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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#581

Post by Self-Perfection »

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?

One guy bought over 4 thousands LED lamps over years, meticulously measured their actual specs and made a huge online catalog https://lamptest.ru/

I follow his project a bit and it looks like consumers are really at loss. Generally there is no reliable way to choose a good led lamp without consulting such catalog. Lamps packaging often lies about actual specs, lamps with the same packaging but manufactured in different years might have different quality etc

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#582

Post by cesaref »

jsmith45 wrote: post #516
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…

I really wish i could find a brand that would reliably tick all the boxes: - Does not overdrive the LEDs and Does not run power supply components at the limit of what they can. (Thus good longevity) - Has a current based driver, so that slight voltage shifts from an appliance kicking on don't result in an obvious brightness shift. - Suitable for use in recessed lighting or enclosed fixtures. (For better or worse, can…

Not sure where you are located, but if you have ceiling halogens to replace, there are two options - to use a low voltage bulb + separate PSU or the 'all in one' bulbs. Here in the UK they are designated GU10 for mains voltage and MR16 for 12v. If you go with 12v bulbs, you can invest in a decent power supply for them, and hence also avoid the poor quality bulb problem.

It's possible to get power supplies to support multiple bulbs daisy chained, so you can invest in one decent power supply.

For general bulbs (e.g. chandelier tulip bulbs) i've found it to be really hard to find stuff that works reliably. 'Normal' round bulbs seem to be more reliable for some reason.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#583

Post by rini17 »

eimrine wrote: post #425
rini17 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true only for white LEDs. The RGB strip does not have them (there are some that include white LEDs but not this one). If you set it to yellow, only pure red and green elements are on, blue elements are completely off.

There is no such thing as a pure red LED. Those are blue ones but with light filters. If you don't see blue which is actually present and you see deep red which is actually absent then maybe consider yourself as brainwashed by marketologists.

No.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#584

Post by bombcar »

nonethewiser wrote: post #429
bombcar wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've started marking LED bulbs as "not for enclosed fixtures" which is .... 90% of existing fixtures? They overheat and die really fast if used in something that's not vented/cooled. You need fixtures that fully expose the bulb so it doesn't burn itself out. Amusing that LED bulbs, the energy savers, die from excess heat .

Is that because they are “downscaling” (totally made up term, IDK electronics) the energy coming into them?

Part of it is that but part of it is just heat loss as the other reply mentioned.

If you get an LED strip, the power supply itself can become warm; but even a LED with no voltage changing needed will warm up.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#585

Post by njarboe »

riskable wrote: post #499
fsh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Humans have used fire probably for their entire evolutionary history. Before language and but after stone tools. The desire for a light spectrum at night similar to what a fire gives off surely comes mostly from that long genetic history.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#586

Post by ikekkdcjkfke »

jsmith45 wrote: post #516
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…

I really wish i could find a brand that would reliably tick all the boxes: - Does not overdrive the LEDs and Does not run power supply components at the limit of what they can. (Thus good longevity) - Has a current based driver, so that slight voltage shifts from an appliance kicking on don't result in an obvious brightness shift. - Suitable for use in recessed lighting or enclosed fixtures. (For better or worse, can…

I think ikea has some nice bulbs. Almost no flicker on slo mo camera. Their rechargeable batteries however are bad

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#587

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

It's interesting how the led datasheets have all the useful information (spectrum, CRI, angular spread). But once manufacturers put them on a bulb, they will refuse to tell even what leds they used.

At this point I believe companies are willfully refusing to inform their customers.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#588

Post by dawnerd »

bombcar wrote: post #396
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…

They've started marking LED bulbs as "not for enclosed fixtures" which is .... 90% of existing fixtures? They overheat and die really fast if used in something that's not vented/cooled. You need fixtures that fully expose the bulb so it doesn't burn itself out. Amusing that LED bulbs, the energy savers, die from excess heat .

And if you want enclosed rated bulbs there’s not many choices. The GE ones I picked up flicker like crazy.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#589

Post by jryb »

I don't understand any of this at all. I got the cheap 2700K LED bulbs from a big box store (~$3 for a pack/bulb, I don't remember) and they are wonderful, they're just as good as they were when I got them, and the spectrum feels the same as an incandescent bulb. I literally put no thought into the purchasing process and it couldn't be more ideal.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#590

Post by vl »

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…

I use https://www.1000bulbs.com/ because they have godzillion bulbs in stock and it's possible to filter by CRI and color temperature. I just get highest CRI in required color temp, and it's good. More expensive, but well worth it.
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