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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#481

Post by _rs »

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…

> - It is quite difficult to even buy high quality LEDs as a mere mortal

I'm going through this again now. At one point I found Philips EyeComfort bulbs on Amazon which checked all my boxes (2700-3000K, 60W, dimmable, almost non-existent flicker). I've had a couple bulbs die on me now, and I cannot for the life of me find replacements, it's like they stopped manufacturing them. I have no clue what to replace them with now

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#482

Post by jsheard »

swimfar wrote: post #402
jsheard wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More recently Philips has started selling the Dubai-style bulbs worldwide, branded as the "Ultra Efficient" range. They're expensive though, as you'd expect.

Are you sure those are the same bulbs? The ultra efficient versions sold on Amazon have reviews going back to 2017. Supposedly the Dubai-style bulbs were only available in Dubai even a few years ago.

The Ultra Efficient series only just launched in November: https://www.signify.com/en-gb/our-company/news/press-release...

There must be some kind of listing error on Amazon, maybe an old listing being repurposed without clearing the old reviews.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#483

Post by smolder »

ajmurmann wrote: post #294
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 think there might be something about the wiring in some homes. Some of my LED bulbs have been going for a decade now without issues. I have a few fixtures where bulbs keep hauling in specific sockets after a few months. I have one fixture in my bathroom where a bulb was fine for a few months and then two replacement bulbs failed instantly and three third one failed again after a year or so. Maybe the voltage is wro…

It could be sensitive power circuitry failing due to power quality, but is more likely a heat buildup. LEDs bulbs fail rapidly without good convective cooling ability, particularly in locations where you have the bulb on for great lengths of time.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#484

Post by CapsAdmin »

cal85 wrote: post #367
simongray wrote: post #258

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.

I guess you can't tell the difference? For me it's huge. I recently changed my bathroom downlights from dimmable LEDs to dimmable halogens, and it's so much nicer. The colour temperature was the same, so I guess it's not that. It's something else about the way they work. I don't profess to know why, but I can absolutely tell the difference, and I have a very clear preference now. And this is after a decade of me bein…

I also have the ikea home smart bubls. They're dimmable and can change color.

It seems like some people are more sensetive to flickering light. I've asked people every now and then when in a group if they can tell the light is flickering, and I'm usually the only one. The effect is pronounced in my peripheral vision and somehow even more when drunk.

I don't think these lights emit the entire spectrum of light either, but a spectrum that "fools" us to think we're seeing the whole spectrum. Maybe that feels uncomfortable for some?

The ikea bulbs I have flicker a little when dimmed, but I don't really mind.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#485

Post by acomjean »

jghn wrote: post #278
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…

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?

That’s the current problem is knowing when a “Brand” which was a marker for quality cashes in.

Consumer Reports tests a lot of consumer goods and used to be my go to for testing. They don’t take ad revenue so that helps. Though you have to be a member to see their reviews.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/what-we-do/inde...

They used to be the go to for car reliability info (when your car was rated high you sold more, according to my dad who was in the car business)

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#486

Post by zaroth »

throwuwu wrote: post #467
zaroth wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Save on their electric bill with cheap LEDs that get the job done, while worrying about more important things than if the bulb flickers sometimes when you dim it?

Your answer is missing some steps involving money

I suppose it depends on the extend of the impoverished-ness.

The homeless certainly aren’t worried about lightbulbs but the 65% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck probably appreciate the savings.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#487

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

#488

Post by m463 »

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…

I personally think high color temperature lighting is harsh, like hospital harsh.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#489

Post by Spivak »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #213
derbOac wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar reaction to the article. I actually am opposed to bans on traditional incandescent bulbs but vastly prefer LEDs and have no desire to go back to them. Using LEDs was a shock to me initially mostly because, as you point out, with traditional household incandescents there wasn't a whole lot of options. So suddenly when I had to pay attention to color profiles and so forth more carefully, I wasn't expect…

> I actually am opposed to bans on traditional incandescent bulbs AFAIK, there are no simple bans on them [ EDIT: in the USA ]. What exists are energy performance standards, which these bulbs do not meet. If you want, you can say that this is nit-picking, and that of course that's a ban. But when we have energy performance standards for, say, cars, nobody says it is a ban on cars, just a effective end to the producti…

Where the standards are set isn’t arbitrary.

If LEDs were exactly as efficient as incandescent bulbs there wouldn’t be a law that bans all lightbulbs. Also there’s no way a law would pass that sets the efficiency standard of incandescent bulbs because the law would do nothing.

It’s a ban on incandescent bulbs with the thinnest veneer of generalization.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#490

Post by zaroth »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #461
zaroth wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> you can do the research to find those brands and pay extra for them This is such a lie - no, you can't do the research. There are no reseatch papers conparing consumer products Doing the research means buying everything avaliable on the market and testing it yourself. Googling is not research, its choosing which SEO'd fraudulent article will lie to you today. Quality is going to shit, because there is no way to twl…

I mean… just here in this comment section are suggestions for suppliers of premium LEDs that I would trust based on the karma rating of the people who posted the links.

Googling for “premium LED high ratings 95 cri” or searching on Amazon definitely isn’t going to work, because they will just send you to the highest bidder, or the most proficient scammer.

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