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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#321
post #241

Hi US people, european here. The EU forbid terribly inefficient light around a decade ago. Yes, we had plenty of debates. Yes, people were concerned about all kinds of things. Most of them were entirely made up, some were exaggerated out of proportion. I can say that we still have lights, the debate mostly vanished and no, it's not blue everywhere.

Hello European, US guy here.

> The EU forbid terribly inefficient light around a decade ago.

So did we. Very few incandescent bulbs are on the market here since they were basically banned a decade ago. There are some niche options, you could still find expensive halogens, but that's it.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#322
post #313

https://www.stouchlighting.com/blog/light-comparison-led-lig... . "New LEDs can last 50,000 to 100,000 hours or more. The typical lifespan for an incandescent bulb, by comparison, is 1-5% as long at best (roughly 1,200 hours)." I've never seen more than 15000 hours from an LED bulb at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb "The chart below lists values of luminous efficacy and efficiency for some…

The lifespan on incandescent isn’t a conspiracy. Cheap bright incandescents don’t last very long.

The centennial light was neither cheap or bright - presently it’s about the strength of a 4-watt nightlight. You put enough power through a thick filament it will glow for a very very long time, but no one wants to illuminate their house that way!

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#323
They just put in some new townhomes near me. The architecture is beautiful but all the exterior lighting is cold LED light and it looks so strange and frightening at night. Just... off. Amazing how the quality and temperature of light matters.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#324

This article and comment section is bizarre to me. It's like travelling back in time to the 2000s. We've only used LEDs in my country for, what, 15 years now? They are perfectly fine, no issues really, much cheaper than incandescent bulbs of course. We just buy the ones in IKEA and they haven't really failed us so far.

> It's like travelling back in time to the 2000s.

That's because it is. George W. Bush signed the death warrant for the incandescent bulb in the US in 2007. Incandescent bulbs are a niche product in the US, LEDs have been the mainstream choice for years.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home is full of bright, warm yellow/orange LEDs. I also have a lot of "sunlight" LEDs which I'll describe as "white" and I LOVE them for big rooms and making daytime feel like daytime. Great for my office. I recall blue being a big problem when LEDs for homes were new, but when I bought a house 3 years ago and revisited it, I was delighted to find so many very solid options. Dimmable, non-flicker, warm LED bulbs.…

“for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources” This is what drives your "warm" lamps. No deep red at all, man.

I guess my lying eyes deceive me.

By filtering out other wavelengths I’m left with all this warm light rather than nothing.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#326

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…

Just chiming in to say that I'm a big fan of Waveform bulbs. That's what I've been buying for the last two years.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#327
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm no expert with LEDs' technical bits, but I purchased LIFX bulbs which were pretty expensive and they've lasted for almost a decade now.

I've had the opposite experience. I find that LIFX bulbs fail far too often considering the price tag, however I've yet to find anything else that can match up to them when they work. So I just keep buying them.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#328
post #245
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.

I have a lot of dimmers in my house because they were there. It's nice to turn the hall lights down at night when I'm the last one awake (but not if they get too flickery; older dimmers built for incandescent don't always work with dimmable leds), and very nice when watching or starting a movie, etc. But, dimmable bulbs are also an indicator of quality. Someone cared enough to make sure it worked in that situation, s…

> But, dimmable bulbs are also an indicator of quality. Someone cared enough to make sure it worked in that situation, so there's evidence that someone was caring during the design.

Maybe. It could also be to avoid the situation in which the average consumer just picks up the cheapest bulb and, when he gets it home and it is flaky when used with the dimmer, returns it to the store.

Or maybe it's a low quality way of ticking a feature that a customer has been told to look for regardless of whether it is relevant to his situation.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#329
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality? And then how do I know that they stick with the high quality approach? What happens when a brand decides to rest on the laurels of their brand name and start slipping in lower quality parts?

> as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time?

Like any informed consumer you must read every retail-based HN comment thread ;-]

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#330

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.

> This seems like an excellent business opportunity.

Consumer education is rarely an excellent business opportunity.

Consumers are very good at comparing prices, and "incandescent watt equivalent" labels provide an understandable comparator for light output. Beyond that, the statistics become much less meaningful.

Consumers typically don't read colour temperature ratings (in black-body Kelvin), but instead follow "warm white / soft white / cool white" descriptors. Even still, it's common to see homes with temperature-mismatched lighting.

CRI is a step worse. It is a higher-is-better indicator, but there's no intuitive connection for a consumer. Is a CRI of 80 bad? Is 95 better enough to be worth double the price? Worse yet, CRI is a summary statistic that can gloss over less-measured color reproduction difficulties, and worst yet not all bulbs even publish CRI numbers on the box. My local hardware store is happy to sell you its store-brand generics, none of which have CRI numbers.

Flicker is another step into the unknown. No bulbs that I'm aware of publish flicker numbers, even the otherwise respected names like Philips. If you consider this a 'business opportunity', you're left with an unverifiable claim that your bulbs are uniquely better than the competition.

Sadly, for now good LED lighting really is the domain of the expensive professional or the hobbyist who spends their spare time tracking down reviews or building custom lighting rigs.

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