I've switched out all of the bulbs in my house to LED and learned a lot in the process. You have to learn some new terms. I honestly can't tell the difference in my house now after replacing with all LEDs vs with halogens - but use about 80% less energy than I used to on lighting.
Some stuff that was helpful for me:
1) Brightness - don't think about Watts - that's how much power it uses, not how bright it is. To figure out how "bright" an LED bulb is, look at the lumens - the more lumens, the brighter the bulb.
2) Color - this is measured in degrees kelvin. The lower the degrees kelvin (~2700) the more yellow the light, the higher the degrees kelvin (~5000) the more blue. Go to Home Depot or Lowes or something and you can see a demo. In my opinion, for a nice light that I want in my home, go for 2700-3000 kelvin. Avoid 5000 like the plague.
3) Quality of the light - measured using the CRI - the higher the number (max 100) the closer it is to an incandescent bulb, with a full spectrum of component colors. Most LED bulbs are at least 80. As a rule of thumb, the closer you get to 100, the higher the cost of the bulb.
4) Direction - it's true that LED light is directional - but it seems that the LED manufacturers have found a bunch of ways around this - and proudly label so on the packaging.
If you need a specialty bulb for recessed can lighting or a fixture or something, you can find pretty good ones on Amazon - but be sure you look at 1-4 as above when shopping.
My guess is that you have seen some 5000kelvin LEDs with a low CRI rating that are unidirectional. I agree those are terrible - but don't at all represent the great options that are out there.
Good luck
