881–890 of 966 posts
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…
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I wondered for a long time why we don't have standard built-in DC in building codes that could power our lights, and most electronic devices. Really the few things in my house that require full line voltage are all in the kitchen. Everything else has a transformer attached.
Me too - standard 12V and 5V rails run throughout the house would be great. I even thought about a wallpaper with conductive strips so the power could be invisibly delivered to any part of any room and "tapped" with a push-into-the-wall socket.
And switch mode power supplies are relatively inexpensive and quite efficient.
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You can , but as GP comment said, "Good indoor lighting is now something only people with plenty of disposable income can afford." When you're poor, are you going to cough up $18 for a single bulb, or get a 16-pack for $24 at Home Depot? $288 vs $24.
So "is now something" implies that incandescent was affordable. 16 incandescent bulbs, averaging 3 hours per day, would cost about 50 cents per day. $150-$250 per year in most of the country. So getting the really premium LEDs is still cheaper than lighting used to be. Even better if you use the good bulbs for room lighting and the cheap bulbs for closets and outdoors and such.
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The problem is I used to be able to spend a couple dollars on lightbulbs that consistently looked great and didn’t require a ton of research or money. I’ve bought hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of high-end LED lightbulbs since moving into my new place last year, and the lighting here still looks like crap. Even with budget it’s hard to get something that looks good. Finding something that dims without flicker…
Check out WAC lighting. You'll pay for the quality, but it's there. Work with a local lighting store to guarantee results. There are other high-end brands too, but WAC are very popular and what many high-end hotels and restaurants use.
I searched for "A19" since thats the kind of bulb type that a regular old joe like me has. Just one match and its only 80 CRI. Thats not anywhere competitive with what else has been suggested in this thread.
Im sure if I spent 10 dollars per instead of 30-40 I could find bad ones, but I didn’t and I haven’t.
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…
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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…
One thing the NYMag article says is that CRI is not a very good measure of light quality. I'd love to read more about that on a technical level. edit I learned a bit from a marketing blog article; CRI measures reflection of 8 spot colors but it leaves out some important parts of the spectrum, particularly deep red. https://www.waveformlighting.com/tech/what-is-cri-color-rend...
Maybe I should just give up and install a bunch of these "sun tunnels" in my house.
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> The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. In a screw base, maybe. But compare: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i... $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30... $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W. (Efficiency goes up quite…
This is just an anecdote, but I’ve had multiple “10 year” LED bulbs fail after just a year or two. I suspect much of the claims for these bulbs are theoretical as they just don’t hold up, probably for reasons the grandparent poster is pointing out.
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…
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…
Those satisfy my need for super-bright light.
But, I can only find them online.