There's something off about LED bulbs • Hacker News Board

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#201

Post by HPsquared » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

Not just incandescent filament bulbs, the original artificial light was literally incandescent - gas lamps, oil lamps, beef tallow, candles, tallow etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#202

Post by brodouevencode » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #175

brodouevencode wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine paying $150 for a six pack, when Home Depot's private label LEDs are $12 for a six pack. I could replace it 10 times before I hit that mark - not sure it's worth that.

I can’t imagine sitting in a room with the color temperature of a gas station bathroom with random flickering and fading out every couple of years.

I have those HD bulbs. They are nowhere near as bad as what you just described.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#203

Post by reaperman » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

doitLP wrote: post #68

aardvarkr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s an example of what you consider to be a high quality led? I’m pretty happy with everything that I have in my home but I’m curious what you’re talking about

Check out https://www.waveformlighting.com/ for some very high quality LEDs and education about how they work.

In contrast to the other child comment of this... Thank You!! Any additional suggestions for high quality LED's would be super appreciated. I'm still on mostly halogen lighting in my home. I keep trying to switch the LED's but for some reason with my vision, the low CRI of even "decent" LED bulbs make it so I feel like I can't actually see anything.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#204

Post by dividedbyzero » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

Back then LEDs were still quite a bit worse, so I got some spare incandescents too. I still have about 20 bulbs somewhere that I got for cheap as retailers were emptying their inventories. I have switched almost all lights to Ikea Tradfri bulbs that are controlled via Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant and I wouldn't go back. I still have an incandescent bulb in one lamp, but the Ikea ones set to the right temperature are so close I don't think I could tell them apart.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#205

Post by stevenkkim » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

I came across this article on HN recently:

https://www.sevarg.net/2023/02/11/how-your-leds-are-killing-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34902429

After reading it, I realized that having overhead led lights in our home were possibly contributing to my worsening sleep and general tiredness over the past few years. Granted, we used 4100k lights which are much bluer than 2700k.

We swapped all our leds back to incandescents and halogens (which were a bit tricky to find, but not impossible). Anecdotally, I've been sleeping so much better since, finally feeling well rested and far less stressed. I just feel a tremendous amount of relief after not sleeping well for years.

Also, while we had leds, I had to replace a surprising number of them for burnout/failure, and also experienced flickering, dimming issues, buzzing and more.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#206

Post by reaperman » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #175

brodouevencode wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine paying $150 for a six pack, when Home Depot's private label LEDs are $12 for a six pack. I could replace it 10 times before I hit that mark - not sure it's worth that.

I can’t imagine sitting in a room with the color temperature of a gas station bathroom with random flickering and fading out every couple of years.

They have several different warm LED's at Home Depot. You can generally find 2100K to 3000K. Sometimes even 1800K in the specialty bulbs there.

They're not terrible, but the low CRI keeps me coming back to halogen.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#207

Post by jhartwig » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #189

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.

If we're sharing anecdotes - I've had my homes 100%(or close) LED equipped for over a decade now and never had a single LED bulb fail.

I wish I could say that. I have a 3 year old house that is about 3k square feet wiht alot of bulbs. Every bulb installed was LED and I have replaced most of them at this point, and some more then once. I have even had the electrical company come out thinking there was something wrong with the power in my house or the breaker box. Nothing...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#208

Post by brodouevencode » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

Arubis wrote: post #169

brodouevencode wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine paying $150 for a six pack, when Home Depot's private label LEDs are $12 for a six pack. I could replace it 10 times before I hit that mark - not sure it's worth that.

If you told me you could make one room of my house consistently color-balanced with LED lighting that I would have no reason to hate, I would ball up a couple hundred dollar bills and throw them at you. (Edit: I’m also coming from buying Philips Hue bulbs for precisely this reason, so in fairness, it’s not as big a price jump.)

I have a few Hues and they are great, and last much longer. But in this house I cannot justify even that. In my kitchen/breakfast nook alone I have 10 lightbulbs plus an overhead flushmount.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#209

Post by marcellus23 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #197

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 sp…

Are there companies out there creating premium LED bulbs without these problems?

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#210

Post by basch » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

brodouevencode wrote: post #147

doitLP wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out https://www.waveformlighting.com/ for some very high quality LEDs and education about how they work.

I can't imagine paying $150 for a six pack, when Home Depot's private label LEDs are $12 for a six pack. I could replace it 10 times before I hit that mark - not sure it's worth that.

that doesnt really fix the flickering problem.