There's something off about LED bulbs • Hacker News Board

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#61

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

Remember back when texting and calling cost decent money? People used to differentiate cell plans based on the amount you got. Now it's a free unlimited or practically unlimited inclusion in just about every mobile phone plan and people care about other things.

The same thing happened to lighting.

Back in "the day" nobody cared about light color or light temperature. You bought whatever was cost effective for the amount of light you needed. Nobody cared that sodium bulb lighting was orange and that arc lamps were bright white. They were the economically viable options for their use cases.

Heck, nobody "liked" the florescent lights, especially the early ones but they did the right job at the right price so they got bought in droves.

Now that we have LEDs for everything and the affording the amount of light being scattered is not the primary hurdle anymore so consumers suddenly care about using other performance metrics to differentiate products.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#62

Post by nickthegreek » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

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 think it was worse in the past. I had to chose a daylight, warm or soft bulb. Now I buy one bulb capable of changing color temp and brightness from my couch and it lasts way longer. This is exactly the kinda thing sci fi had when I was a kid and now its in every room of my house.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#63

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

throwthrowuknow wrote: post #59

alistairSH wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For a "lifetime" bulb that doesn't make me crazy, I'd gladly pay $100. Well, maybe not quite, but certainly more than whatever I pay now for mid-grade (by HD/Lowes standards) bulbs.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#64

Post by throwthrowuknow » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

gaudat wrote: post #51

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…

[flagged]

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#65

Post by noneeeed » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

dannyz wrote: post #13

I have found that there can be huge quality differences between cheap and more expensive LED bulbs as well. Specifically the ones that use a cheap rectifier. Sometimes I think that I can see them flickering out of the corner of my eye.

This is a big part of it. I tend to pay a reasonable amount for my LEDs and I've yet to be disappointed. I very rarely replace bulbs despite having dozens of fixtures, and the quality of the light is good because I made a point of buying the right colour temp and getting dimmable ones where it makes sense.

Unfortunately the market is swamped with cheap low quality ones that produce pretty crap quality light and burn out quickly. I learnt pretty quickly that it was a false economy to skimp on them.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#66

Post by foobarian » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

I had an epiphany this year that I don't need to conform to the lightbulb socket interface any longer, now that things like straight-wired LED modules [1] are available. They waste a lot less space on unnecessary hardware, and can therefore fill more space with useful light producing material. I've been slowly converting my big round ceiling fixtures and the light and dimming performance is nothing short of miraculous.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09H3VFG8B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#67

Post by dboreham » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

thrdbndndn wrote: post #38

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…

> LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons > Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons Can you elaborate? What does "hard" mean here, I don't understand.

Placed under operating conditions very close to their specified limits.

Like if you were to drive your car in 2nd gear on the freeway, at 6000rpm. The engine would wear out much quicker than if you drove in 5th gear, at 1500rpm.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#68

Post by doitLP » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

aardvarkr wrote: post #47

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…

What’s an example of what you consider to be a high quality led? I’m pretty happy with everything that I have in my home but I’m curious what you’re talking about

Check out https://www.waveformlighting.com/ for some very high quality LEDs and education about how they work.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#69

Post by elzbardico » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

thrdbndndn wrote: post #38

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…

> LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons > Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons Can you elaborate? What does "hard" mean here, I don't understand.

In most cases, they are run too hot with barely adequate heat dissipation.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#70

Post by pdabbadabba » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

davidmurdoch wrote: post #52

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.

Wow, what kind of awful bulbs are you buying? I have literally a house full of LED bulbs, some of which are on dimmers, and have experienced literally none of these problems. Just for starters, I haven't had a single LED bulb fail in the 8-odd years I've been using them in my home.

But maybe there's an argument that you have to pay a significant premium to get a bulb that doesn't have the issues you've run into and, once you factor that premium into account, LED bulbs aren't worth it. But some of the broad claims here, and in the article, about the allegedly poor performance of LED bulbs just don't cohere at all with my experience with them. I made a point of buying high quality bulbs that are dimmable, don't flicker, and have the color temperature and CRI that I want and...well...that's exactly what I got.