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eimrine 14 minutes ago [-]
Hey friends, why you do not pull off that second resistor in order to make your LED bulb to emit 30% of power but to have endless lifespawn? Your TV has a matrix of LED with endless lifespawn. Just don't be a blind consumer, also you can glue off the cap which blurs the light winning 10% of light, also you can drill the radiator for helping to cool the debuffed bulb even more.
freediddy 14 hours ago [-]
I've never had LED lights last anywhere near the purported 5-7 year timeframe. The worst ones are the small decorative ones with the tinier screw part that my house seems to have an inordinate number of. Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. I like LED lights immensely but the idea they last even 2 years is a lie in my opinion.
Hilliard_Ohiooo 13 hours ago [-]
I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad. Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?
A 100 out of 100 success rate after 8 years.
_puk 1 hours ago [-]
A recent rewire saw the electrician fit LED bulbs throughout the house. Modern fire safe housings etc, plenty of ventilation.
These were not cheap off the shelf bulbs from the local store.
3 in the kitchen went after less than a year.
I contacted the manufacturer directly. Turns out they had a "bad batch". How many bulbs did I fit?
About 50..
A box of 48 bulbs turned up 2 days later.
Not a single other bulb has gone 4 years later.
Not sure what the lesson there is. You win some you lose some? It's not always down to cheap bulbs?
cucumber3732842 14 minutes ago [-]
>3 in the kitchen went after less than a year.
Cheap/poor quality LEDs (the only kind I buy) hate high temps. Like really, really really hate it.
I've killed more bulbs near the shower than all other rooms on that floor combined. Meanwhile in the garage/basement the only tube LEDs that I've replaced this decade are the ones in the hot unventilated area away from the door or near hot work.
t0mas88 53 minutes ago [-]
Same here, around 40 Philips Hue lights, 8 years old. All but one are still working fine. In the broken one the electronics went bad after about 4 years, the light was still working but would occasionally turn off or change color for no reason. Got a new one for free.
krackers 13 hours ago [-]
They have become cheaper and cut costs over time. LED bulbs bought around the l-prize time when the technology was new are heavy, you can feel their metal heatsink. New LEDs from the same reputable brand are comparatively cheap.
lelandbatey 12 hours ago [-]
Yep, I have a 15 year old LED lightbulb that's a "60 watt equivalent" and it works great. It was one of the first LED bulbs I bought, and I only bought one because I remember it costing individually about $25, maybe more. It's got a very heavy metal heatsink where nowadays you have just a plastic "neck" of the bulb. It chugs along wonderfully (though the color is noticable a little bit greener than later cheaper bulbs that have better color accuracy).
InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, same. I have probably around 60 Philips Hue bulbs or lamps, I bought the first one over a decade ago, and so far, one lamp has failed (a Signe that has started flickering).
piva00 13 hours ago [-]
Same for me, have Philips Hue bulbs for the past 10 years, some 50 of them and only had one failure unrelated to the LEDs themselves.
pkphilip 3 hours ago [-]
The bulbs from about 7 to 10 years ago were far more long lasting than the new ones
freediddy 13 hours ago [-]
No, I started with Philips Hues but then gave up and migrated to Cree light bulbs with Lutron Casetas because the Hues kept dying. These are over 2 different houses as well. I wonder what is going on if it's just me
shawn_w 13 hours ago [-]
The old Cree bulbs that Home Depot used to carry have been great for me. I need to find a new supplier though because the brands they have now are junk that last a year or two if I'm lucky.
Krutonium 13 hours ago [-]
Yeah that is very weird. Personally I even have some LED lights that are going on 15 years old, spent a bit more than I'd like on them at the time, but they were on sale!
sam1714 13 hours ago [-]
Had a ton of issues with the original Cree bulbs. They underglued the glass bulb and it came off with thermal cycling. They also put the LEDs on a metal core PCB they bent into ~10-gon tower. On the bends, the traces apparently would crack which led to overheating and a burn spot.
Cree is now no more; the bulbs are just a brand for FEIT who imports the same unreliable Chinese white-label bulbs.
freediddy 13 hours ago [-]
Which brand do you suggest?
sam1714 13 hours ago [-]
Philips Hue. I've had issues with color ones, the White + Ambience ones are fine. (Makes sense as they omit the color section)
Hue is basically the only bulbs not being sourced from the same couple of white label manufacturers. Philips/Signify's rapidly shrinking line of dumb bulbs are being sourced from there too.
Never buy filament style bulbs. They are universally unreliable because of poor thermals with the emitters.
longitudinal93 12 hours ago [-]
Can second this. Did my whole house in Hue and have only had one failure (early on) in 5 years.
gucci-on-fleek 13 hours ago [-]
> I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad.
I had a bulb go bad once (out of almost 50 bulbs), but I called their support number and they shipped me a new one for free without any hassle.
toasty228 13 hours ago [-]
2 of the 4 philips hue I bought in 2019 died a few years back, a bulb and a led stripe, I'm not buying expensive ones next time
Twirrim 13 hours ago [-]
I bought a whole bunch of GE LED bulbs figuring big name, probably more reliable. Nope. Diabolically bad. Never again.
NathanielK 8 hours ago [-]
Me too. They were a lovely colour temp and high CRI, really well diffused too. But wow, they died so fast in almost any fixture.
hagbard_c 13 hours ago [-]
> Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?
If only that were true. Osram is a well-renowned brand so you'd think their - rather pricey - 'high-wattage' (10W) bulbs meant for outside lights here on the farm would last longer than about a year, all in different armatures, all with plenty of cooling (they're mainly used in autumn/winter/spring when it tends to be rather chilly here in Sweden). You'd think cheap bulbs go bad quickly but the cheap 'Biltema' brand bulbs I bought for some rooms just keep on going without marked loss of output.
All in all the average life time of a LED bulb seems to be around 2-3 years before it either has dimmed so much that it is no longer usable or it has failed outright. There are exceptions like the mentioned cheap bulbs which are still going strong after about 9 years of close to daily use or those Osram bulbs which fail in about a year or less or the (not mentioned) 'fluorescent tube replacement fixtures' which last less than a year before one of the 4 LED segment strips fails due to a failed LED. I repair these by replacing the failed chip, they work for a few months and then the things fail again.
I've used 'efficient' lighting since I bought my first house starting with jam-jar like Philips SL 'bulbs' (compact fluorescent tubes with all the related gizmos packaged in a single replaceable unit) for which I made fixtures out of birch plywood wood, 90° PVC drain pipe bends and E27 sockets because those things were heavy at about 500 grams. None of those SL bulbs had failed when I moved out 6 years later, I still have some somewhere in storage. Later I moved to the lighter PLC version which also tended to last a long time, some of them are still in use here. Then came LED bulbs which were supposed to last for tens of thousands of hours... and I suddenly started to have to think about replacing failed bulbs again.
PinkSheep 11 hours ago [-]
> Osram
Pay attention to the European efficiency rating for LEDs. Anything above B is practically "Dubai LED" class. The common Osram isn't doing good in this category, their LEDs I have seen in retail are rated like E-F.
To reiterate: the article fell short on the point of LED efficiency. LEDs are semiconductors, do you know when the CPU is at peak efficiency? Before it hits the exponential voltage/frequency curve. Low voltage -> cooler LEDs -> more efficient light conversion -> easier to cool -> tens of thousands hours of practical lifespan.
What does it cost? Like less than a dollar in BOM. What does it cost us? Billions in replaced LEDs worldwide and megatonnes of electric waste, because it is not made to last for "objective reasons": lower price tag in storeshelves aka capitalism and oblivious consumers.
rob74 60 minutes ago [-]
Hm... race to the bottom? We bought our current apartment (built in the 1980s) 12 years ago, and I have switched to LED lighting everywhere from the beginning. Main learning: old relays and/or dimmers seem to generate voltage spikes that are fine for old lightbulbs, but kill LED lamps in a matter of months, so that it looks like the lamps themselves might be the cause. After I replaced those, no more problems - most of the LED lamps from the beginning (except for those connected to old relays and dimmers) are still with us! I also tend towards brand name LED lights (Philips & co), which might be a bit more expensive, but have (I hope) better quality checks.
ido 33 minutes ago [-]
The following anecdote doesn’t contradict what you wrote but maybe you’ll find it interesting- I worked for a daughter company of Phillips in the 00s (as an embedded programmer). I was working on mp3 players and set-top boxes but my boss has been with Phillips for decades at the time. He told me how the CD players (the ones you’d connect to speakers at home, not the portable ones) had a variety of brands, from budget to premium. But the only differences were in the external materials & the quality of the disc tray - as those are differences people notice. But everything else (and thus the audio quality) was identical.
aetherspawn 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah my parents had the type with the external driver box from Bunnings, and they died every 6 months or so. Those were DIY with a little pigtail plug.
They were awful. I genuinely believed that LED lights were crap.
In our new house the sparky put in a proper Chinese brand from the commercial sparky store I guess, no external box, dimmable, 4 adjustable hues with a toggle switch. They were like $10 each. Been 7 years no failures.
We have some really expensive ATOM ones above the shower (IP68) and outside around the perimeter. Those were around $75 each, but are the same age as well, no issues.
wjnc 4 hours ago [-]
In the category of private victories without any economic use (any hobby costs you something): I store boxes for LED lights with receipts. Write on the box where you put the light and chug it in the garage. I have not failed to get a new one for free at our local home depot equivalent after 3 to 4 years. It doesn’t help the store that the boxes used to state how many years they would last.
I agree that even Osram doesn’t meet the hours or years, Philips doesn’t by a long way.
craftkiller 13 hours ago [-]
I have never had an LED light bulb fail. I'm still using the same 6-pack I bought over a decade ago, bringing them with me from apartment to apartment. I only have 5 remaining because the glue that holds the glass bulb onto the base eventually failed on one and I couldn't be bothered to figure out what the correct adhesive would be for lightbulbs.
somat 12 hours ago [-]
Fair enough but they don't get hot, nearly any glue would work, Being plastic, I would use CA(superglue).
After failure I like to do a postmortem teardown, it has never been the LED proper, usually it is the capacitor in a capacitance power supply, otherwise the controller IC.
craftkiller 11 hours ago [-]
Good to know, because another one of the bulbs visibly looks on the verge of separation. Thanks!
tialaramex 2 hours ago [-]
Because LED lighting is electronics it hates heat, unlike an incandescent lamp. So the most common cause of shorter lifetimes is that the LED can't discard enough heat to the environment and begins to overheat. Small (or absent) heatsinks, installation which (perhaps for aesthetic reasons) puts the lighting where warm air can't escape and of course just putting the lighting directly in concentrated sunlight will make this worse.
I have a room which is lit for like 10-20 hours per day and so it clocks up hours very quickly and my LED lamps are guaranteed for 2 years so I figured surely the guarantee would trigger but nope, I began keeping receipts and turns out that I only need to replace one every 3-5 years it must just feel frequent because it's annoying, I just dug out the most recent receipt and it's from 2021. I will continue keeping the receipts to feel better about the annoyance.
maccard 1 hours ago [-]
I've lived in my current home for 5 years with LED lighting, and we have hardly changed any lightbulbs in the house. I've got no idea how old those bulbs are. I lived in my previous place for 7 years and changed a handful of bulbs.
Can't say my experience matches at all!
addaon 13 hours ago [-]
Every Philips L-Prize bulb I bought in 2012 is still working. Some have been on about 30% of the time since purchase. A few have been dropped multiple meters onto concrete; oops. Well made LED bulbs last. Cost-optimized ones may not.
sam1714 13 hours ago [-]
My OG gray Philips lasted more than a decade constantly on. It was still working at the end but I noticed the yellow remote phosphor plastic panels were disintegrating with a web of cracks. Underneath, the plastic surrounding the LEDs had turned brown: the polymers had photodegraded.
freediddy 13 hours ago [-]
I had a bunch of Philips Hue LED light bulbs until they started dying within a couple of years or less and the replacement costs were ridiculous. That's when I switched to Lutron Casetas.
addaon 13 hours ago [-]
I run about 50 Philips Hue lights and I’ve replaced 3 in six years, so definitely not as reliable as the L-Prize lights, but not awful. The L-Prize bulbs are built like tanks… when you drop one you check the floor for damage before the bulb.
Shadowmist 10 hours ago [-]
Exact same numbers for me! 3 bulbs stopped shutting off completely. When I would turn them off they would stay around 5% brightness.
duskdozer 2 hours ago [-]
I guess if people are nerding out on lights in this subthread, maybe someone can recommend me a type or source for low-K (say, 2200K or something thereabout) bulbs with good CRI (yes, I know, but I can still notice a big difference at 2700. I don't know how low it will matter to me, but I want to see)
anonymous_user9 2 hours ago [-]
I've been using one of these 1700K bulbs [1] for a few years, and it produces a pleasant light. They also have a 2400K model [2].
Randomly, my Philips Hue E27 bulbs last far longer than any of the China Zigbee clones I've bought, but like all mass produced goods, there are outliers that fail.
The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few months, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail ever, so Philips seems to be doing something right.
Hilliard_Ohiooo 13 hours ago [-]
I agree, my Philips hue bulbs have been going strong for about 7 to 8 years now I'm not a single issue. I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs.
Marsymars 12 hours ago [-]
It's a bit tricky to determine what exactly is "cheap" though. I've got various Philips Hue bulbs/strips with no failures at 20k+ hours. OTOH I've got a few Philips Ultra Definition bulbs over my kitchen island which seem to fail at an average of 10k or so hours.
None of the other bulbs in my house are really on long enough to say much about failures... like I've got dozens of recessed LEDs without any failures over 5 years, but I doubt any of them are over 1-2k hours.
basisword 1 hours ago [-]
>> I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs.
What is a 'cheap' bulb though? We paid a few bucks for a bulb for generations. Suddenly we're paying 10x that for a Phillips Hue and anything lesser is 'cheap'.
xnx 13 hours ago [-]
Enclosed fixtures can kill some LED bulbs quickly if they can't dissipate heat.
foobarchu 13 hours ago [-]
I would say most LED bulbs. You need ones specifically rated for enclosures, which are way less common, and most people have the wrong idea of what counts as enclosed (the glass hood around your kitchen chandelier bulbs is an enclosure, as are ceiling cans)
jerlam 10 hours ago [-]
I was killing a lot of LEDs in recessed cans. I replaced them with integrated retrofits, which aren't designed around a bulb shape that fries its own electronics, and aren't made as cheaply as possible.
My n=1 study: I built my living room lights about 8 years ago and have had to swap 1/20 lamps since. Perhaps try a better manufacturer?
mort96 13 hours ago [-]
Do you keep your light on constantly?
I used to have a lamp that I kept replacing bulbs for "all the time". I didn't understand why since the light bulbs claimed to last for years and years. One day I read the light bulb package more closely, and it said something along the lines of, "7 years life span at 2 hours per day" in small text (the numbers may be wrong, going by memory). Doing the math, the number of active hours claimed on the box turned out to be roughly true. I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.
fn-mote 10 hours ago [-]
> I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.
It's perfectly logical that lifetime should be measured in hours of service, not days of existence. People don't know how to translate 7500 hours of service into a real duration, though. Hence the years.
mort96 3 hours ago [-]
I would expect 7500 to translate into 0.85 years though, not 7.
cameronh90 2 hours ago [-]
I’ve never had a Hue bulb fail in about a decade of using them in every fitting.
usefulcat 13 hours ago [-]
I had an LED porch light that lasted ~10 years. The fixture had light and motion sensors, so it wasn't on during the day or all night, and often it was not running at full brightness, but still it was on a lot. I was surprised it lasted that long, especially since it was outdoors.
I switched to all LED lighting many years ago. I've had a few that lasted less than a year, but by and large I'd say that nearly all the lights I've had have lasted at least on the order of years.
semerda 4 hours ago [-]
Ditto. They barely last 12 mos. This goes for both types: LED Light Chips (Strips) and LED String Lights from various manufacturers.
tzs 13 hours ago [-]
In mid 2016 I replaced around 25-30 incandescent bulbs (7 x 100 W, a couple or so 40 W, and the rest 60 W) with Walmart Great Value non-dimmable LEDs. Basically every incandescent bulb I could find around the house that was not on a dimmer and was A19 shape with an E26 base (except I forgot the attic and crawlspace).
There was some sort of deal between Walmart and Puget Sound Energy that applied an instant rebate automatically so that they simply rang up on checkout for $0.17.
They are all still working fine.
benj111 1 hours ago [-]
I owned my last house for 12 years, I replaced 1 bulb?
Half the bulbs were carried over from a previous house, so some are ~14 years old. Admittedly these were early ones, so the original batch had metal bodies etc. the replacement was a Phillips one. This is in the UK though, with pendant fittings, so less heat issues.
basisword 1 hours ago [-]
This sounds like you have electrical issues. I've lived in a couple of apartments before where bulbs would go all the time. Outside of that I've been using the same Phillips Hue bulbs for going on 8 years without any issue.
watwut 13 hours ago [-]
That is weird. Mine are basically infinite.
convolvatron 14 hours ago [-]
I've run 30w led modules for 10+ years by - using real power conversion components, making sure they have sufficient cooling and running them at 75% of their rated current. they still seem plenty bright.
lovich 13 hours ago [-]
We have several hundred smart led lights from I want to say Lutron? In my home going on year 6 soon and we’ve had to replace only 3-4 so far. 3 of those replacements were on the same circuit as well so I question if the circuit isn’t at fault.
Plural of anecdote isn’t data and all that but I think the several hundred quantity adds some weight. Also about 90 of those are in outdoor lamps so there’s a good amount dealing with weather and we’ve not had to replace any of those yet.
quickthrowman 12 hours ago [-]
If you are installing LED lamps into enclosed fixtures you need to use LED lamps rated for enclosed fixtures or they will die an early death. A globe around a lamp with an open bottom and a recessed can are both enclosed, even though you can see the lamp. Heat rises.
Similarly, you can’t install recessed cans into a ceiling that is insulated without them being IC rated or they will die an early death.
Spend a few dollars more per lamps for quality ones. Philips makes decent LED lamps, I’m fond of their 2200-2700K dimmable lamps that lower the color temp as they dim. Philips makes an E12 base BA11 shape (candelabra) lamp that should fit your needs.
I buy Keystone lamps LED T8 lamps almost exclusively, but those are pretty uncommon in homes.
Commercial LED fixtures are rated for 50,000 hours typically but they have a separate LED driver and massive heatsinks to provide that sort of lifespan.
cge 12 hours ago [-]
While the author mentions that they are not trying to defend the Phoebus cartel, I think they may inadvertently be somewhat misleading in their explanation. What they are saying is, from an engineering standpoint, true. But my understanding of the argument against the Phoebus cartel is that it was using legitimate engineering points as the official justification for profiteering business collusion: that the points were real, but were not the actual reasons for their decisions, or reasonable justification for the particular choices of values they enforced.
In doing so, the article perhaps obscures the point that business collusion, I expect, is more often built around legitimate reasoning taken to illegitimate extents and conclusions, than around outright fabrications.
cucumber3732842 9 minutes ago [-]
>is more often built around legitimate reasoning taken to illegitimate extents and conclusions, than around outright fabrications.
I don't disagree with you.
Whatever standard we choose I want it applied evenly to all subjects.
A solid 60% of the "policy advocacy" type HN comments fall into this category.
Aerolfos 3 hours ago [-]
> In doing so, the article perhaps obscures the point that business collusion, I expect, is more often built around legitimate reasoning taken to illegitimate extents and conclusions, than around outright fabrications.
It also doesn't quite come around to the idea of something you might call "convenient" obsolescence. Not planned, not actively colluded to happen (the Phoebus cartel did do this, but are one of few examples), but very convenient for the manufacturer when optimizing for other factors (mostly cost) instead of lifespan.
joe_the_user 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah, moreover, the argument is a particular kind of apologism for one or another kind of profiteering. Basically, "the people criticizing this (profiteering) don't understand the full details of how business (give some business details)". But then, actually, even with all the details, the alleged profiteering is actually happening and naturally people running these business know lots of details but they like money too.
wolfgangK 13 hours ago [-]
BTW, I don't understand why having the driver converting AC to DC inside the LED spots is the default. For a new house, it seems to make sense to me to have at least one external driver for a ceiling of spots, if not one per floor (not one for the whole house because pf the drop in voltage). But 24V led spots seem much less common and I cannot find many reviews.
Any idea why it's not more common ? It seems efficiency and thermals would be much easier to optimize without the size constraint, plus economy of scale with components.
Any specific 24V led spots / bulbs to recommend ?
cameronh90 2 hours ago [-]
In the UK having separate drivers is, or used to be, the most common set up. I never had good luck with it. Big problems with compatibility, failing drivers, especially with dimmers, plus weird electrical problems like residual glow.
Ekaros 2 hours ago [-]
GU5.3 is 12V standard socket. Then there is G4 but they probably have some issues as well in wrong place. Probably some others, it really is a mess.
NooneAtAll3 3 hours ago [-]
> I don't understand why having the driver converting AC to DC inside the LED spots is the default.
because LED bulbs are drop-in replacement for incandescent bulbs. AC is pre-installed
stand-alone LEDs don't have converters, be it singular or be it strips
mort96 13 hours ago [-]
It seems like a pretty normal local maximum situation, no? It's a solution which works "well enough" and means all light bulbs work in all light fixtures and all light fixtures work with all light bulbs. It would be better if we all moved away from LED, got all new standardized 24V light fixtures and stopped putting the power supply in the base of a standard E26 light bulb socket, but those kinds of transitions are costly.
It probably also doesn't help that this would require industry-wide cooperation between companies which would much rather sell their own light fixture + LED combo which people have to replace regularly than a light fixture which people buy once and keep for life.
bob1029 12 hours ago [-]
This is also a good solution to the flicker problem. Centralizing the conversion means you can afford better power filtering capacitors and circuit designs.
I notice most BR30/40 bulbs start to flicker after about a year in my fixtures. It's not a happy environment for an electrolytic capacitor. In the summer I guarantee we are out of the operational range of what is in those bulbs.
piguin 13 hours ago [-]
I expected the -48VDC telco standard to become popular as people had more solar, batteries, etc. I guess we will get there the most complicated way possible with usb-c.
HappyPanacea 13 hours ago [-]
It would be nice to have the driver and LED decoupled from each other with a standard socket between driver and LED even if there is one per bulb.
stavros 13 hours ago [-]
That's what I've always thought as well. The driver could also fit in the standard sockets that bulbs fit in now, with the socket/LED interface being a different standard connector.
quickthrowman 12 hours ago [-]
You can buy recessed LED cans with remote drivers. It’s not super common, but they exist in commercial installations. The largest LED drivers that I am familiar with are 24VDC/96w which is enough for (12) 8w recessed cans.
Individual drivers per fixture allow flexibility with regards to commercial lighting control. The 0-10V dimming signal is sent to the driver, and if you have multiple fixtures per driver, they will all dim together. This behavior can be accomplished with individual LED drivers by wiring the dimming signal in parallel to each driver from the dimming module.
Line voltage circuits can handle a lot of fixtures, particularly at 230V or 277V. A 277V 20A circuit can continuously power 554 8w recessed cans or 138 32w 2x4s on a single pair of #12/2.5mm^2 wire. Two of those circuits can power all of the lights in a 20,000 square foot office.
Aardwolf 3 hours ago [-]
> In order to put the emission peak in the visible spectrum, the filament would need to run at ~5700 °C (...) No metal can survive these conditions: Tungsten melts at "only" 3422 °C.
Hmm, can we possibly find something that does survive at 5700 °C to use as a light source? Perhaps molten metal confined in a magnetic field...
NooneAtAll3 3 hours ago [-]
mercury vapor
MathMonkeyMan 24 minutes ago [-]
mercury vapor lamps are not a thermal light source, though
mreome 12 hours ago [-]
For an even deeper dive into this topic...
Technology Connections:
Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated
Tungsten will burn in an oxygen atmosphere, therefore standard light bulbs actually use an inert gas (like argon). The gas pressure slows down tungsten evaporation and prevents oxidation. The main reason for short living of the bulbs is that the filament gradually evaporating over time until it thins out and snaps.
comrade1234 13 hours ago [-]
There are varying levels of quality for the same bulb. I don't know what the difference is in the bulb but they make a difference in the order of years.
I'm in Switzerland where we can no longer buy halogen bulbs. Every bulb in our apartment is led except 7 bulbs under the cabinets in our kitchen. I used to buy bulbs from a hardware store but they would only last about a year. When they banned halogen bulbs I found that I could buy them from a photography supplier for more money. The product number was different but it had the right specs. They've been going for three years and no burn outs.
dataflow 13 hours ago [-]
What do you like about halogen bulbs?
lelanthran 3 hours ago [-]
They last forever. I moved into my current house over a decade ago and the only bulb I haven't had to change is the single halogen that was already in a bathroom.
With halogen, the lifespan doubles just by reducing the power by a single percent. Having a light fitting far away enough from the DB means that the tiny internal resistance of the wire going to this bulb is enough to make a difference to lifespan.
shrx 4 hours ago [-]
The light spectrum they produce.
BGizzle 13 hours ago [-]
You have been misled about spelling misled
WarmWash 13 hours ago [-]
That top paragraph is a masterclass in modern media standards. Tell the truth will hiding facts so your readers can be reassured that they are in fact smart and correct, while you never have to tell a lie.
jsLavaGoat 14 hours ago [-]
5700 is a terrible temperature for lighting unless that matches the daylight. Soft white and even reddish is much better at night. Presumably, most artificial light it used at night. 2700 is more like it.
My LED lightbulbs change temperature based on the time of day and are dull red at night so you both don't wake up and you don't stub your toe. Show me a non-LED that can do that.
sam1714 13 hours ago [-]
Lighting color is cultural. Go to Asia and you'll find many places, commercial and residential, lit with 5500K, traditionally fluorescents.
I've heard a theory that it has to do with genetics and lower eye sensitivity.
duskdozer 2 hours ago [-]
Is it by deliberate choice or something like availability? I come across enough people who don't seem to notice the difference at all, or at least until it's directly pointed out.
simoncion 1 hours ago [-]
> I've heard a theory that it has to do with genetics and lower eye sensitivity.
Might be.
But I expect that -as you said- it's cultural, rather than biological. One's sense of color is amazingly adaptable [0], but when I do a side-by-side comparison, I find that I strongly prefer the "noontime sun" color to the "incandescent bulb orange" color. As a bonus, the "noontime sun" whitepoint is pretty close to the whitepoint of my monitors, so white things on the screen are very nearly the same color as white things on my desk.
[0] Go play the game "Return of the Obra Dinn" for like an hour straight, and then be amazed at how off your understanding of what black is has become.
francisofascii 13 hours ago [-]
A dimmed incandescent bulb will shift from 2700k down to maybe 2200k. Maybe not as versatile as your LED but it worked well to somewhat mimic the sun before LEDs.
Hilliard_Ohiooo 13 hours ago [-]
I do something similar and all my Philips hue bulbs are going strong after 7 to 8 years. I think people just get upset with themselves for being cheap.
TacticalCoder 13 hours ago [-]
> Show me a non-LED that can do that.
Many of use simply don't find LED lights, no matter the color they try to simulate, enjoyable.
I find my LED lights, including fancy decorative ones, bearable only because I always use one real, old-school, warm white (more like yellow really), incandescent (hence non-LED) light in my living room. And, yup, if you know what you're looking for, it's totally possible to still buy incandescent lightbulbs.
LED lights, no matter the shade/color always give such a fake / non-cosy feeling to just about everything.
I'm taking an actual candle + an incandescent lightbulb's warmth feeling any day over anything LED.
Now as I'm also conscious about saving the planet, I'll mix those with mostly LED lights. But having one incandescent lightbulb (and/or one candle) really creates, to many of us, a better atmosphere than pure LED lighting.
It's the old "you're eyes cannot detect more than 24 fps" all over again: "you cannot detect the flickering of a LED light". Except I can instantly tell if it's the cold (no matter how "warm white" the box says it is) light of a LED or the actual warm light of a proper incandescent lightbulb.
tzs 13 hours ago [-]
Have you tried Philips Ultra Definition bulbs? They have 1/6th the flicker percentage of incandescent bulbs and 1/3 the flicker index.
Here's a review I found of several bulbs for CRI, flicker, dimming performance, and spectral characteristics [1].
There's two separate issues where LEDs still have a hard time competing with incandescent bulbs: CRI (really R9 or other deep-red measures, because CRI stats are sort of gamed) and flicker. Most LED bulbs also have poor heatsinks and are more likely to die if kept inverted or in enclosed fixtures.
All of these are individually solved problems, you just can't buy a bulb that's an e26 retrofit that satisfies all of them for whatever reason. If LED bulbs actually lasted 10 years, then there'd be 10 year warranties. Yet even the most expensive boutique LEDs (e.g. from YujiLED) are only 3 years at best.
jsLavaGoat 11 hours ago [-]
For the vast majority of people the problem was their first exposure to LED bulbs were in harsh temperatures and they wrote them off. The lightbulb wars aren't new. It's an evergreen political football.
If you strongly prefer incandescent that's fine but it doesn't take the 5-7 years the author suggests to recoup your investment. It might, or it might not. Where your curve lands depends, but they do in fact use a lot less energy.
pigpop 13 hours ago [-]
It's called a dimmer switch.
foobarchu 13 hours ago [-]
Brightness and color temperature are orthogonal. The dimmer switch only controls brightness.
Marsymars 12 hours ago [-]
There are, however, some dumb LED bulbs that have built-in circuitry to warm as they dim. Some of them even adjust the temperature based on the dimmer switch setting without adjusting the brightness for part of the range of the switch. They're quite nice, I use them in various places.
pigpop 12 hours ago [-]
Incandescents are mostly in the red/warm end of the spectrum anyways so you don't need to change the color temperature at night.
montag 14 hours ago [-]
Misled
enobrev 13 hours ago [-]
I've been seeing the misspelling of the past tense of lead (led) incredibly often in the past couple years. It's clearly confusing that lead is an actual word, so it may seem right and likely doesn't get caught by auto-correct, although I assume grammar correction should catch it.
Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,
and you have burned so very very brightly, Roy
- Bladerunner (1982)
also, I enjoyed the last lines of the article:
Also, to preempt the orange site, I'm not saying that planned obsolescence doesn't exist.
ludwigvan 2 hours ago [-]
To the contrary, isn’t the phrase the orange site used as a derogatory sense here? I have seen it used when authors think HN audience just criticize everything without substance.
simoncion 1 hours ago [-]
> ...isn’t the phrase the orange site used as a derogatory sense here?
Seems likely, yeah.
> To the contrary...
Why are you -er- proposing the contrary or whatever? From my ~sixteen years of experience with HN commentary, the preemption seems totally fair and reasonable... as does getting some joy from seeing an author publish it.
shevy-java 1 hours ago [-]
The author critisizes one incorrect claim, but also makes claims that are in turn incorrect.
For instance:
> In truth, increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way... but people think they want a long lasting lightbulb
Here the author writes "people think they want a long lasting xyz".
Well, people do not merely THINK they want a long lasting xyz. They really WANT it.
Why are projects not infinite in durability?
Of course, creating products with an infinite life time is not possible if only due to entropy alone; but also wear-and-tear damage. Nonetheless, the intrinsic quality and production process SHOULD CREATE PRODUCTS with a maximum life time. Some companies try that. Others deliberately avoid that in order to force customers to spend more on products they need to buy again and again and again. So the author is incorrect in the assumption; people WOULD ideally want a product that lasts as long as possible. Nothing wrong with that.
> Going off modern day prices, electricity costs around 0.10 [$/kW*h], so a 60 W lamp will consume 6$ of electricity over a 1,000 hour lifespan. Considering that such a lamp only costs around 3$, installing one that lasts longer but uses more power would be silly.
Here he is doing another mistake. First, those flat prices are not correct in general; instead, you must take in the opportunity costs. For instance, when I order new LED devices ("lamps"), I do not want to just order one. I want to order several, so that I have backup, and also so I don't have to go to purchase them several times. It is easier to do buy in some quantities, say, 8-10 or so. This lasts quite a long time for my use cases.
Ideally this would last a long time, because if not then I have to do more purchases, which in turn takes away time I could spend doing other things. So the cost comparison is different here. The ideal situation would be to never ever have to replace anything here. Or even capture in solar power and use that for the lamps.
> Instead of "making bulbs last longer", manufacturers spent huge amounts of time and money developing entirely new technology: fluorescent and LED lamps.
Well ... the EU forbade the old technology. While I understand this partially, I don't understand why a dictatorship forces me into having to use new technology. I have nothing against new technology at all, but the prices increased a LOT, so those technocrats ultimately forced me (and force me) to increase expenditure. I absolutely hate that. It is even more annoying with the current inflation. Why do a few people constantly try to abuse the huge majority? Perhaps LED lamps is not the real problem, but this tendency exists throughout society. I feel that both democracies and dictatorships abuse people, just in different amount of quality. We see this with the current trend to force age sniffing onto people. This is even clearer abuse.
A 100 out of 100 success rate after 8 years.
These were not cheap off the shelf bulbs from the local store.
3 in the kitchen went after less than a year.
I contacted the manufacturer directly. Turns out they had a "bad batch". How many bulbs did I fit?
About 50..
A box of 48 bulbs turned up 2 days later.
Not a single other bulb has gone 4 years later.
Not sure what the lesson there is. You win some you lose some? It's not always down to cheap bulbs?
Cheap/poor quality LEDs (the only kind I buy) hate high temps. Like really, really really hate it.
I've killed more bulbs near the shower than all other rooms on that floor combined. Meanwhile in the garage/basement the only tube LEDs that I've replaced this decade are the ones in the hot unventilated area away from the door or near hot work.
Cree is now no more; the bulbs are just a brand for FEIT who imports the same unreliable Chinese white-label bulbs.
Hue is basically the only bulbs not being sourced from the same couple of white label manufacturers. Philips/Signify's rapidly shrinking line of dumb bulbs are being sourced from there too.
Never buy filament style bulbs. They are universally unreliable because of poor thermals with the emitters.
I had a bulb go bad once (out of almost 50 bulbs), but I called their support number and they shipped me a new one for free without any hassle.
If only that were true. Osram is a well-renowned brand so you'd think their - rather pricey - 'high-wattage' (10W) bulbs meant for outside lights here on the farm would last longer than about a year, all in different armatures, all with plenty of cooling (they're mainly used in autumn/winter/spring when it tends to be rather chilly here in Sweden). You'd think cheap bulbs go bad quickly but the cheap 'Biltema' brand bulbs I bought for some rooms just keep on going without marked loss of output.
All in all the average life time of a LED bulb seems to be around 2-3 years before it either has dimmed so much that it is no longer usable or it has failed outright. There are exceptions like the mentioned cheap bulbs which are still going strong after about 9 years of close to daily use or those Osram bulbs which fail in about a year or less or the (not mentioned) 'fluorescent tube replacement fixtures' which last less than a year before one of the 4 LED segment strips fails due to a failed LED. I repair these by replacing the failed chip, they work for a few months and then the things fail again.
I've used 'efficient' lighting since I bought my first house starting with jam-jar like Philips SL 'bulbs' (compact fluorescent tubes with all the related gizmos packaged in a single replaceable unit) for which I made fixtures out of birch plywood wood, 90° PVC drain pipe bends and E27 sockets because those things were heavy at about 500 grams. None of those SL bulbs had failed when I moved out 6 years later, I still have some somewhere in storage. Later I moved to the lighter PLC version which also tended to last a long time, some of them are still in use here. Then came LED bulbs which were supposed to last for tens of thousands of hours... and I suddenly started to have to think about replacing failed bulbs again.
Pay attention to the European efficiency rating for LEDs. Anything above B is practically "Dubai LED" class. The common Osram isn't doing good in this category, their LEDs I have seen in retail are rated like E-F.
To reiterate: the article fell short on the point of LED efficiency. LEDs are semiconductors, do you know when the CPU is at peak efficiency? Before it hits the exponential voltage/frequency curve. Low voltage -> cooler LEDs -> more efficient light conversion -> easier to cool -> tens of thousands hours of practical lifespan.
What does it cost? Like less than a dollar in BOM. What does it cost us? Billions in replaced LEDs worldwide and megatonnes of electric waste, because it is not made to last for "objective reasons": lower price tag in storeshelves aka capitalism and oblivious consumers.
They were awful. I genuinely believed that LED lights were crap.
In our new house the sparky put in a proper Chinese brand from the commercial sparky store I guess, no external box, dimmable, 4 adjustable hues with a toggle switch. They were like $10 each. Been 7 years no failures.
We have some really expensive ATOM ones above the shower (IP68) and outside around the perimeter. Those were around $75 each, but are the same age as well, no issues.
I agree that even Osram doesn’t meet the hours or years, Philips doesn’t by a long way.
After failure I like to do a postmortem teardown, it has never been the LED proper, usually it is the capacitor in a capacitance power supply, otherwise the controller IC.
I have a room which is lit for like 10-20 hours per day and so it clocks up hours very quickly and my LED lamps are guaranteed for 2 years so I figured surely the guarantee would trigger but nope, I began keeping receipts and turns out that I only need to replace one every 3-5 years it must just feel frequent because it's annoying, I just dug out the most recent receipt and it's from 2021. I will continue keeping the receipts to feel better about the annoyance.
Can't say my experience matches at all!
[1] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-...
[2] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/lux24-circadian-...
The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few months, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail ever, so Philips seems to be doing something right.
None of the other bulbs in my house are really on long enough to say much about failures... like I've got dozens of recessed LEDs without any failures over 5 years, but I doubt any of them are over 1-2k hours.
What is a 'cheap' bulb though? We paid a few bucks for a bulb for generations. Suddenly we're paying 10x that for a Phillips Hue and anything lesser is 'cheap'.
Here's a nice dim-to-warm recessed: https://www.homedepot.com/p/HALO-RL56-Series-5-6-in-Recessed...
I used to have a lamp that I kept replacing bulbs for "all the time". I didn't understand why since the light bulbs claimed to last for years and years. One day I read the light bulb package more closely, and it said something along the lines of, "7 years life span at 2 hours per day" in small text (the numbers may be wrong, going by memory). Doing the math, the number of active hours claimed on the box turned out to be roughly true. I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.
It's perfectly logical that lifetime should be measured in hours of service, not days of existence. People don't know how to translate 7500 hours of service into a real duration, though. Hence the years.
I switched to all LED lighting many years ago. I've had a few that lasted less than a year, but by and large I'd say that nearly all the lights I've had have lasted at least on the order of years.
There was some sort of deal between Walmart and Puget Sound Energy that applied an instant rebate automatically so that they simply rang up on checkout for $0.17.
They are all still working fine.
Half the bulbs were carried over from a previous house, so some are ~14 years old. Admittedly these were early ones, so the original batch had metal bodies etc. the replacement was a Phillips one. This is in the UK though, with pendant fittings, so less heat issues.
Plural of anecdote isn’t data and all that but I think the several hundred quantity adds some weight. Also about 90 of those are in outdoor lamps so there’s a good amount dealing with weather and we’ve not had to replace any of those yet.
Similarly, you can’t install recessed cans into a ceiling that is insulated without them being IC rated or they will die an early death.
Spend a few dollars more per lamps for quality ones. Philips makes decent LED lamps, I’m fond of their 2200-2700K dimmable lamps that lower the color temp as they dim. Philips makes an E12 base BA11 shape (candelabra) lamp that should fit your needs.
I buy Keystone lamps LED T8 lamps almost exclusively, but those are pretty uncommon in homes.
Commercial LED fixtures are rated for 50,000 hours typically but they have a separate LED driver and massive heatsinks to provide that sort of lifespan.
In doing so, the article perhaps obscures the point that business collusion, I expect, is more often built around legitimate reasoning taken to illegitimate extents and conclusions, than around outright fabrications.
I don't disagree with you.
Whatever standard we choose I want it applied evenly to all subjects.
A solid 60% of the "policy advocacy" type HN comments fall into this category.
It also doesn't quite come around to the idea of something you might call "convenient" obsolescence. Not planned, not actively colluded to happen (the Phoebus cartel did do this, but are one of few examples), but very convenient for the manufacturer when optimizing for other factors (mostly cost) instead of lifespan.
because LED bulbs are drop-in replacement for incandescent bulbs. AC is pre-installed
stand-alone LEDs don't have converters, be it singular or be it strips
It probably also doesn't help that this would require industry-wide cooperation between companies which would much rather sell their own light fixture + LED combo which people have to replace regularly than a light fixture which people buy once and keep for life.
I notice most BR30/40 bulbs start to flicker after about a year in my fixtures. It's not a happy environment for an electrolytic capacitor. In the summer I guarantee we are out of the operational range of what is in those bulbs.
Individual drivers per fixture allow flexibility with regards to commercial lighting control. The 0-10V dimming signal is sent to the driver, and if you have multiple fixtures per driver, they will all dim together. This behavior can be accomplished with individual LED drivers by wiring the dimming signal in parallel to each driver from the dimming module.
Line voltage circuits can handle a lot of fixtures, particularly at 230V or 277V. A 277V 20A circuit can continuously power 554 8w recessed cans or 138 32w 2x4s on a single pair of #12/2.5mm^2 wire. Two of those circuits can power all of the lights in a 20,000 square foot office.
Hmm, can we possibly find something that does survive at 5700 °C to use as a light source? Perhaps molten metal confined in a magnetic field...
Technology Connections: Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
I'm in Switzerland where we can no longer buy halogen bulbs. Every bulb in our apartment is led except 7 bulbs under the cabinets in our kitchen. I used to buy bulbs from a hardware store but they would only last about a year. When they banned halogen bulbs I found that I could buy them from a photography supplier for more money. The product number was different but it had the right specs. They've been going for three years and no burn outs.
With halogen, the lifespan doubles just by reducing the power by a single percent. Having a light fitting far away enough from the DB means that the tiny internal resistance of the wire going to this bulb is enough to make a difference to lifespan.
My LED lightbulbs change temperature based on the time of day and are dull red at night so you both don't wake up and you don't stub your toe. Show me a non-LED that can do that.
I've heard a theory that it has to do with genetics and lower eye sensitivity.
Might be.
But I expect that -as you said- it's cultural, rather than biological. One's sense of color is amazingly adaptable [0], but when I do a side-by-side comparison, I find that I strongly prefer the "noontime sun" color to the "incandescent bulb orange" color. As a bonus, the "noontime sun" whitepoint is pretty close to the whitepoint of my monitors, so white things on the screen are very nearly the same color as white things on my desk.
[0] Go play the game "Return of the Obra Dinn" for like an hour straight, and then be amazed at how off your understanding of what black is has become.
Many of use simply don't find LED lights, no matter the color they try to simulate, enjoyable.
I find my LED lights, including fancy decorative ones, bearable only because I always use one real, old-school, warm white (more like yellow really), incandescent (hence non-LED) light in my living room. And, yup, if you know what you're looking for, it's totally possible to still buy incandescent lightbulbs.
LED lights, no matter the shade/color always give such a fake / non-cosy feeling to just about everything.
I'm taking an actual candle + an incandescent lightbulb's warmth feeling any day over anything LED.
Now as I'm also conscious about saving the planet, I'll mix those with mostly LED lights. But having one incandescent lightbulb (and/or one candle) really creates, to many of us, a better atmosphere than pure LED lighting.
It's the old "you're eyes cannot detect more than 24 fps" all over again: "you cannot detect the flickering of a LED light". Except I can instantly tell if it's the cold (no matter how "warm white" the box says it is) light of a LED or the actual warm light of a proper incandescent lightbulb.
Here's a review I found of several bulbs for CRI, flicker, dimming performance, and spectral characteristics [1].
[1] https://www.thesmarthomehookup.com/25-soft-white-led-light-b...
All of these are individually solved problems, you just can't buy a bulb that's an e26 retrofit that satisfies all of them for whatever reason. If LED bulbs actually lasted 10 years, then there'd be 10 year warranties. Yet even the most expensive boutique LEDs (e.g. from YujiLED) are only 3 years at best.
If you strongly prefer incandescent that's fine but it doesn't take the 5-7 years the author suggests to recoup your investment. It might, or it might not. Where your curve lands depends, but they do in fact use a lot less energy.
also, I enjoyed the last lines of the article:
Also, to preempt the orange site, I'm not saying that planned obsolescence doesn't exist.
Seems likely, yeah.
> To the contrary...
Why are you -er- proposing the contrary or whatever? From my ~sixteen years of experience with HN commentary, the preemption seems totally fair and reasonable... as does getting some joy from seeing an author publish it.
For instance:
> In truth, increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way... but people think they want a long lasting lightbulb
Here the author writes "people think they want a long lasting xyz".
Well, people do not merely THINK they want a long lasting xyz. They really WANT it.
Why are projects not infinite in durability?
Of course, creating products with an infinite life time is not possible if only due to entropy alone; but also wear-and-tear damage. Nonetheless, the intrinsic quality and production process SHOULD CREATE PRODUCTS with a maximum life time. Some companies try that. Others deliberately avoid that in order to force customers to spend more on products they need to buy again and again and again. So the author is incorrect in the assumption; people WOULD ideally want a product that lasts as long as possible. Nothing wrong with that.
> Going off modern day prices, electricity costs around 0.10 [$/kW*h], so a 60 W lamp will consume 6$ of electricity over a 1,000 hour lifespan. Considering that such a lamp only costs around 3$, installing one that lasts longer but uses more power would be silly.
Here he is doing another mistake. First, those flat prices are not correct in general; instead, you must take in the opportunity costs. For instance, when I order new LED devices ("lamps"), I do not want to just order one. I want to order several, so that I have backup, and also so I don't have to go to purchase them several times. It is easier to do buy in some quantities, say, 8-10 or so. This lasts quite a long time for my use cases.
Ideally this would last a long time, because if not then I have to do more purchases, which in turn takes away time I could spend doing other things. So the cost comparison is different here. The ideal situation would be to never ever have to replace anything here. Or even capture in solar power and use that for the lamps.
> Instead of "making bulbs last longer", manufacturers spent huge amounts of time and money developing entirely new technology: fluorescent and LED lamps.
Well ... the EU forbade the old technology. While I understand this partially, I don't understand why a dictatorship forces me into having to use new technology. I have nothing against new technology at all, but the prices increased a LOT, so those technocrats ultimately forced me (and force me) to increase expenditure. I absolutely hate that. It is even more annoying with the current inflation. Why do a few people constantly try to abuse the huge majority? Perhaps LED lamps is not the real problem, but this tendency exists throughout society. I feel that both democracies and dictatorships abuse people, just in different amount of quality. We see this with the current trend to force age sniffing onto people. This is even clearer abuse.