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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#451

Post by jchw »

terr-dav wrote: post #421
jchw wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some bulbs will give you information on their CRI which ideally should be required to be labeled on the bulbs packaging the way calorie information is required on food packaging (but I don't think it is.) That will tell you roughly how good the quality of the light is by proxy of the spectrum of light it covers. On the other hand, there is no equivalent afaik for knowing how well the power supply is designed or how h…

An important point in the article is that CRI for LED bulbs does not meaningfully map to the light quality. >Oh, but: Experts agree that the color-rendering index doesn’t really index how colors are rendered. Some bulbs with a 90 CRI make things look wan; some with an 80 are passable. There are better, more useful metrics, but you can’t have them. Nobody puts them on the packaging. One lighting professional — an LED…

Yes that's a good point, there's definitely more to it than just CRI. That said, a bulb with very poor CRI definitely sucks, so it's not entirely useless. This seems like one of those things that will suck until it doesn't.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#452

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#454

Post by kube-system »

SargeDebian wrote: post #307
greggsy wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does that work? The head of engineering gets a unit cost reduction target and then they call some shareholders to come review some proposals for which option works best? Do they show up with a printed certificate showing they own at least one share?

Public companies are required to hold annual meetings with shareholders where they vote for board members and bring up proposals. Shareholders may choose to vote for board member with views about managing the business that they agree with.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040315/what-can-sha...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#455

Post by jeffbee »

nonethewiser wrote: post #429
bombcar wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Is that because they are “downscaling” (totally made up term, IDK electronics) the energy coming into them?

It's because despite being far more efficient than incandescent they are still only about 30% efficient at producing visible light. The rest is heat, and unlike incandescent an LED does not want to be hot. The device must be cooled or it becomes less efficient and wears out faster. There is no good way to get the heat out of the front of the device because that's the side you are supposed to see, so in practice all the heat is removed from the back, i.e. the part inside the fixture.

Other solutions to this include using much larger devices, but that costs proportionally more and has application issues because people want their light bulbs to act like either line or point sources, not as areal sources. So most lights on the market use a single small LED, unless they are targeted to a buyer demanding high efficiency and long life, like a city streetlight.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#456

Post by ClumsyPilot »

piuantiderp wrote: post #393
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?

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

Yeah, just paying £2000 fot an item does not mean you got anything quality - 90% chance you got scammed

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#457

Post by skocznymroczny »

Reason077 wrote: post #291

> "'Hungarian-made GE Básica bulbs ... with a bold stamp on the side reading, NOT FOR SALE FOR USE IN THE UNITED STATES." This seems odd considering they surely can't be used in Hungary either. The EU started phasing out incandescent bulbs more than a decade ago! Don't miss them, personally. LED lighting is excellent if you buy good quality ones. And I certainly don't miss having to periodically go around the house c…

The EU regulations were against sales of incandescent bulbs. But in most countries they are still available rebranded as "heat bulbs" or "workshop bulbs" with a large "NOT INTENDED FOR HOUSEHOLD USAGE" 'warning' sign.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#458

Post by KennyBlanken »

Agentlien wrote: post #246
phoyd wrote: post #168

>If you’re lucky, the LED will have a CRI of 90 or higher EU has banned incandescent lights years ago and the situation for LED buyers is much different here. My local drug store chain (Rossmann in Germany) sells 1000lm E27 bulbs under their own Rubin brand with CRI>97 for 4.99€. No flickering and available as 2700K or 4000K. My Opple Light Master 3 even reads CRI 100. So for me right now, it's just going to the drug…

I read a lot of the other comments here before yours and they all seemed to describe a reality very different from my own experience. Then I saw yours and it suddenly makes sense. I am also in the Europe, most other commenters seem to be from the US. Here I find it is very easy to find good LED bulbs with the strength and color profile of my choice and I have used LED in all rooms of my house for the last 10+ years w…

I'm in the US and every single LED bulb I've ever bought - some ten years old - still work fine.

I also don't buy the shitty cheap bulbs. I buy mostly Cree's high CRI dimmable bulbs, Phillips high CRI dimmable, or GE high-CRI bulbs if I can't find the Crees (Home Depot stopped carrying them in-store.)

The problem is that both the author and a ton of people in this discussion buy shitty, cheap, no-name bulbs and then they're shocked when they flicker, don't dim well, and fail often.

This whole discussion is a bunch of angry old men yelling at clouds because the guvmint won't allow them to waste 4x as much electricity to light their home.

Even high-CRI bulbs aren't a "perfect" replacement for an incandescent, but the energy savings, especially if you're in an area where you use air conditioning and thus the heat of an incandescent bulb equals more energy usage for cooling, is worth the small sacrifice.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#459

Post by sam_goody »

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…

There is also IoT in some of these bulbs, especially the more expensive ones.

That there is a huge turn off for me, even if I don't have a smartphone handy ;)

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#460

Post by smolder »

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…

They're remarkably heat sensitive, especially cheap ones. Some bulbs would gladly run for 10 years in a room slightly above freezing temperature, but put them in a semi-enclosed fixture in a normal living space, and they're dead in a few months. Fully enclosed fixtures destroy them in no time, unless you buy really exotic bulbs with truly massive aluminum heatsinks, rated for high temp operating environments. I can't even find domestic suppliers for those, and had to order from China.
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