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

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#221

Post by throw0101b » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

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…

> - Poor CRI and SSRI

So having a minimum CRI of 80-90 is a good starting point, there are issues with the CRI measure itself:

> Ra is the average value of R1–R8; other values from R9 to R15 are not used in the calculation of Ra, including R9 "saturated red", R13 "skin color (light)", and R15 "skin color (medium)", which are all difficult colors to faithfully reproduce. R9 is a vital index in high-CRI lighting, as many applications require red lights, such as film and video lighting, medical lighting, art lighting, etc. However, in the general CRI (Ra) calculation R9 is not included.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index#Special_...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index#Criticis...

There are initiatives to come up with a better metric, but there doesn't seem to be much traction:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_quality_scale

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#222

Post by cogman10 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #198

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.

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 s…

This is the frustrating thing about LEDs that IDK we can change.

If there was a "DC" light socket in the house we could have LEDs outlasting owners, and for cheap. Nearly all the expense of LED bulbs is the power supply. Everything else is dirt cheap. A single home DC power supply with ~200W of output could light an entire house, flicker free.

What's even more frustrating is I think we could fix it. A national regulation for DC light sockets would fix it. Mandate a voltage, shape, and max amperage and BAM, you'll get 1000 different manufactures making standard compliant bulbs and home power supplies that will last an eternity.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#223

Post by sparker72678 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:02 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #167

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 e-waste issues of having to replace entire LED units every two to three years are worse than replacing an old fashioned bulb every decade.

Agreed the e-waste issues are real, but how did you get incandescents to last 10 years? I replaced every dang one after 12 months or less, every time.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#224

Post by ryanjshaw » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:02 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…

Seems like a great time to start designing space heaters that accept 10-20 E27 incandescent 'heating elements'. (Well, until this is banned too.)

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#225

Post by jonas21 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

For me, the biggest issue with LED bulbs is flicker. And there's a lot of variation between different bulbs, even ones that claim to be flicker-free. There are metrics for quantifying flicker [1], and hopefully they'll be required to print this on the packaging at some point.

For now, I always go to see bulbs in person before buying them, and record them in slow-motion video on my phone. This makes it easy to tell which ones flicker badly and which don't.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/articles/flicker-understandi...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#226

Post by smm11 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

They flicker, they die, and all at a more rapid rate that old school bulbs, despite the boxes saying they'll run 10 years or more. Ridiculous.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#227

Post by justin66 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

aardvarkr wrote: post #47

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…

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

Philips' Dubai lamps are really interesting (sorry about the goofy title on the video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#228

Post by PragmaticPulp » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

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 TVs are made of the things.

They’re not the same thing. Displays are optimized for specific R, G, and B color points. White LEDs are optimized for full, smooth spectrums.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#229

Post by rssoconnor » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

stevenkkim wrote: post #205

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 inc…

I've set up Kelvin[1] to lower the colour temperature of my LED bulbs in the evening, and reduce their brightness. In fact, they end up pretty deep red when doing middle of the night bathroom runs.

[1]https://github.com/stefanwichmann/kelvin

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#230

Post by Brendinooo » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

dashundchen wrote: post #146

I think just like CFLs and incandescents before, quality is going vary and people will need to stick to a brand that works. I've had a lot of success with Cree light bulbs. They seem to have much better light quality than some of the hardware store brands. They definitely cost a bit more, but I had one fail 5 years out and I was able to call Cree up for a replacement. The rep collected a few questions - model, when i…

Wanted to give a tentative endorsement to Cree. I bought a box of LEDs at the hardware store and about a third of them failed early. I wanted to spend good money on good product; Cree is well-regarded, and so far (a few months) I've been way happier with their bulbs than the cheap stuff.