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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#651

Post by tomtheelder »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #138
pdabbadabba wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Perhaps it's the 50 year old house I live in, but lots of Phillips brand, also whatever the Lowes and Home Depot in-house brands are. I bought Kree in bulk for my last house about 10 years ago and that was a huge mistake. As for the color reproduction issue... you do experience it, I imagine you haven't done color critical work under incandescent and then under LEDs? I do have some stupidly expensive $29 D-50 complia…

> As for the color reproduction issue... you do experience it, I imagine you haven't done color critical work under incandescent and then under LEDs?

High quality LEDs with a good CRI are vastly better for that sort of work. You don't want to be doing anything like that under 2700k incandescent light.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#652

Post by fsckboy »

aimor wrote: post #633

Some people seem to have different memories than I do of what it was like buying lightbulbs before LEDs came out. I remember incandescents also having a variety of color quality, lifespan, and decorative options. I remember having the choice between bargain bin bulbs and luxurious options, making sure to outfit a room with a single brand so everything looked the same, realizing it's more difficult to read with this o…

I do have different memories than you about buying lightbulbs. I remember thinking 60-watt bulbs are frustratingly dim, 75 watt bulbs are a minimum, but what I really wanted every time was a 100 watt bulb, it just improves visual acuity tremendously. And my frustration with LED and flourescents, etc is that I can't find the equivalent of my good old 100 watt bulb; whatever the new rating systems are, it's all an excuse for "it's a little dimmer"

(don't get me wrong, I like dim lighting, I prefer it, I don't turn lights on when I get up in the morning, I make coffee, I take showers in the dark, people come into spaces that I'm in and always snap the lights on and it drives me crazy. I'm simply saying, when I want to turn a light on to see, I want it to cast a good amount of light.)

(oh, let me add on, I also know that 1 tiny little blue or white LED power indicator on each of a few gadgets I buy seem able to bathe my bedroom in light when I'm trying sleep.)

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#653

Post by wrycoder »

aimor wrote: post #633

Some people seem to have different memories than I do of what it was like buying lightbulbs before LEDs came out. I remember incandescents also having a variety of color quality, lifespan, and decorative options. I remember having the choice between bargain bin bulbs and luxurious options, making sure to outfit a room with a single brand so everything looked the same, realizing it's more difficult to read with this o…

And yet I have a growlight that specs its output in moles of photons per second.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#654

Post by rwalle »

righttoolforjob wrote: post #575
stasmo wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? What is weird about that comment? An LED light from a random brand purchased from a random grocery store is very likely to work just fine, and that is many people's experience, so if your experience is different, you should provide concrete evidence instead of hand waving or using words like "worse" with no substance whatsoever.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#655

Post by oezi »

mschuster91 wrote: post #540
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 issue is that 95% of consumers will only choose the cheap bulbs, period. Because the big box stores (Walmart, Home Depot or whatever) don't carry expensive stuff with Cree LEDs and solid cooling designs. They carry whatever shit they can get their hands on for as cheap as possible. And most consumers don't know better, the 1% of consumers that does know orders from Amazon and prays for not getting ripped off by…

The primary issue is that the 'good' bulbs cost 4x but are only 30%-50% better.

It is a clear ripoff.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#656

Post by nmeofthestate »

fsckboy wrote: post #652
aimor wrote: post #633

Some people seem to have different memories than I do of what it was like buying lightbulbs before LEDs came out. I remember incandescents also having a variety of color quality, lifespan, and decorative options. I remember having the choice between bargain bin bulbs and luxurious options, making sure to outfit a room with a single brand so everything looked the same, realizing it's more difficult to read with this o…

I do have different memories than you about buying lightbulbs. I remember thinking 60-watt bulbs are frustratingly dim, 75 watt bulbs are a minimum, but what I really wanted every time was a 100 watt bulb, it just improves visual acuity tremendously. And my frustration with LED and flourescents, etc is that I can't find the equivalent of my good old 100 watt bulb; whatever the new rating systems are, it's all an excu…

I ended up buying adaptors that turn a light socket into two sockets. Then you can achieve something approaching 100W, or better, with a couple of averagely dim LEDs.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#657

Post by jacobsenscott »

elihu wrote: post #636
jacobsenscott wrote: post #620

No less that half my led can lights are unusable - either they "burned out" (whatever that means for an led light, but they did), or they flicker too much or buzz too loudly. I gave up on replacing them and am just living with the ones that work. I don't know where to buy good ones - the led market 99% scammers. The crap at the big box hardware stores is not worth it. I've probably spent more money in one year on def…

LEDs are sensitive to heat. It might be that recessed lighting is causing your bulbs to overheat and fail early because they don't have enough ventilation.

Maybe, but they are designed for this. I suppose given the quality of the product that isn't saying much.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#658

Post by BizarroLand »

HideousKojima wrote: post #519
BizarroLand wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this could be a prosumer retrofit thing, where the AC voltage gets converted to DC in the junction box, and then DC is sent down to the fixture. Probably with some sort of current sensing system to make it compatible with dimmers. Pair that with DC A19 LED bulbs that have no internal power systems. Probably expensive to put together and to install, but if the goal was to have LEDs that last longer, that would d…

>Maybe this could be a prosumer retrofit thing, where the AC voltage gets converted to DC in the junction box, and then DC is sent down to the fixture. The problem is that in 99.99% of homes outlets are on the same circuits as light fixtures, you would need to do some major rewiring.

No, I'm saying you put a module into the junction box that the light fixture is attached to that serves as an AC/DC adapter, current limiting driver, and possibly a dimming sensor that would then provide downstream DC voltage to retrofit A19 bulbs.

Those bulbs would then have no internal switching systems to burn out and rely entirely on the module hidden behind the wall to handle their power needs.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#659

Post by brewdad »

fsckboy wrote: post #652
aimor wrote: post #633

Some people seem to have different memories than I do of what it was like buying lightbulbs before LEDs came out. I remember incandescents also having a variety of color quality, lifespan, and decorative options. I remember having the choice between bargain bin bulbs and luxurious options, making sure to outfit a room with a single brand so everything looked the same, realizing it's more difficult to read with this o…

I do have different memories than you about buying lightbulbs. I remember thinking 60-watt bulbs are frustratingly dim, 75 watt bulbs are a minimum, but what I really wanted every time was a 100 watt bulb, it just improves visual acuity tremendously. And my frustration with LED and flourescents, etc is that I can't find the equivalent of my good old 100 watt bulb; whatever the new rating systems are, it's all an excu…

I've had good luck finding 100w equivalents at my local big box store. Only in the bright white color format though which looks terrible indoors. So those get used on outdoor fixtures and in my utility room and garage.

Fortunately, my home has plenty of overhead lighting and a few lamps, so 60w soft white bulbs are sufficient for the other rooms in the house.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#660

Post by globular-toast »

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 think it's the flicker. Pulse width modulation is evil. I'm not aware of a single instance where it's preferable over an analogue adjustment. It's a horrible and thoroughly "non-human" solution to a problem. The most annoying thing for me is that car headlights are now PWM LEDs. I can see the flicker, especially in my peripheral vision. It's highly distracting and annoying.
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