That's a useful metric though, it means "produces about as much light as a 60W incandescent light bulb"

And if you're buying products with Energy Star certification, they have to meet a specific output requirement to claim an equivalent wattage: https://www.energystar.gov/products/lighting_fans/light_bulb...

If you're buying no-name brands off Amazon with no certification, they may very well be lying to you. But "60W equivalent" is still a metric with a specific meaning, whether or not a particular shitty company is lying to you about it.

Maybe we need an independent "this spec sheet isn't full of bullshit" certification for hard drives.

"Equivalent RPM" would make sense for something where there was actually an equivalence. Like if a drive had two sets of heads (halving the seek time), or if an SSD called itself a 20krpm equivalent or something. This is just straight up lying about a standard metric.

I thought that based on the amount of lumens it produces

It is, and that's the point: you can screw a 60W equivalent LED into any socket where you previously had a 60W incandescent and have about the same amount of light for a much lower energy cost.

You'd think so. But I've seen LEDs that are kind of like spotlights and they market them as the wattage based on the brightness under the spotlight not the total lumens it produces.

Only in the fine print do they disclose how many actual lumens.

Not everywhere -- LEDs aren't always dimmer switch compatible, and mismatched bulbs on a shared circuit will have weird interactions.

So why not use the actual measurement that the customer is interested in: The light quantity? Power consumption (W) seems to be the wrong measurement since you're comparing apples to oranges.

Are they just basing it on lumens? There might be more interplay, i.e. if you can get by with fewer lumens if you emit in a different wavelength.