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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#231

Post by willis936 »

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.

I've moved three times with one set of cheap LED bulbs without having to replace a single one. I'd have gone thorough dozens of incandescent bulbs in the same time period. I'd have also burned my hand on a few.

LEDs are definitely simpler than incandescent from a user perspective.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#232

Post by droopyEyelids »

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…

You're right though I want to mention the LEDs are also damaged by the heat, their color temperature will wander, lifetime will be reduced, and brightness per watt will also be reduced. Still useful for projects and areas where perfect lighting isn't as important.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#233

Post by doitLP »

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.)

Keep in mind: all LEDs leak blue light even the warm ones (color is achieved by average so you can have high red and high blue and it looks balanced visually). These bright blue leaking LEDs are great during the day — especially those with high CRI and R9 values. But not at night when you’re trying to go to bed! Switch to incandescent only in the evenings until they figure out blue-less dimmable LEDs

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#234

Post by the_af »

whateveracct wrote: post #214
the_af wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you don't want to become an expert, which is something that wouldn't scale for every piece of tech and equipment? (Maybe you enjoy tweaking with lights, but what about chairs, tabletop materials, woods, wall paints, and yes -- electronic gadgets?). With LEDs, what's the "I don't want to deal with this, I just want something that will work as intended and not introduce weird artifacts"?

why are you acting like you need a college credit in an LED survey course in order to buy incandescent-replacement LEDs? It's like a new vocabulary of like 5 terms/concepts that can all be summarized in a sentence or two. When I upgraded my house, I spent maybe 30 min reading some articles and then 30 more going through product listings [1]. To upgrade a core piece of infra for my whole house. [1] I can already hear…

> why are you acting like you need a college credit in an LED survey course in order to buy incandescent-replacement LEDs? It's like a new vocabulary of like 5 terms/concepts that can all be summarized in a sentence or two.

I hope by "you" you are also including TFA and the comment I was replying to, right?

Your response directly contradicts TFA. I don't know who is right, I just know I'm not entirely satisfied with the LEDs I have. It's not my most pressing concern, but I'd rather not have to deal with 5 concepts when picking a lightbulb.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#235

Post by adrianmonk »

Majromax wrote: post #25
jmclnx wrote: post #5

I have heard that newer LED Bulbs now have some kind of built in obsolescence. This is from someone I know who is an engineer working for the US military. I told him I had bought some LEDs (started moving over 2 years ago) and that is when he mentioned that. I guess I will find out, so far so good. I did stock up on 100 watt incandescent years ago and have a many left just in case. I found LEDs cause me eye strain, b…

> I have heard that newer LED Bulbs now have some kind of built in obsolescence. This is from someone I know who is an engineer working for the US military. BigClive covers this issue a fair amount on his Youtube teardown videos. It's not exactly built-in obsolescence, so much as being built to cost. The cheapest way to build an LED bulb is to minimize the number of components. Instead of spreading the light emission…

> in ordinary use the chips and phosphors inside will run at high temperatures and degrade much more quickly. This effect will be even more pronounced with enclosed fixtures (like ceiling lights) that have little to no ventilation.

So, if I want bulbs that are less likely to fail, would it help to always buy enclosure-rated ones, even for applications where they're not going to be enclosed? It seems like that could be a way to get the safety margin that manufacturers aren't bothering with.

> unlikely to try to exercise their warranty

I'm in this exact situation now, and it's because of the hassle. You must take the bulbs back to the store. There are various issues like waiting in line, and I haven't done it. I bought name-brand bulbs thinking they'd be good, but now I'm unhappy because the guarantee process is such a bother.

I wonder if a company could make a viable product by differentiating in this area. Make a truly no-cost, no-hassle return process. Allow me to print a pre-paid shipping label and just drop it in the mail. No in-person store visits, waiting on hold for customer support, etc. And really push this in marketing. Maybe even put some kind of hour meter on the bulbs as a visible sign that I am buying the one brand of LED bulb that takes reliability seriously. People might pay more just to be spared from the headache of LED bulbs that fail a lot.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#236

Post by stasmo »

I’ve never had a problem with my Phillips Hue bulbs and I’ve owned the same 4 bulbs for 5 years now. I’ve got them scheduled to start brightening at sunset, change to a warmer colour closer to bed time, then start dimming and warming up before bed time.

If I want to feel more awake I ask Siri to change the colours of the bulbs to white. If I went to go to bed earlier I ask Siri for the colour tan and to dim the lights by 30%.

At this point I can’t imagine not having control over the colour or brightness of my lights. These things are essential for a good sleep.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#237

Post by mrguyorama »

jhartwig wrote: post #207
gambiting wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It usually comes down to the brand, factors you can't be aware of like component choice, and the light fixture itself. A lot of LED edison socket lights die quickly in recessed lighting or other tight fixtures because the heat is death to them. Manufacturers build the worst technically functional capacitors into the power supplies with a low temperature rating, meaning they really can't handle anything above ambient.

This is also the same industry and the same players that were perfectly fine with agreeing to not improve incandescent light past 1000 lifetime hours, illegally. I have no doubt that there is a tacit agreement not to make good lighting, as that would extremely disrupt the industry.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#238

Post by imtringued »

jhartwig wrote: post #207
gambiting wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Lightbulbs are a bad form factor. I have some lights without bulbs and no issue. Meanwhile the halogen emulating LEDs break all the time.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#239

Post by causality0 »

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…

Is there anything decent in the middle? Somewhere between one dollar bulbs and eighteen dollar bulbs?

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#240

Post by Havoc »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #180
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…

The problem is, as always, the MBAs.

Painfully broad generalisation
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