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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#51

Post by gaudat »

Is it just me or is there something off about this article? It reads quite incoherent.

I happen to work with a lot of LED light sources nowadays and I can see most problems discussed are related to the light fixture, driver or psychology. More often than not it is the capacitors in these mains powered LEDs that fail first, because the circuit is designed to run at the highest temperature possible to lower the cost of the final product. The bulbs, or LED chips, looks quite innocent in this regard.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#52

Post by davidmurdoch »

My pool pump and AC will cost me about $700 US this month. Switching from incandescent to LED bulbs might have saved me a few dollars. And for what? For expensive bulbs that flicker, don't reproduce colors well, last less than a year, and undulate and buzz when dimmed (yes, the dimmable ones)? I think we've been bamboozled by the light bulb industry.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#53

Post by alistairSH »

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 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".

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#55

Post by daneel_w »

I've been surprised several times the past decade by how many people just don't notice the poor quality of light with low CRI, that the light is "hollow" and missing a chunk in the red/yellow part of the spectrum. Thankfully LED bulbs are getting better, and a lot of affordable offerings these days hover around 90 CRI. Same goes for the problem with indirect flickering, which the past few years have mostly gone away thanks to producers finally spending two cents more per bulb to fit them with adequate capacitors.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#56

Post by roel_v »

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…

"Good indoor lightning"

Man I'd love me some indoor lightning, no matter the cost.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#58

Post by derbOac »

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…

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 expecting it.

But I don't see that as a bad thing, I really love all the options, and the better precision in labeling color versus power versus brightness.

One problem I've noted, that others in the thread are pointing to, is that a lot of shoddy manufacturing has taken advantage of many of the claims of LED technology to push unacceptable products. One of my pet peeves is how I've suddenly seen fixtures with integrated bulbs take over lighting departments, poorly constructed and forcing you to remove the entire fixture rather than just the bulb, when it dies after a year, much earlier than promised. But I guess even there it's just moved me to more selective lighting stores where I can still buy better fixtures separately from the bulbs.

I do think there's something to be said about declines or fraud in lightbulb manufacturing quality compared to what is possible, but I see that as a scourge of our age and not something unique to LEDs. I have as much trouble finding a quality lightbulb as I do a quality pair of pants.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#59

Post by throwthrowuknow »

alistairSH wrote: post #53
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 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".

Sure but it’ll cost $100. The efficiency of LEDs is a joke when you factor in materials, manufacturing, and subjective utility. We’re paying more for worse.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#60

Post by davidmurdoch »

detourdog wrote: post #11

Has anyone noticed that warmer light LEDs causing blurrier text. I did a test and found that my cool light LEDs made small text stable and readable while the same text under warm light was blurry.

Could be lots of things. The CRI (a measure of how well it reproduce colors across the visible spectrum) of the bulb is a likely candidate.
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