There's something off about LED bulbs • Hacker News Board

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#471

Post by egeozcan » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

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?

If you speak German there's always Stiftung Warentest: https://www.test.de/Lampen-im-Test-4436814-0/

I pay them and they do the research. A very logical business model.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#472

Post by BizarroLand » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

amluto wrote: post #417

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…

I think this falls apart in the details. LEDs want constant current power supplies, and their owners frequently want them to dim. So you will still need a power supply. You can fudge it with resisters like in an LED strip, but you lose efficiency and dimming quality. That being said, I expect that power supplies with 48VDC input or so would be cheaper.

Maybe this could be a prosumer retrofit thing, where the AC voltage gets converted to DC in the junction box, and then DC is sent down to the fixture.

Probably with some sort of current sensing system to make it compatible with dimmers.

Pair that with DC A19 LED bulbs that have no internal power systems.

Probably expensive to put together and to install, but if the goal was to have LEDs that last longer, that would do it.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#473

Post by MarkusWandel » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

Even the cheapest, crappiest (though you shouldn't compromise on colour rendition) LED bulbs are better for your wallet than incandescents. Simply because of the huge amount of power they save.

I'm not sure yet about the light fixtures that have non-replaceable LEDs in them. Generally these are heatsinked well and use higher quality power supplies though.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#474

Post by MengerSponge » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

CrimsonCape wrote: post #370

ChadMoran wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been looking for solid high CRI LED bulbs, thank you. Lately I've been using the GE Reveal/Relax. They were better than the contractor grade bulbs that came with the house but still just... wasn't there. If you know any other manufacturers like this I'd greatly appreciate it if you could provide their links.

Budgetlightforum.com is the best source for flashlights and bulbs. Everyone there knows the metrics of what makes good light. GE Filled With Sun, Philips Ultra HD (available on Amazon, but from Canada), and some other Chinese brands are currently top of the chart for CRI 95+, RA 90+ bulbs

I use GE Sun Filled bulbs at my desk. They're nice! I really wish I could easily get the Lumitronix or LEDvance models.

http://www.seoulsemicon.com/en/technology/sunlike/casestudy/

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#475

Post by _rs » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

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.

Sadly they don't sell dimmable bulbs (at least that meet my criteria: 2700-3000K, 60W equiv / ~800 lumens)

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#476

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

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

[deleted]

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#477

Post by karaterobot » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

Counterpoint: The transition to LEDs has been fine, even cheap LEDs are fine, and this article feels like an unnecessary problematizing.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#478

Post by smolder » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

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...

I'm repeating myself a lot in this thread, so I'm sorry. What fixtures are the bulbs in? Are they a generic design meant for incandescents? A huge number of fixtures out there don't allow for enough heat to convect away and the bulbs overheat.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#479

Post by michael1999 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:41 PM UTC

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…

That's not entirely true. I guarantee that someone at Philips is tuning their drivers not just on manufacturing cost, but also to "optimize" lifetime. That you can pay a premium for less "optimized" drivers is as much about market segmentation as it is about BOM costs.

As evidence, notice that Philips refuses to sell the Dubai lamp outside Dubai. They are designed for truly long lifetimes, and nobody at Philips want's that.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#480

Post by mech987987 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

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…

CRI has to do the hard job of describing a spectrum using a single number. It's like looking at the entire menu of a restaurant and having to say how healthy the food there is. (heck, there's probably way better metaphors).