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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#491

Post by scottyah »

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…

If you have two products where one lists a metric proudly and the other doesn't, I think most consumers would choose the one with the metric.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#492

Post by _rs »

notatoad wrote: post #413
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…

just because somebody decides to geek out about LED bulbs, does't mean all those stats that are theoretically measurable actually make a difference. the 4-for-$10 A19 LED bulbs from amazon or ikea are flicker free to my eyes. i've bought some fancy bulbs with big metal heatsink bases, supposed "high CRI" ratings, equivalently high price tags. to my eyes, i can't see the difference. the super-cheap bulbs from one of t…

> are flicker free to my eyes

Very rarely will bulbs visibly flicker in my experience. What happens instead is after several hours I'll start to get headaches and feel fatigue without knowing exactly where it's coming from. Since I replaced my Hue bulbs (which flicker, and I proved it by just using my smartphone camera even) I've felt so much better at home

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#493

Post by simongray »

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'm sorry, but to me you mostly just sound like an audiophile talking about how vinyl sounds better than CDs...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#494

Post by hollerith »

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…

Nowadays the situation is better, but for years after incandescents were banned in California, the only LED bulbs available in stores had a huge spike in the blue part of the spectrum, which I experienced as painful and now know probably caused the death of some of the cones in my retina through oxidative stress.

(I am over 60 and have some health problems that chronically elevate my levels of oxidative stress -- in all cell types, though the light-detecting cells in the retina are more vulnerable than other types of cells are.)

I.e., I wanted to buy an LED that vaguely approximated a 2700K incandescent, tried many brands, but could not find one, so I don't know what you are on about.

Bright blue light will make a brain more alert -- and the effect is immediate. That is probably why you young people like it, but I am baffled by your "a color temperature of only 2700K is often chosen" (not that color temperature is a useful way of summarizing the spectrum of and LED bulb).

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#495

Post by kristjank »

A funny thing my power electronics TA pointed out at a lab class was that, while incandescents radiate heat and waste a lot of power to just heat the space below them, we still need to heat our classrooms. When the university went from incandescent to fluorescent and, later LED lighting, the only thing that changed was the power usage shifting from lighting to heating. Granted, heating can be more efficient when handled by the systems designed to heat, not to illuminate, but at the scale of a reasonably big, cold-war era building with moderately inappropriate insulation, the gain in efficiency is minuscule. It all made me think that we're solving a lot of problems by shifting the issue away from us, in this case from the bulbs to the radiators. It's comparable to EVs in my opinion: "if we take all the pollution and put it in SE Asia, we can cargo cult ourselves into thinking that driving that 20yo beater is worse than generating new waste"

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#496

Post by smolder »

BizarroLand wrote: post #446
jghn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I spent probably $150-$200 for 7 packages of "high CRI" "long lasting" phillips brand LED bulbs last year, for a total of 28 bulbs. 6 of them have failed in less than 9 months, either flickering so badly it could cause an epileptic seizure or just straight up dying on me. It's maddening.

Look at the fixtures you're putting them in and consider if they're getting adequate cooling. If your average "long lasting" (they all claim this, but not at what temperature...) LED bulb is uncomfortably hot to touch, it's on the fast track to failure.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#497

Post by acuozzo »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #424
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…

Can't wait to become a mini-expert in fucking LED lightbulbs just to have decent lighting in my house. I hate that the vast information of the internet has basically required us mere mortals to try and become experts in literally anything and everything just to be able to buy something that isn't awful. Computer? Better keep up to date on all of the CPU, GPU, etc. info. That doesn't even include the insanity of monit…

> I hate that the vast information of the internet has basically required us mere mortals to try and become experts in literally anything and everything just to be able to buy something that isn't awful.

This has always been the case. The difference now is that with the internet it's within reach.

You don't have to dig through your social network to find someone working for the lighting division of GE. You don't have to visit your local library to check out books on how lightbulbs work in order to figure out which makes one better than another. You just need to hop on Google or ask New Bing.

--

Think all incandescent bulbs were the same? Think again. Manufacturing conditions and filament thickness are two of the several factors involved in how long that lightbulb will last and how bright it will get. Cheap, shitty lightbulbs from discount stores were a thing.

Oh, and one more thing! You're pretty much stuck with one color temperature.

--

There are plenty of examples throughout the 20th century of poorly-made, barely-working tech being sold as acceptable. The plethora of non-electric "vacuum cleaners" sold around the turn of the century are one notable early example. The lightbulbs which came after the agreements made by the Phoebus Cartel are another.

1978! Home video! Do you go with VHS from JVC, Betamax from Sony, SelectaVision from RCA, or DiscoVision from MCA?

For an entertaining diversion, imagine you're living in 1973 and it's time to purchase a new car. Is that Plymouth really going to hold up against your new concerns about gas mileage? How do you know? Do you have any mechanic friends? Do you know anything about how cars work? Does the local library have any books to help?

Random final tidbit: The "older"=="better" myth is the result of the fact that we're not exposed to the junk of yesteryear; only the good stuff. The junk was thrown away years and years ago.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#498

Post by katbyte »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #295
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.

Similarly, I started buying Philips Hue bulbs back around 2015 and none of those have failed in the time since, even being used every night since then. They're all in freestanding floor lamps installed in a horizontal orientation, which might have something to do with it. That seems like it'd dissipate heat a lot better than e.g. a pot light housing in the ceiling.

+1 for hue colour/white adjustable ones

They produce great light at the temperature you want and I’ve yet to have one fail after nearly 10 years using them.

Not cheap, but given I’ve never had to replace one maybe in the end they are

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#499

Post by riskable »

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 reference, a candle has a color temperature around ~1800K (with some spots of the candle emitting ~2600K)...

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Candle-shows-different-c...

I'd imagine that the "warm" color temperature is modeled after candle and gas lighting but after reading some articles on the history of light bulbs it seems that all the folks working on it were trying to make the brightest, whitest light they possibly could. Today's "daylight" bulbs would probably be perceived as an engineering wonder by those folks.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#500

Post by sp332 »

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?

Subscribe to Consumer Reports. https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/lightbulbs/ There are lots of categories of products that have the same problem. This covers a bunch of them.
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