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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#621

Post by tomtheelder »

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 had literally the exact opposite experience when swapping mine out. Both the incandescent and halogen replacements resulted in a _way_ better quality of lighting. And these were just like "first ones off the shelf" from the Home Depot or something- I'm not exactly sure it was maybe 10 years ago. But I vividly remember thinking how much better the lighting quality was, and I had far more options in terms of color temp, which was great.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#622

Post by twawaaay »

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…

As an amateur EE, I have analysed some of LEDs when I wanted to light up my kitchen counters. I wanted flicker-free LEDs with high CRI and temperature matching the rest of my apartment.

I ordered samples of a lot of LEDs and found that almost all of them are using their parts, especially capacitors, well above the specs.

Driving caps at well above their specs, at high temperature, basically ensures speedy failure. Not only that, but undersized smoothing capacitor causes visible 100Hz flicker.

What's even more interesting is at the price point putting better caps was almost inconsequential to the price of the product. I have ordered capacitors that should have been there in the first place and replaced the original ones with the new ones. Not only LEDs are flicker free now, I suspect they will be serving me for much longer.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#623

Post by timbit42 »

uranium wrote: post #565

One thing I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere is that the energy savings of LEDs may not actually be what you expect. We heat our home something like 330 days of the year. If we use LED bulbs instead of incandescents, we just have to run the gas furnace more to make up for the "saved" heat energy. Add in the fact that LEDs have a much higher embedded energy of manufacture, and the fact that they seem to last a lot les…

Depending on how warm your summers are, LED bulbs will reduce the amount of air conditioning you need.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#624

Post by garaetjjte »

shagie wrote: post #537
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs that will practically outlive their owners It is also possible (and not very difficult) to design incandescent bulbs that will outlive their owners. In fact, the first mass produced light bulbs generally lasted 2,500+ hours. In the 1920s, the major bulb manufacturers formed the 'Pheobus Cartel' in Geneva and secretly colluded to limit the lifespan of bulbs…

This goes into the "actual conspiracy - not a theory" category. Veritasium - This is why we can't have nice things - https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy > On 23 December 1924, a group of leading international businessmen gathered in Geneva for a meeting that would alter the world for decades to come. Present were top representatives from…

Devil's advocate: Incandescent lifetime is inversely related to efficiency, thus Phoebus cartel prevented spread of long-life but inefficient bulbs.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#625

Post by 7speter »

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…

95% of consumers are squeezed financially and can’t afford the nice bulbs.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#626

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

What numbers do you expect to see for flicker?

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#627

Post by tomtheelder »

Crusoe123 wrote: post #334
wankle wrote: post #313

https://www.stouchlighting.com/blog/light-comparison-led-lig... . "New LEDs can last 50,000 to 100,000 hours or more. The typical lifespan for an incandescent bulb, by comparison, is 1-5% as long at best (roughly 1,200 hours)." I've never seen more than 15000 hours from an LED bulb at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb "The chart below lists values of luminous efficacy and efficiency for some…

My experience is opposite of yours. I have not yet had to change an LED light in the last 8-9 years since I started using them and replacing incandescent ones in my apartment. On the other hand I remember changing incandescent ones quite often and using up all the surplus ones I had after I started the transition to LED.

Yeah ~10 years of LED bulbs and I've never replaced one. I've moved multiple times and brought my bulbs with me. Used to have a drawer with a bunch of incandescent ones ready to go because it was a regular occurrence.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#628

Post by JohnFen »

xxs wrote: post #550
JohnFen wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power supply died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves. I harvest the LEDs out of dead bulbs to use in hobby projects. With Edison-style bulbs, anyway, the orientation they're mounted in makes a huge amount of difference. They're last a lot longer if they're oriented upright (base down) than in any other orientation because it reduces the heat buildup in the power s…

>Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power supply died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves. I have the exact opposite experience, virtually every single light bulb I have torn down - one LED (all in series) has a black dot, if I shorten it - it will 'work' again. The bulbs I have seen tend to drive the LEDs so hard that some of the latter fail, power supplies might have huge ripple but generally don'…

It could very well be more of a US problem. In the bulbs that I've torn down, they all have used a capacitive dropper power supply, and it's usually been the capacitor that failed.

I have had lamps that lived long enough to see LED failures (the "black dot of death") but that's not the most usual failure mode that I've personally encountered.

I've been considering following in the footsteps of Big Clive and modifying new LED bulbs to stop them from overdriving the LEDs, but my interest in doing that hasn't yet overcome my inherent laziness.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#629

Post by garaetjjte »

Tarball10 wrote: post #528
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?

California's JA8 certification requires LED bulbs to meet specific criteria related to efficiency, lifespan, and light quality. - Efficiency >= 45 lumens per watt - CRI >= 90 - R9 Color Rendering value >= 50 - Rated life >= 15000 hours - Minimum dimming level - Flicker Theoretically if a bulb is listed as JA8 compliant (and the certification isn't fake) you know it at least meets these thresholds.

What does it mean to specify flicker in percents?

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#630

Post by michaelmrose »

vl wrote: post #590
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 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.

As far as I can see this doesn't even show you the CRI just that its 90+ with limited reviews.
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