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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#391

Post by jeroenhd »

treffer wrote: post #363
wankle wrote: 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…

It is not a conspiracy, it was a well known cartel that made light bulbs horrible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel The 1200h are slightly above the 1000h target put in place by the cartel.

It's still happening to LEDs as well. Big brands are over driving LED chips, degrading their lifespan significantly.

The story of the Dubai bulbs show that the industry could easily make bulbs that last (even) longer, but there's no money in selling products you'll never need to replace.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#392

Post by electroly »

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.

I recently replaced all my bulbs with Waveform Lighting bulbs. They're good but IMO overrated and overpriced, and their shipping prices are absurd. You can get high-CRI bulbs at Home Depot, it's just a matter of trying a couple until you find one that doesn't flicker (use your phone's slow motion camera) if you don't want to go the route of specialty bulbs. My Cree bulbs all flickered but my Philips bulbs did not; to my eye, there's no difference between the cheaper Philips bulbs and the much more expensive Waveform Lighting bulbs.

One of my Waveform Lighting bulbs arrived defective, and it flickers all the time. I couldn't detect the Cree flicker with the naked eye but the defective Waveform bulb flickers visibly. Not sure if Waveform's QA is up to snuff.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#393

Post by piuantiderp »

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?

This is the tragedy of modern times in the West. Hard to get anything quality without tons of research. Not even about the money, there's just too much noise

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#394

Post by samtho »

coryrc wrote: post #352
cogman10 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regula…

LEDs must be powered by a constant-current supply, and distribution does not work well at constant-current, and is always constant voltage. So no matter what you will need some sort of switching power supply. LEDs are like 15% efficient and power supplies are >95%. They just need to be separated slightly so the LEDs aren't heating the power supply. Most recessed LED lighting now has a separate junction box with the p…

> LEDs must be powered by a constant-current supply, and distribution does not work well at constant-current, and is always constant voltage. So no matter what you will need some sort of switching power supply.

I think the biggest problem is that many cheap power supplies cycle at lower frequencies that cause flickering which is perceptible subconsciously. A modern switchmode power supply might operate in the 50-500khz range which will not cause perceivable flickers.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#395

Post by gorkish »

542458 wrote: post #129
alistairSH wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be that you only had one option so you didn’t have to think about it. But, that single option was at least "good enough". I never bought a normal incandescent bulb only to have the color rendering/brightness/etc be downright awful. LEDs come packaged as "daylight" or "bright white" or whatever else. I want one that's labelled "just like your normal 60W incandescent".

I've found the color/brightness of the GE Relax HD (Yeah, they go one step further and label the color temperature as "Relax HD") to be pretty good. Lifespan has been hit and miss in semi-enclosed fixtures though.

Power supplies in all GE bulbs are total horseshit.

Their new bulbs with the selectable color temperature gutted the product of its remaining redeeming features. The cost of the extra LEDs in the bulb is coming out of the quality of the remaining components.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#396

Post by bombcar »

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…

They've started marking LED bulbs as "not for enclosed fixtures" which is .... 90% of existing fixtures?

They overheat and die really fast if used in something that's not vented/cooled. You need fixtures that fully expose the bulb so it doesn't burn itself out.

Amusing that LED bulbs, the energy savers, die from excess heat.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#397

Post by DavidPeiffer »

Majromax wrote: post #330
eschneider wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "wa…

> Even still, it's common to see homes with temperature-mismatched lighting.

Maybe I'm hypersensitive to it, but I don't understand how it's viewed as okay. I walked through a house on a home show and despite being listed for 800k+ (in Iowa), they had a couple mismatches.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#398

Post by thayne »

One thing that really, really annoys me, that isn't mentioned is that practically all LED bulbs have a warning (in fine print) that you shouldn't use them in enclosed spaces. If you do use them in enclosed spaces some components overheat, and it dramatically reduces the lifetime of the bulb. In my home, like many, probably most, home in the area, most of the light fixtures are enclosed. And finding bulbs designed to work in enclosed spaces is practically impossible.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#399

Post by dyno12345 »

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.

it doesn't take a degree to figure out when consumers are only comparing prices when shopping

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#400

Post by samtho »

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 am in the same boat, but they do tend to become significantly dimmer over time.
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