These new lamps are intensely bright - floodlight is indeed the better word, with all the comfortable thoughts that brings: prisons, runways, interrogations, and Sainsbury's carparks.
The lamps are not more directional than the old and since they are a good metre higher, they shine in peoples' bedrooms.
The only good point is that many of them are now positioned in the middle of trees which gives the roads a Christmasy feel, but this defeats the object really.
As for savings, they seem to be on full power 24h a day, presumably to draw complaints so they can turn them all off.