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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#571

Post by dashundchen »

antisthenes wrote: post #527
AlanYx wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun's spectrum is relatively smooth, whereas there are some grow lights that have a narrow, intense spike of UV designed to match chlorophyll B's absorption. Not all grow lights have this spectrum, but it's worth being careful. It's one of the reasons why some grow lights come with a warning about using eye protection.

That's a good point, although I'm pretty sure the Sun still trumps any kind of LED grow light output, especially during summer months. That being said, maybe it's a good idea to use a plexiglass UV filter when using it as a workshop light.

My understanding is outside, your pupils will dilate as the light increases, protecting your retina from increased UV. If you had a strong emitter of UV in a relatively dim room, your pupils wouldn't shrink and would allow more damaging UV to hit your retinas.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#572

Post by cesaref »

jimbobjim wrote: post #529
BizarroLand wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Phillips bulbs I bought have a ridiculously high failure rate. About half have failed within 6 months. Much worse than the supermarket own brands, or cheaper ones from Amazon.

Meanwhile I replaced around 40 halogen bulbs with Philips branded bulbs around 5 years ago, and have not had a single failure.

It's possible the quality has changed, but i'm also wondering whether the mains voltage might be a factor - there is quite a wide range of possible voltages allowed whilst still being in-spec, so maybe i'm lucky at my properties and mains voltage is on the low end of the standard and maybe you're running hot. It's all most frustrating!

BTW, I went with Philips on the basis that there was a good chance that if I did need to replace a few after a year or two due to failures i'd be likely to be able to source the same bulb, as it's really annoying if you find one bulb a different colour than the others...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#573

Post by xxs »

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?

Weight them and buy the heaviest one, for E27 likely you don't wish to go over 8-10W of total power (this can be measured easily as well).

A scale that can measure grams is like $10.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#574

Post by Zak »

Joker_vD wrote: post #558
Zak wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to cram all the infrastructure for an LED lamp into the shape of a light bulb is a bad idea, even if the input power is DC. Good designs for LED lighting have larger surface areas for heat dissipation and some physical/thermal separation between the LEDs and the power supply. A quality power supply does not produce flicker. As other comments have noted, dimming, or even predictable output requires some sort of…

> Trying to cram all the infrastructure for an LED lamp into the shape of a light bulb is a bad idea, even if the input power is DC. Absolutely, the incandescent light bulbs have that shape for a reason: the screw is small because there is nothing to put in it and it doesn't heat, the bulb is large to dissipate all the light and heat it generates. And the LED light bulbs have exactly opposite problems: almost all of…

I don't think we're exactly stuck with the old form factor. We can start phasing them out. Replacement of screw sockets with modern fixtures is well within the capabilities of the average DIYer (though perhaps some places it's illegal for anyone but a professional electrician to touch anything hardwired).

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#575

Post by righttoolforjob »

stasmo wrote: post #314
SoftTalker wrote: post #133

LED bulbs suck. CFLs suck. The light is poor and though they cost an order of magnitude more than incandescents did, they are built so cheaply that they don't last any longer. And they qualify as hazardous waste when they need to be disposed of. At times I've seriously considered trying oil lamps. The only LED bulbs I buy now are the "filament" types. Their bulbs are filled with helium so heat transfer is good, and t…

It feels weird to me to see this kind of comment on HN. I’m sure somewhere out there on the internet there are people complaining that computers suck because they bought a few cheap computers and didn’t have a good experience, so they’re assuming all computers are bad. Without any sort of detail about what brand or what it was used for and why it was a bad experience, it’s really not adding anything to the conversati…

The regular consumer, like us, don't give a rats ass about the technology behind the light, we just want them to work well. The light is much, much worse than incandescents for the typical consumer. That's what the article is about. Your comment if anything is the weird one.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#576

Post by olyjohn »

jimbobjim wrote: post #529
BizarroLand wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Phillips bulbs I bought have a ridiculously high failure rate. About half have failed within 6 months. Much worse than the supermarket own brands, or cheaper ones from Amazon.

The Philips Hue bulbs somehow never burn out. I have about 30 of them in my house, and the oldest ones (5+ years old now) are working as well as the new ones that I have bought recently. They are the only "smart" thing that I have in my house, because they're the only thing I've ever hooked up that worked with 100% reliability. They don't require an internet connection, etc. I never have connection problems, never have to reboot the hub, the switches work for me 100% of the time.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#577

Post by hoffs »

stasmo wrote: post #314
SoftTalker wrote: post #133

LED bulbs suck. CFLs suck. The light is poor and though they cost an order of magnitude more than incandescents did, they are built so cheaply that they don't last any longer. And they qualify as hazardous waste when they need to be disposed of. At times I've seriously considered trying oil lamps. The only LED bulbs I buy now are the "filament" types. Their bulbs are filled with helium so heat transfer is good, and t…

It feels weird to me to see this kind of comment on HN. I’m sure somewhere out there on the internet there are people complaining that computers suck because they bought a few cheap computers and didn’t have a good experience, so they’re assuming all computers are bad. Without any sort of detail about what brand or what it was used for and why it was a bad experience, it’s really not adding anything to the conversati…

The oil lamp is epitome of HN

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#578

Post by jt2190 »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #2

Non-dimmable bulbs are the author's problem. First, bans on incandescent bulbs are foolish because they encourage defeatist foolishness like this article (as far as I can tell, for the sake of virtue signaling and modest acceleration of a change that was already happening.) The CFLs which preceded LEDs were really awful, especially for closets (where they'll linger for decades, given the low utilization of those bulb…

Yes. This immediately stood out:

> We were renovating our apartment, and one day our contractor summoned me to the bathroom in dismay. He adjusted the dimmer switch he’d just installed, and a new LED fixture began strobing like we were in a seven-by-eight-foot basement dance club.

I’m not sure what skill-level of contractor he was using, but it’s pretty obvious that nobody checked that the light fixture was dimmable with that particular switch.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#579

Post by righttoolforjob »

Majromax wrote: post #25
jmclnx wrote: post #5

I have heard that newer LED Bulbs now have some kind of built in obsolescence. This is from someone I know who is an engineer working for the US military. I told him I had bought some LEDs (started moving over 2 years ago) and that is when he mentioned that. I guess I will find out, so far so good. I did stock up on 100 watt incandescent years ago and have a many left just in case. I found LEDs cause me eye strain, b…

> I have heard that newer LED Bulbs now have some kind of built in obsolescence. This is from someone I know who is an engineer working for the US military. BigClive covers this issue a fair amount on his Youtube teardown videos. It's not exactly built-in obsolescence, so much as being built to cost. The cheapest way to build an LED bulb is to minimize the number of components. Instead of spreading the light emission…

> It's not exactly built-in obsolescence, so much as being built to cost.

How do you know this? Seems completely implausible. Source please.

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