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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#461

Post by ClumsyPilot »

zaroth wrote: post #315
browningstreet wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As consumers are we really supposed to do a ton of research on light bulbs and accept that we can't run down to Home Depot and get some new bulbs when they go out in our house?

If you want nice things that engineers spent thousands of hours researching, designing, and tuning, you can do the research to find those brands and pay extra for them. Most people don’t want to pay the premium and don’t value the benefits that come with that premium.

> you can do the research to find those brands and pay extra for them

This is such a lie - no, you can't do the research. There are no reseatch papers conparing consumer products

Doing the research means buying everything avaliable on the market and testing it yourself.

Googling is not research, its choosing which SEO'd fraudulent article will lie to you today.

Quality is going to shit, because there is no way to twll apart which item is qualify. The market is failing.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#463

Post by nathan_jr »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #228
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #150

I hate how many of these things aren't limits of the technology but rather the result of cost optimization and general apathy towards the customer. We know how to mass-produce quality LEDs to the point entire TVs are made of the things. We know how to mass-produce rectifiers pretty much ever since diodes existed. We know how to cool mass-produced objects in compact spaces. But because we apparently can't have nice th…

You can go buy high CRI, high quality bulbs right now. Nothing is stopping you. Here is one common vendor: https://store.waveformlighting.com/collections/a19-bulbs/ The issue isn’t that MBAs have cost reduced bulbs for no reason. The issue is that 95% of consumers will only choose the cheap bulbs, period. As a result, that’s what gets produced at scale. > We know how to mass-produce quality LEDs to the point entire T…

Any ideas why waveform doesn’t offer recessed lighting products? Is that a particular form factor that is difficult to support high quality output?

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#464

Post by fy20 »

Agentlien wrote: post #246
phoyd wrote: post #168

>If you’re lucky, the LED will have a CRI of 90 or higher EU has banned incandescent lights years ago and the situation for LED buyers is much different here. My local drug store chain (Rossmann in Germany) sells 1000lm E27 bulbs under their own Rubin brand with CRI>97 for 4.99€. No flickering and available as 2700K or 4000K. My Opple Light Master 3 even reads CRI 100. So for me right now, it's just going to the drug…

I read a lot of the other comments here before yours and they all seemed to describe a reality very different from my own experience. Then I saw yours and it suddenly makes sense. I am also in the Europe, most other commenters seem to be from the US. Here I find it is very easy to find good LED bulbs with the strength and color profile of my choice and I have used LED in all rooms of my house for the last 10+ years w…

I'm not sure if this is the norm in Europe, the only chain store I know that sells high CRI (>90) bulbs is IKEA. If I go to my local home store or supermarket, they are all junk Chinese bulbs that I doubt are really even 80 CRI.

CRI isn't even something you can filter by on their online catalogues. At least the new EU energy labeling let's you see what the specs are.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#465

Post by chongli »

jghn wrote: post #278
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go buy high CRI, high quality bulbs right now. Nothing is stopping you. Here is one common vendor: https://store.waveformlighting.com/collections/a19-bulbs/ The issue isn’t that MBAs have cost reduced bulbs for no reason. The issue is that 95% of consumers will only choose the cheap bulbs, period. As a result, that’s what gets produced at scale. > We know how to mass-produce quality LEDs to the point entire T…

The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality? And then how do I know that they stick with the high quality approach? What happens when a brand decides to rest on the laurels of their brand name and start slipping in lower quality parts?

The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time?

The issue is that LED bulbs aren’t simple devices like incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs have an electronic power supply inside which drives the LEDs at a constant current.

Power supply design is a major subfield of electronics engineering and there are all kinds of tradeoffs you can make to optimize for different goals. Consumer electronics almost always optimizes for cost, to the detriment of all else.

It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs that will practically outlive their owners [1]. The problem is that it requires putting more LEDs in the bulb and driving them at lower current. This makes the bulb cost more and the only benefit is longer life. For a manufacturer, there are nothing but downsides to this approach.

[1] https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#466

Post by ljf »

formerly_proven wrote: post #24

There's a lot wrong with LEDs in general and retrofit (E27 bulbs) in particular. In no particular order - LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly - Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly - Poor CRI and SSRI - Flickering - Dim-to-warm is uncommon - Poorly designed power supplies that age and fail quickly - The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve wit…

I would agree - BUT try 'Edison style' warm leds - these use the filament style.

They last for YEARS, and give a soft warm light - the bulbs I have a dim (but then 'Edison style squirrel cage bulbs have always been dim).

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#467

Post by throwuwu »

zaroth wrote: post #337
throwuwu wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget about premium, what the hell are impoverished people supposed to do?

Save on their electric bill with cheap LEDs that get the job done, while worrying about more important things than if the bulb flickers sometimes when you dim it?

Your answer is missing some steps involving money

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#468

Post by throw10920 »

jghn wrote: post #278
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go buy high CRI, high quality bulbs right now. Nothing is stopping you. Here is one common vendor: https://store.waveformlighting.com/collections/a19-bulbs/ The issue isn’t that MBAs have cost reduced bulbs for no reason. The issue is that 95% of consumers will only choose the cheap bulbs, period. As a result, that’s what gets produced at scale. > We know how to mass-produce quality LEDs to the point entire T…

The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality? And then how do I know that they stick with the high quality approach? What happens when a brand decides to rest on the laurels of their brand name and start slipping in lower quality parts?

> The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality ${PRODUCT} that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality?

That's the million-dollar question of the '10s and '20s (and likely beyond), and is far bigger than just bulbs.

The only solution that I can think of that could work is a distributed rating system with a built-in web of trust. It theoretically shouldn't be that difficult for people to adopt, if only they got collectively fed up with the universe of crap we have now, and someone provided a nice app and protocol to federate information with.

(direct regulation of quality, vendor-controlled ratings, and browsing Reddit/HN comment threads are all fatally flawed non-solutions)

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#469

Post by throw0101b »

fsh wrote: post #365
throw0101b wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another benefit to If all your indoor lighting was 5000K, then it would be like you would be living your indoor life constantly at noon. It's why software like f.lux was created (and the functionality has been incorporated into some OSes as well).

I believe this is more folklore than science. A significant color shift happens only for a couple of minutes during sunrise and sunset. The change in brightness is probably significant, but it is hard to believe that the color has a significant physiological effect (but the placebo could be very strong!). In my experience, f.lux and co. make it pretty difficult to read text due to the low contrast, and simply changin…

What's true for outdoor lighting is just as true for indoor lighting:

> It is crucial to control upward-directed light, but we now know that the color of light is also very important. Both LED, and metal halide fixtures contain large amounts of blue light in their spectrum. Because blue light brightens the night sky more than any other color of light, it’s important to minimize the amount emitted. Exposure to blue light at night has also been shown to harm human health[1] and endanger wildlife[2]. IDA recommends[3] using lighting that has a color temperature of no more than 3000 Kelvins.

* https://www.darksky.org/our-work/lighting/lighting-for-citiz...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#470

Post by smolder »

britzkopf wrote: post #153
DougN7 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just an anecdote, but I’ve had multiple “10 year” LED bulbs fail after just a year or two. I suspect much of the claims for these bulbs are theoretical as they just don’t hold up, probably for reasons the grandparent poster is pointing out.

I'll add a second identical anecdote. I've witnessed about a dozen die after about doing about 1/10th their promised duty.

Are they in fixtures designed for incandescents? "Boob lamps" for example are highly efficient LED bulb destroyers, since they don't breathe, and the bulbs overheat.
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