tree are PVC.