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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#191

Post by dpkirchner »

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,…

What brand do you buy and how did you evaluate it beforehand?

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#192

Post by mhb »

orev wrote: post #101
mhb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Many people complain about sleep problems. Light exposure is essential to regulating sleep cycles, and going from full brightness to full darkness at night can easily contribute to those problems. Dimmers allow finer control of exposure.

I am skeptical that any significant portion of the population outside HN is tailoring their room lighting, via dimming, to their activity schedule.

It also is a tad hyperbolic to include non-dimmable bulbs in the pantheon of things to make homeowners lose their minds.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#193

Post by e40 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #133

LED bulbs suck. CFLs suck. The light is poor and though they cost an order of magnitude more than incandescents did, they are built so cheaply that they don't last any longer. And they qualify as hazardous waste when they need to be disposed of. At times I've seriously considered trying oil lamps. The only LED bulbs I buy now are the "filament" types. Their bulbs are filled with helium so heat transfer is good, and t…

Can you give an example sku?

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#194

Post by xeromal »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #120
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.

On my first read of this, it makes sense though. The mileage of infrastructure is the same regardless of use. Those powerlines still need maintenance even if LEDs are making homes more efficient.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#195

Post by vikingerik »

DougN7 wrote: post #135
amluto wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. In a screw base, maybe. But compare: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i... $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30... $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W. (Efficiency goes up quite…

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.

10 years isn't a minimum threshold for every item. Any individual item could fail any time, and the overall distribution will have a shape somewhere between a bell curve and a long tail.

I don't know if there are any regulations around the 10-year claim, but if there are then I'd expect that it's either an average or something like a one-standard-deviation threshold, like 68% last past that but 32% don't.

"Guaranteed 10 years" doesn't actually say anything about expected lifetime at all, just that they'll do a warranty replacement if it fails sooner.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#196

Post by gniv »

drcongo wrote: post #37

I don't recognise any of the issues mentioned in this article at all and there must be a hundred odd LED bulbs in my house. I'm wondering if this is a US-specific thing, I'm in the UK.

> I'm wondering if this is a US-specific thing, I'm in the UK.

I think so. I am in France now and all I can easily buy are expensive and good quality bulbs. In US the quality was all over the place and price was not always a good proxy.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#197

Post by taneq »

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…

Cost optimization IS the limits of the technology. All the nice things you mention are the result of large amounts of work by exceptional people. This costs money. Most of them require higher-spec components, or more design time, or more complicated fabrication and assembly. These things also cost money.

Nobody's denying you nice things at low prices just out of spite. Nice things just cost more. To put a positive spin on it, our innate sense of 'nice' is a well tuned heuristic for good engineering (and/or whatever the Joneses can't afford).

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#198

Post by JohnFen »

DougN7 wrote: post #135
amluto wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. In a screw base, maybe. But compare: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i... $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30... $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W. (Efficiency goes up quite…

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.

Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power supply died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves. I harvest the LEDs out of dead bulbs to use in hobby projects.

With Edison-style bulbs, anyway, the orientation they're mounted in makes a huge amount of difference. They're last a lot longer if they're oriented upright (base down) than in any other orientation because it reduces the heat buildup in the power supply.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#199

Post by megous »

amluto wrote: post #74
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…

> The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. In a screw base, maybe. But compare: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i... $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30... $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W. (Efficiency goes up quite…

Heatsink costs?

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#200

Post by eschneider »

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…

This seems like an excellent business opportunity.
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