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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#381

Post by AceyMan »

browningstreet wrote: post #304
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #228

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…

As consumers are we really supposed to do a ton of research on light bulbs and accept that we can't run down to Home Depot and get some new bulbs when they go out in our house?

THD by me doesn't even stock the CREE bulbs anymore, just the crappy FEIT generics.

I had to drive all over town to find a specialty lighting store with some 'real' Sylvania brand. (But then found the supermarket across the street has Philips on the shelf. Oof.)

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#382

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

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…

As a side point, the bulbs from the link you shared might be of good quality but very, very low power by my standards. In order to work comfortably I need "200W replacements", not 40W-60W. This has enormous influence on my mood in winter months, probably people in warmer climates care less.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#383

Post by trgn »

zaroth wrote: post #315
browningstreet wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As consumers are we really supposed to do a ton of research on light bulbs and accept that we can't run down to Home Depot and get some new bulbs when they go out in our house?

If you want nice things that engineers spent thousands of hours researching, designing, and tuning, you can do the research to find those brands and pay extra for them. Most people don’t want to pay the premium and don’t value the benefits that come with that premium.

> Most people don’t want to pay the premium and don’t value the benefits that come with that premium.

This is also called boiling the frog. People actually do care, but in the scheme of things, they'll accept it.

The default lightbulb in the store 20 years ago had a tender warm light. The default lightbulb in the store today has garish light, or doesn't dim, or has that ugly plastic half cover. A real decline in quality of life. but sure, we can be dismissive about it, of course you can spend hours on the internet figuring it out (ignoring the fact that it took no effort whatsoever to get nice lighting before).

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#384

Post by OkGoDoIt »

dahfizz wrote: post #350
browningstreet wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As consumers are we really supposed to do a ton of research on light bulbs and accept that we can't run down to Home Depot and get some new bulbs when they go out in our house?

No, the lightbulbs at home depot are inexpensive and they work fine. On the other hand, if you care about CRI, then you can also google for high-quality bulbs with a good CRI. I don't really see a problem here?

The problem is I used to be able to spend a couple dollars on lightbulbs that consistently looked great and didn’t require a ton of research or money. I’ve bought hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of high-end LED lightbulbs since moving into my new place last year, and the lighting here still looks like crap. Even with budget it’s hard to get something that looks good. Finding something that dims without flickering, the issue with dimming not actually warming like mentioned in the article, trying to match color temperatures to actually look good, so many issues. I’ve tried to splurge and get good lights and good dimmers but I’m still not happy with how it’s turned out. And if you go in any home or restaurant where they haven’t dedicated substantial time and money into good lighting, things are downright painful these days. I desperately miss incandescent bulbs. I’ve been told by several people that I seem oddly sensitive to this, but it’s a huge deal as far as I’m concerned.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#385

Post by randyrand »

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…

For evening humans are more used to to campfire color temp than to the sun.

For daylight, people typically prefer daylight (5000K) bulbs.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#387

Post by rootusrootus »

timw4mail wrote: post #33

There is a problem with LED lamps: they need their own power supply to convert AC to DC. This is where a lot of the issues happen. Low quality filtering caps, or just circuit designs with a lot of ripple lead to pulsing. When the filtering cap fails, the bulb often does as well.

For this reason I think that LED filament bulbs are the best choice now. The cheap ones can have flicker issues, though. But otherwise they're a nice step up from the last generation of LED bulbs.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#388

Post by JohnFen »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #280
JohnFen wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> I harvest the LEDs out of dead bulbs to use in hobby projects. This is a great idea and I would love it if you would post a Youtube how-to video. It might encourage a bunch of hobbyists to do something useful with those dead bulbs. I've had a number of LED's fail after only a year or two, in fact more quickly than the average incandescent bulb. Seems like it defeats the whole purpose of "upgrading" and in fact may…

The LEDs are surface mount (although big surface mount components, so not particularly difficult to work with). I desolder them with hot air (although you can totally do it with a soldering iron), then use them later as any other surface mount LED. I don't have access to YouTube right now, so can't search for you, but there are tons of videos covering how to desolder and solder surface mount components. I'd be willing to bet there are multiple videos covering this for LEDs specifically, too.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#389

Post by bombcar »

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…

LEDs really DO suck and they're not tremendously bothering to "unsuck" them.

You do want to consider kerosine lamps - check out https://www.sevarg.net/2022/10/09/keropunk-part-1-kerosene-l... - browse around and he does some spectrum analysis of LED bulbs, too - https://www.sevarg.net/2023/02/26/feit-electric-wifi-rgb-bul...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#390

Post by transcriptase »

greggsy wrote: post #273
throwaway173738 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, as always, the MBAs.

I have an MBA. It’s not mine or any of my peer’s jobs to provide crap products to ends users - thats up to shareholders to decide.

It’s your job to decide whether to make the world slightly worse and make an extra dollar, or maintain/improve quality while finding efficiencies elsewhere.

The second option may be more difficult but let’s not pretend there aren’t companies that choose it and succeed.

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