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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#111

Post by account42 »

apienx wrote: post #9

It went like this in the EU: "Bulk purchasing of incandescent bulbs was reported ahead of the EU lightbulb ban. Many retailers in Britain, Poland, Austria, Germany and Hungary have reported bulk purchasing,[126][127][132][133][134] and in Germany, sales rose by up to 150% in 2009 in comparison to 2008.[125] Two-thirds of Austrians surveyed stated they believe the phase-out to be "nonsensical", with 53.6% believing th…

> From my understanding, the ban will start somewhere around Q4 this year. Still, you'll always be able to buy them for "decoration purposes".

They are very efficient heat bulbs after all.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#112

Post by jfrej »

roel_v wrote: post #56
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…

"Good indoor lightning" Man I'd love me some indoor lightning, no matter the cost.

You can get it in a bottle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-93Ij5WIcok&t=28s

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#113

Post by Cthulhu_ »

timw4mail wrote: post #35
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…

Not to mention space constraints for power supplies, and cooling the LEDs enough. For all the benefits of LED lights, incandescent bulbs are infinitely simpler.

Simpler and better light, but bad energy efficiency.

Although, as was pointed out to me at some point, because LEDs are more efficient, people feel less guilty about having more of them; replacing 1x40 watt bulb with 8x5 watt LEDs means the net result is the same. I've got like 7 cute LED spotlights in my TV closet for example, I wouldn't have had that setup if I was forced to use incandescent lamps.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#114

Post by axus »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #70
davidmurdoch wrote: post #52

My pool pump and AC will cost me about $700 US this month. Switching from incandescent to LED bulbs might have saved me a few dollars. And for what? For expensive bulbs that flicker, don't reproduce colors well, last less than a year, and undulate and buzz when dimmed (yes, the dimmable ones)? I think we've been bamboozled by the light bulb industry.

Wow, what kind of awful bulbs are you buying? I have literally a house full of LED bulbs, some of which are on dimmers, and have experienced literally none of these problems. Just for starters, I haven't had a single LED bulb fail in the 8-odd years I've been using them in my home. But maybe there's an argument that you have to pay a significant premium to get a bulb that doesn't have the issues you've run into and,…

I've had plenty fail, stuff from the grocery store, Home Depot, Lowes. Actually the fan-size bulbs I ordered from Amazon were the worst ones, which I expected since it was almost the cheapest. Interestingly, the generic ones I got from a state-sponsored efficiency program have been the best.

But the ones that didn't fail have been fine, and lasted for years. Like CPUs, the yields aren't good but the ones that pass give good service for a long time.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#115

Post by balfirevic »

alistairSH wrote: post #53
eig wrote: post #6

The irony of this article is that the author is suffering from “too much choice”. LEDs have so much more capability than fluorescent and halogen bulbs that the burden has fallen on the consumer to sort out what dimmability, temperature, and lumens they need. It used to be that you only had one option so you didn’t have to think about it. Anyone who works in stage lighting or art knows that light is complicated. We sh…

It used to be that you only had one option so you didn’t have to think about it. But, that single option was at least "good enough". I never bought a normal incandescent bulb only to have the color rendering/brightness/etc be downright awful. LEDs come packaged as "daylight" or "bright white" or whatever else. I want one that's labelled "just like your normal 60W incandescent".

> But, that single option was at least "good enough"

It wasn't if you wanted a good amount of light without having kW heater over your head.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#116

Post by giraffe_lady »

mhb wrote: post #77
QuarterReptile wrote: post #2

Non-dimmable bulbs are the author's problem. First, bans on incandescent bulbs are foolish because they encourage defeatist foolishness like this article (as far as I can tell, for the sake of virtue signaling and modest acceleration of a change that was already happening.) The CFLs which preceded LEDs were really awful, especially for closets (where they'll linger for decades, given the low utilization of those bulb…

> Non-dimmable LEDs are right up there with running toilets and rodents in the pantheon of things to make homeowners lose their minds. Really? I've never understood the affection for dimming lights. Essentially always I want lights on or off.

For me it's like if the sound on your computer was either on or off. I adjust the light to the specific task, time of day, my mood & energy level, and what the natural light is doing to the room which also varies by season, time and weather.

I'm really miserable in a too-bright room. I have some sensory processing issues which contributes a lot to this admittedly, but when I talk about it with people who don't they often understand it immediately or admit to experiencing the same thing, though to a smaller extent.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#117

Post by elil17 »

noneeeed wrote: post #75

I've noticed that my LEDs seem to have a bimodal lifespan. In parts of the house where we have many of the same kind, we went through a period early on where a few lasted much less time than I expected and had to be replaced, but now I've not had to replace any for several years. There seems to be an element of luck with the cheaper ones. The ones in a batch that work well just keep going, while a small number fail r…

In failure engineering this is called the "bathtub curve." Those early failures are called "infant mortality" and are typically due to errors in the factory. In 20-30 years you'll get wear out failures, as the components hit the end of thier designed lifespans. Generally in manufacturing any new product/process has a pretty high infant mortality rate which then gets worked out over years of improvements to design and manufacturing process. You can either do factory testing (probably what high quality LED brands are doing) or just ship the product and let the customer handle it.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#118

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ghaff wrote: post #92
userbinator wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the limits of their ratings. They could make LED bulbs last many orders of magnitude longer and be more efficient, but they don't (unless forced to[1]) because they prefer planned obsolescence. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793

Or because, as with many products and services, many people go into Home Depot or wherever and buy whatever is cheapest--especially in a world where higher price does not necessarily equate to higher quality or longer life.

> especially in a world where higher price does not necessarily equate to higher quality or longer life.

There's the kicker; how can you tell when something is better quality anymore? Qualifiers like "is this device run at max capacity or is there leeway" are never listed on packaging or product features.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#119

Post by DennisP »

fsh wrote: post #87
eig wrote: post #6

The irony of this article is that the author is suffering from “too much choice”. LEDs have so much more capability than fluorescent and halogen bulbs that the burden has fallen on the consumer to sort out what dimmability, temperature, and lumens they need. It used to be that you only had one option so you didn’t have to think about it. Anyone who works in stage lighting or art knows that light is complicated. We sh…

It is quite interesting that 2700K is often considered to be a "normal" color temperature, even though it is much yellower than sunlight (around 5000K, depending on atmospheric scattering). This stems purely from a technological limitation of incandescent bulbs. The bulb filaments simply cannot withstand a temperature significantly above 2700K. Even though LED bulbs have no such limitations, a color temperature of on…

Sunlight is great during the day but in the evening, you want to be closer to the color of sunsets and campfires.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#120

Post by sidewndr46 »

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…

It is interesting you cite that the cost has went up for lighting. Where I live the government owned utility often raises their rates per kwHr. One of the reasons they cite is the increase in efficiency leading to a drop in revenue each year.

The same utility pays for those efficiency projects.

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