We have probably all seen the marketing blurbs on packaging and elsewhere promoting the amazing lifespan of LED lighting solutions. Theoretically you should be able to install a LED bulb in a fixture that used to hold that incandescent lightbulb which had to be replaced annually and have it last a decade or longer. Yet we seem to replace these LED bulbs much more often than that, with them suffering a range of issues. To get to the root cause of this, [The Doubtful Technician] decided to perform an autopsy on a couple of dead lightbulbs which he got from a variety of sources and brands.
One lamp is an Amazon-bought one from a seller who seems to have vanished, but was promised over 3 years of constant use. Other than the fun of blinding of oneself while testing, this one was easy to diagnose, with a dodgy solder joint on a resistor in a MELF package. The next one from Lowes was very dim, and required popping open with some gentle force, which revealed as likely culprit a shorted SMD resistor. Finally a more substantial (i.e. heavier) bulb was tested which had survived about 7 years in the basement until it and its siblings began to suddenly die. Some might consider this the normal lifespan, but what really failed in them?
The electronics in this last bulb were the most impressive, with a full switch mode power supply (SMPS) that appears to have suffered a failure. Ultimately the pattern with these three bulbs was that while the LEDs themselves were still fine, it were things like the soldering joints and singular components on the LED driver PCB that had failed. Without an easy way to repair these issues, and with merely opening the average LED lightbulb being rather destructive, this seems like another area where what should be easy repairs are in fact not, and more e-waste is created.
I just get the great value brand walmart bulbs, I have had some that last 3 or 4 years in the harsh environment of steamy bathrooms in tiny fixtures all the way up to the one’s on my front porch that I installed when we moved in … 9 years ago
The bathroom is one of the worst places to cheap out on LED bulbs if you care about the mirror.
The CRI of these cheap bulbs is still awful in 2024.
I have spent several dozens of hours and an annoying amount of money, and I still can’t find acceptable LED bulbs for less than about $15 each.
Odd; I seem to remember Philips has 95 CRI for $10 or so. If they have multiple colors, I’d get two daylight and two neutral or warm for a regular four-bulb fixture.
Phillips won the L-prize with their 99 CRI bulb that cost $50, just to show them they could do it, and then stopped selling it a year or two later. The 95 CRI version was more like $20 when it was launched, and they stopped selling that too – what you might have seen were the ones on discount since nobody bought them.
Well, in the usa, it looks like it’s under $3 per bulb for their current model of 95 cri bulbs. So unless they’re secretly terrible I really don’t see an issue.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/321121512
Oh, and there’s a 90-cri version of their “ultra efficient” which is something like 180lm/watt instead of 210. But that one is still a little bit greener than I’d like, so you have to either mix them or filter them and lose efficiency that way.
More plastics and semiconductors in landfills, versus some glass and bits of metal — both harmless and recyclable. All in the name of saving energy, when we should really be looking at the major consumers of power in our domiciles: heating/cooling, clothes dryers, and refrigerators.
EV charging? Don’t get me started…
You appear to have only gotten started, actually. Many expers have already given much thoughts and planning of EV charging (for more than a decade), and it has NOT been the apocalypse to the grid that newbees, who are only just begining to ponder these things, fear. AI and crypto have actually been a burden at peak demand times, though. Most EVs charge off peak hours and at lower voltage. Rapid chargers store up energy during off-peak times, to dispense during peak times.
It hasn’t been an apocalypse to the grid because the chargers they have been thinking about have largely failed to materialize as has the huge influx of electric vehicles.
Well thats not true. Theres over 1/2 million pure EVs on US roads. People were panicing that any number in the 10s of thousands would be problematic. Its just not.
Ya, I know right?
Like when people started plugging household convenience items into those original power lines that were meant only for lights, infrastructure was never upgraded so the power grid died and we haven’t had electricity since.
Or when central AC became the norm. The infrastructure was never upgraded, the grid died and we haven’t had electricity ever since.
Or when the Internet took off and suddenly there was one or more PC in every house. The infrastructure was never upgraded, the grid died and we haven’t had electricity ever since.
“when we should really be looking at the major consumers of power in our domiciles”
In the US at least, they have been for quite some time – the Energy Star program.
The thing is, this means the failures would disappear if most home lighting moved to low-voltage DC wiring. All that effort trying to rectify and step down voltage in the base of a bulb that gets way too hot.
I’d switch out everything at considerable expense just to never have a flickering LED bulb again.
But that’s an issue ever since electric lightning came to be. Bulbs have to be designed for 120 generally impacting the materials needed. The longest incandescent bulb has been on continuously for over a century in a fire station (it lights nothing, it’s just saying here I am) but again if memory serves it just uses 4 watts of power. Or just that amount of little.
In any case here’s the video from where I lifted the 411. I don’t frequent Veritasium that much because in the interest of clicks Derek dilutes the explanation with too much exposition and sometimes I feel he leaves important issues untouched.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE&t=2s&pp=ygUibG9uZ2VzdCBvbiBpbmNhbmRlc2NlbnQgbGlnaHQgYnVsYg%3D%3D
I meant also to say flickering is an issue ever since electric lighting exists but duh. My bad,
You still have to rectify and step down the voltage because you cant use a low voltage DC power grid. The difference is whether it is central or distributed and since the average consumer did not want to rewire their home to use LEDs we got the distributed system. LV lighting existed way before LED bulbs and never became mainstream.
With modern LED lamps that would run at let’s say 12w at most, at 12v there would only run 1a which means that a low voltage system in your house is not a voltage drop issue anymore. Especially with switching LED drivers that can just keep current constant, even if you switch on an extra load.
With many new fixtures installes being integral ones without swappable lamps, by now it doesn’t matter anymore if you mount a LV power supply in the meter cabinet and feed them with that. The existing wiring can be used because of the low current draw.
What do you mean? I don’t think that makes sense. Of course you are going to have more than one light on each circuit rather than only drawing one amp at a time. Someone may have a kitchen or dining room lighting circuit with a fixture with five or six bulbs over the table, another several in the ceiling in various places like you indicate, some light strips underneath cabinets and things, something over the sink, something over the stove, maybe another light they tacked onto the same circuit, etc. And because it’s only lighting, they will have used 14 gauge wire which the first search result says is about 0.3 ohms per hundred feet. As a result, if you used the circuit at its original 15 amps, then if your wiring was 100ft you’d be dropping 4.5 volts which is way too much when you started at 12. You’d normally stop at, say, 5 percent or in this case 0.6 volts of loss, and you’d exceed that at only say, 30 feet and 7 lights. That’s basically just enough for the wiring to snake along the perimeter of each room and get to the lights if the dining room is right next to the room with the 12V source, and you won’t be able to have many on at once.
LED lights havent flickered for years.
Last I saw one flickering was a few weeks ago. It was sold as dimmable but was 1/4 of it’s max brightness for 2/3 of the dimming range and if turned up to max, it started flickering like a disco strobe. OK, it was from Aliexpress, but cost about 3€, while the name brand at the shop cost about 25€ for a quite unusual slim 8W LED bulb replacing a 100W halogen in a bedside light. I bridged the dimmer circuit and be happy about not burning my hand on the lamp anymore. I am not used to hot lamps like I was in the age of heat-bulbs. :-)
I once calculated using U.S. govt stats that the difference in per-capita energy usage I can associate with LEDs is within the ballpark of how much energy that same ‘capita’ would need if they drove the average number of miles using a basic electric sedan. Anywhere that air conditioners are running is a place where incandescents cause the air conditioner to work harder, which is part of why there’s so much of an impact. In fact if you remember, anytime you were right next to a bulb you felt warmer and may have compensated by using the air conditioner at an even lower setpoint. By comparison, in the cold the incandescents just aren’t as good as a heat pump, and don’t necessarily put the heat where you want it. Anyway the reason light bulbs were focused on is that it’s a very visible thing that people can easily do something about – either turn the damn thing off when you’re not using it, or make it fifteen times as efficient for ten bucks, either way you want to go. Refrigerators, after years of improvements, consume minimal amounts of power. The HVAC, cooking, cleaning, and even just semi powerful computers/electronics are all going to be more.
As an aside, a big chest freezer on a conservative setting is now incredibly low energy. I remember having one that was 40+ years old with the original kind of freon – it consumed 600 watts when it started and maybe 150 while running, which it did almost constantly. But now I believe some of them are like 50-60 when running and run only a fraction of the time.
Recyclable, but not recycled. And I like the freedom of choice of color temperatures with LEDs, although higher than 3000K is rare and thus expensive in Europe. Better to be bought in China.
LEDs have never lived as long as promised. I have 3 ceiling fans with LED arrays in them as an inbuilt fan, all bought at the same time, all failed within 18 months. The supplier sent 3 replacement modules claiming the manufacturer had fixed the issue, now they’re failing again after about 2 years, and they weren’t cheap ceiling fans that you’d happily replace after only 4 years use.
I ahve sets of outdoor LEDs that have been in continual use for 4 years and then a further year so far just during night time hours.
This is why I refuse to buy any fan or appliance that hard-wires led lights in. I only accept ones with sockets so I can replace bulbs as needed.
Definitely noticed the not quite up to expectations of LED bulbs, but I find I’m replacing them a lot less than the prior bulbs, and effectively I almost feel like I’m ahead.
I use a sharpie to write the install date on my LED bulbs. They all usually die within a year. The LEDs are just fine, but the power supplies burn out, leaving a brown spot on the plastic. It pains me that the LEDs are always made inseparable from the power supply so you can’t just replace part of it. Also, you can’t really buy LED lights to go into a light fixture that contains a permanent transformer. It’s a scam.
You can! I’ve got them in my office. They’re typically low voltage downlights, with a separate transformer package. Unfortunately they’re around 20-50x the price of using LED bulbs.
Yes you can, I’m an investor in a company that sells T8 bulbs with the designator “type a+b”. They will automatically switch between line voltage and ballast output. These are replacing fluorescents by the 100s of 1000s in north America today. Now quality is a different story – there’s huge differences between Chinese manufacturers, from state-of-the-art robotics to hand assembly in a literal barn. Sorry admiraal ackbar. Not a scam.
Can confirm the unpredictability of Chinese manufacturers. Components are from sources unknown in the West, and are perhaps even salvaged off e-waste then re-reeled. Datasheets can say whatever you want them to say. Component substitutions done without documentation or engineering consultation. The only way to get reliability out of their manufacturing process is to have a trusted representative on-site.
Is your power dirty? I still have some bulbs from 10+ years ago in less-used fixtures, with their bulky aluminum heatsinks and everything. I do wish the power supplies were separable.
Plus, I’m not sure what exactly is causing it but I have to either keep a 60W incandescent lamp around or I have to fire 3-4 times as many “60W” LED bulbs up to be able to read a paperback. They show pretty close to the same curves in visible light spectrum in the testing I’ve seen but there is something most certainly different and wrong happening.
CRI
Nah, LEDs have a pretty high CRI these days. The number you gotta look at, is the lumen output. Not the claimed ‘Equivalent incandescent’ thing.
Cheap LEDs have a 80cri, the good brands like Osram or Philips in the mid 90s.
Switching to 900lm LED from a 60w incandescent to light my room has made a very positive difference in brightness.
Perhaps the cheapest shit won’t make specifications.
What is to be expected, as a typical 60W has about 800lm. At least in the 230V version.
I also have a similar experience. LEDs, even those with high CRI seem “dim” or not as bright, as if shadows are not as pronounced and contrast is somehow lower.
Maybe it’s some form of pulse width modulation, even if the lumens are specified the same.
I personally bought a used halogen floor lamp, because in California, the only incandescsnts that are still legal are “non regular” shapes.
The lumen output is not accurate to the equivalent wattage rating. Actual filament bulbs, especially with halogen bulbs, had higher lumens per watt than what is used as the standard for comparison. Incandescent bulbs actually got better lm/W efficiency at higher power, so it was not a linear relationship. LEDs also dim as they get hotter, while the industry standard is to measure the lumen output when cold at less than 1 s from startup, so you’re getting cheated on the actual brightness from the get go.
As a result, low wattage rated LEDs turn out too bright for things like your bedside reading lamp where you used to have a 15-30 Watt incandescent bulb, and higher power LEDs are considerably dimmer than an actual 60-100 Watt incandescent bulb. The only spot where they kinda sort-of match are in the 40-50 Watt range.
For example, a 60 Watt incandescent bulb, depending on what kind of a bulb it is – frosted, clear, shock proof, etc. can put out anything between 700 – 1100 lumens, and with halogen bulbs it can put out up to 1300 lumens.
Meanwhile, the common “60 Watt equivalent” LED bulb seems to be standardized at 800-850 lm and it will dim by 20-30% if the thermal design is not good enough, as it almost always isn’t. So, in the worst case your 60 Watt equivalent LED can be about half as bright as an actual 60 Watt incandescent bulb, and even in the typical case it’s going to be around 30% dimmer than the bulb it’s supposed to replace.
[citation needed] on that; forget the junk LEDs you’re buying for a moment and tell us where you found a 1100 lumen incandescent bulb that only drew 60 watts? Because the rest of us had to use more like 75 watts to get one with that rating.
@spaceminions: It is just a question of current/rated voltage. The 60W high beam filament of H4 car headlight lamp (12V) is spec’d at 1650 lumen.
Quite the same in EU. But I do like LEDs. in the bedside lamp I replaced the 100W halogen with about 8W of LED as it was turned down with the dimmer anyway. But still hot enough, that you could burn your hand when touching the lamp.
in 2017 i bought some Philips Hue lights and they’ve been great. none have failed so far. they are very expensive, of course. At the shop, I installed 18W ceiling mount lamps. They don’t seem to last more than a year. The amount of trash I generate with these stupid lamps is obscene. LEDs were supposed to last for 50K hours and nowadays the only way to get that, it seems, is spending $50+ on a bulb.
I wouldn’t mind paying $50 on a “forever bulb” but the trend seems to be going towards “specialty lamps” instead of standard E27 or E14 lamps. I refuse to buy such lamps. For the yard I made sure I got fixtures with standard bulbs. They had nicer-looking ones that don’t have a hotspot inside but are uniform. Forget that. In 2 or 3 years when they start failing, good luck finding a replacement that doesn’t involve changing all of them because that model is no longer made.
Big Clive shows how to ‘dooby’ LEDs, as basic clipping off a single SMD resistor which lowers the power going to the bulb, extending the life of the bulb, generating less heat and somewhat less light output.
The name ‘dooby’ being from the Dubai spec bulbs available only in Dubai which have twice the filaments compared to the same W bulb available in the rest of the world, thus creating essentially infinite life bulbs.
He also has video that he puts capacitors in series with Lamps, I’m using that, 1uF in each lamp.
I have had my house running on Hue bulbs for about as long as you. No issues either. They’ve honestly been amazing. I have em everywhere from basement to bathrooms. Sure, costly, but I haven’t replaced a single one yet, so I can’t complain.
LEDs can last a long time. The stuff that I’ve built lasts until the LEDs actually wear out and get dim after many years of use. The trick is to use enough heatsinking that they stay cool and not run them at their maximum current.
The LED lights that you can buy all run hot enough that you can’t touch them. The thermal cycling ends up breaking the bond wires and you end up with a light that either suddenly burns out or starts flashing.
Sometimes I discover myself wandering about my ideal LED lamp with a custom made water based cooling system, probably made of copper or aluminum, using the same yellow liquid cars use to cool the engine, with internal path ways for each LED, or maybe a similar system to that laser epilators use to cool the lamp/diode. and some kind of logic to control temperature levels and a very well designed PMPS with all the elements needed to protect the entrance from surges…and a simple ON/OFF swith (not that smart things connecting to some uknown server)
But then I remember I don’t have a CNC, I don’t know 3D modeling and I have no time to design the PCB :) so I go to my local store and buy an el cheapo one.
sooo, it would be an interesting project, it would last forever, but spending a ton to replace a bulb…
If I had a CNC mill, I would definitely make some water blocks and play around with some very high power, water cooled LEDs.
Water cooling is certainly overkill for room lighting though. Lots of LEDs spread out on an aluminum strip or sheet works great for that and stays cool.
oh! And don’t forget we still have the laptop traditional cooling system with a combo of fan ,copper pipe and heatsink, so yeah it would be something overkilled but you know, it can be done :) for a hacker’s room, for instance.
The way you all put it it won’t be a hackers room but a tanning/incinerating room with toys for hackers. Googleies sunglasses (like the ones from the 1930) will be required. Also sunsscreen lotion and heavy leather allcovering “aprons”.
Or be a nice pal and let your made sun outside for all the neighbours to enjoy. Do not forget to open the booth to sell eclipse glasses and thick mud (the one used to alleviate bones and articulations pains).
No idea what is talking about. But now that we are just fantasizing about the one and only LED lamp to rule them all, we can add some kind of indivudial solderess contacts for each LED so they can have some tolerance to tackle the thermanl expansion issue that was addressing. Maybe using TH components with 2 layers would help. So there you have it. we only need a catchy name, “the make piece not war incinerator LED Lamp” maybe :)
Damn. here my original comment :
No idea what make piece not war is talking about. But now that we are just fantasizing about the one and only LED lamp to rule them all, we can add some kind of individual solderess contacts for each LED so they would have some tolerance to tackle the thermal expansion issue that RPol404 was addressing. Maybe using TH components with 2 layers would help. So there you have it. We only need a catchy name, “the make piece not war incinerator LED Lamp” maybe :)
Good points! I work in aerospace exterior lighting and switched to LEDs a decade ago. Thermal management is the #1 challenge by far. And yes we experienced the broken bond wire issue – especially with white LEDs. Another tough one is the coefficient of thermal expansion differences in the LEDs, solder, and board material. You can get many solder failures down the road if you don’t design for it.
On a previous job, I worked for years with LED suppliers. Unlike incandescent bulb, which life ends when the filament breaks and they no longer function, LEDs lifetime is rated to half brightness, which can be short or long depending upon the LED “color” and the amount of heat generated. It does not take into account color shift in the LED or the lifetime of the driving components.
If you have an LED bulb in an application where it cannot get rid of heat it will reach it’s end of life quickly, not to mention shortening the lifespan of the driving electronics in most cases.
Thing is, I don’t keep records on replacement light bulbs… But empirically it seems I am changing out light bulbs way less often than I used to. In fact I don’t remember the last one I changed out. So we must be ahead of the game :)
The contractor packs from your local Lowes/Home Depot last for about 2-2.5 years of constant burning. Not even half that if you switch them on and off regularly though.
Before installing any bulb, wipe the bulb clean with a dry paper towel or somesuch.
Then I use a black sharpy (big tip) and write the date of install on the bulb.
If you want to improve bulb life, (at least with incandescents) use dimmers instead of the common flip /snap switches.
Helps control that inrush current by using a dimmer.
Haven’t gotten deep enough into the LED stuff, yet, to see how the dimmers affect their life.
But I’ve got a number incandescent still going almost 20 years in some locations.
I’m not sure about your idea. A dimmer is usually using a Triac to shut off part of the voltage cycle. But those LED light use DC not AC so their circuit requires a AC/DC convertor (SMPS). Also LED need a constant voltage to turn on and a modulation in current. But the dimmer doesn’t do that at all, when you “dim” the power, the SMPS struggle to keep up with the limited amplitude, which cause more stress on the electrolytic capacitors used to filter the DC current. In the end, the LED will flicker, the components will fail earlier. The only way to dim a LED is to PWM control it on the DC side (with a powerful mosfet handling the huge DC current) and a microcontroller (like those found in Philips Hue and others). This means more expensive lights and consumers don’t buy what’s expensive.
As for the failure, the thing is expected. The efficiency of the SMPS is usually low (because cheap & small), so a lot of heat is generated here. They are using electrolytic capacitor that have limited lifespan/cycles when used at high temperature. The LED themselves almost never fail, but they are a source of heat too. The SMPS don’t have any circuit for the ramping up their conversion, so when switched on when the main voltage amplitude is at peak, they suffer the most fatigue.
In the end, a house should be wired with a DC source (likely 48V but 12V would do) for lighting and small appliances. It’s completely crazy to waste 15% to 40% of power loss from converting AC to DC, to replace purely functional LED lamps because their SMPS failed, and to pay again for those useless components, and risk one’s life when touching the contacts. Beause it’s historical and people want to keep their dumb E27 socket isn’t an excuse. Houses should have a 97% efficient and central 1000W AC to DC converter and plug their gizmo on this power rail.
It doesn’t take a switch mode power supply to convert AC to DC.
All it takes is a series capacitor to limit the current and a diode bridge to convert the AC to DC – with a smoothing capacitor to remove (some of) the ripple.
There’s a description and a diagram of a typical cheap LED bulb here:
https://josepheoff.github.io/posts/badbulb
Not sure about the inrush current thing with LED “electronics” but AFAIK commercial @home dimmers can “support” at least three different “types”
E.g. https://produkte.kopp.eu/en/product/changeover-switch-led-dimmer-100w-rl-2/
Note the symbol/pictogram on left there: R,L LED
R = Resistive (all dimmers support classic light bulbs)
L = Induktive (for halogen bulbs behind transformers)
C = capacitive (? LEDs?, SMPS transformers?)
LED = ? / (not-so-)obvious
More technical: Phase cut-on or cut-off(?) (cutoff at leading or trailing section/edge of a sine half-wave)
Of course the LED bulb must support dimming too (with different “levels” of compatibility available). :-/
As you can see from all the “?”s sprinkled up there I’m not “that” secure about those information… (e.g. cut-on/-off doesn’t explain all 3-4 types of dimmers)
Thanks for posting the info guys. I’ll admit to hanging onto the tungsten stuff, largely, out of not wanting to have to relearn all of the lighting setups.
Plus too many of the LEDs have a flicker that give me a nasty headache, If caught in rush hour traffic I’ll sometimes just stop at a burger joint to sit out the disco hour. Modern automotive lighting nearly puts me into tears from the sharp flicker (pulse modulation) , Emergency vehicles flashers (LED type) can make me feel sort of sick.
I’ve not dug into my stash for several years now. But I’ve got some dimmers from the old sort that are basically small variacs, and probably weigh 2.5~ 3lb and need a huge mounting hole in the walls. On into the various silicone based stuff.
Oh and my user name is drawn, somewhat, from the flicker and gridding or window screen effect of flash video.
IKEA Tradfri bulbs are fine. And remote controllable for great justice.
I’ve had two of those die on me in 6 years: One, the LEDs or driver went, and I managed to convince Ikea to swap it themselves. The other went just this year, and it appears to be the radio in it – the bulb still lights up fine, but color temperature or brightness can no longer be controlled.
Ikea’s bulbs are no better than what you can find elsewhere, unfortunately.
Wow. Two! I have 23 in my lounge. I hope they last. /s
I have 8 of them deployed myself – two out of 8 in six years doesn’t speak for great chances of reliability. :(
More liberal “green” lies… everyone smart knew this would be the result.
Nuf said…
I would actually expect that it is the race to the bottom for pricing, your average consume sees two bulbs in the store – one for $4- and the other for $3- most will go for the $3- one – so many manufactures just keep making things cheaper and thus the less reliable cheaper wins the race
That’s not a green thing. That’s a capitalism thing. Shareholder value is the most important thing out there for them. And they create that by making the cheapest and therefore shittiest LED lamp that still gets accepted by the market, to sell for the highest retail price that’s still accepted by the market.
If manufacturers are made to adhere to a 10.000 hour lifetime guarantee, just like they voluntarily agreed on 1000 hours in the 1920s, these issues will go away.
I know about some Megaman light bulbs in an elevator that a friend manages. Those have 120.000 hours on them. 6 of them, all still working, though yellowed out and much less bright.
It absolutely is not a problem inherent in LED technology, it’s all what the manufacturers make for the lowest price possible, and the fact that even if you spend more money in retail, you’re not guaranteed to get a better product.
I agree with this. We bought some cheap bulbs from a big box store (3 for $10 on sale) and they were failing every six months. They had a two year warranty but I was getting tired of having to get replacements. We went to a lighting store and bought good quality bulbs for $20 a bulb and they have lasted at least 4 or 5 years already. I don’t like that you don’t always get what what you pay for. Paying more a big box store might not get you more. I feel like specialty stores might have more reasons to maintain their reputation.
Limited liability capitalism, to be specific. Ironically, this is a creation of the state – not a feature of capitalism as a system but how corporations and liability are defined in the law,
I replaced many Tradfri bulbs. I had to replace two last week alone. I probably replaced over 25 bulbs so far.
I wish the cases were easy to open to fix them. I took two apart and were easy to fix, but there’s no point as you can’t put it back together in a reasonable way. At least, I wasn’t.
I have so many dead LED bulbs that are less than 5 years old, a few downright defective and died after a year of frequent use. But I have a half dozen CFLs that are still kicking despite all of them being 10+ years old. The plastic waste from cheap LEDs has just been phenomenally stupid, and it’s a technology that was expensive and too dim that got bright, cheaper, and less reliable as LEDs became more mainstream.
No kidding. I have several 8-socket light bars in my basement with a mix of LEDs and CFLs. Every single LED, different brands, different wattages, every single one has failed in less than a year. The CFLs are all at least 4 years old. Dimmer but still going. I’m actually starting to wonder if the CFLs are what’s killing the LEDs.
I clicked “report comment” by accident. Sorry, I have no problem with your post
I don’t think we’ve bought many LED actual bulbs, but tubes (like fluorescent tubes), yes, and while the ones in our kitchen have lasted many years now, ones I had in the bathroom probably lasted less than a hundred hours. One I had in my office didn’t do much better. The problem was much worse with CFLs. In fact, our son used to do maintenance at a school, and he got a box of CFLs that were supposed to last 15,000 hours, and he always wrote the date on lights when he installed them, and he know how many hours a day the various ones were on, and half the box didn’t even make it to 250 hours.
Part of the problem is that the E27 form factor is not very well suited for LED’s. Mimicking the old incandescent lamps leaves very little room for electronics. Combine that with the cheapest electronics that sort of make it work, and the LED’s running hot, and you’ve got a recipe for a short lifespan.
LED’s can do over 200lm/Watt, but they only do that at low to moderate currents. Most often the LED’s are run at a higher current, and the result is that they can make a LED lamp with the same “wattage” cheaper, but most of it is then converted to heat. I make most of my LED armatures myself. I start with an external low voltage power supply, add some bare LED’s and some circuitry to run them at a current that they do not get too hot.
Making nice LED lights can be fun. You can use a leftover power supply, or buy a (decent) ready made one, Add some LEDs and design an armature together with your spouse or friend. LED strips tend to be bad. COB LEDs on aluminimum panels are better. Don’t trust the power rating of the sellers, but determine them yourself. For example I bought 12V 10W led panels, and when powering them from my bench power supply, they run quite cool up to 6W, and above that they quite suddenly start getting hot. Both bad for efficiency, and for LED longevity.
It’s also getting more common for LED’s in lamps not being replaceable anymore. If the LED or the power supply goes, you have to replace the whole armature (or start hacking) When you build your own armature, make sure to buy some extra LED’s of the same model, so even if they go, you can easily replace them.
And COB LED panels can be bought in many sizes, from very small to very long such as the LED strips used in TV’s.
Do you have a source of good LEDs with a high CRI? All the ones I can buy in stores give a horribly artifical light that’s just bot the same as incandescent bulbs :(
Osram/Ledvance, Philips/Signify. The Philips e27 lamps from before the signify takeover somewhere in the late 2010s – so far none of them have burned out. I only have one 95cri, blue reduced osram lamp in my bedroom, can’t say much about its reliability but the light is great quality.
Not at high CRI. An ideal white light source that emits light at 400-700 nm and follows the black body curve in between can physically reach 251 lm/W. This is because lumens measure apparent brightness, not absolute light output, and having the full spectrum of visible light means that some of it lands on colors that the eye doesn’t perceive to be as bright.
To make a white LED that emits over 200 lm/W would be closely approaching the perfect light source, which is not realistic – but you can easily get there by having a worse CRI than the ideal light source. The higher the lm/W the worse the quality of the light.
The driver circuitry always fails first from what I have seen. The Chinese junk ones may get 1 year of life, some better designs may get 3 or 4 years, and I have a few Philips bulbs that have lasted for 6 years in open (low temperature) fixtures, but upon inspection, even the good ones still have good LEDs, and some fake Chinese FET or capacitor is the fault.
Maybe separate the LEDs and drive circuitry? Then there would be less electronic waste? Maybe I just design my own from now on?
I’ve started writing the date of purchase and date of installation on all my bulbs, and keeping the receipt with the box. That way I can hold them to their 5-year guarantee! Eventually they’ll start making better bulbs (or lower their guarantee), or I’ll get free bulbs for life…
A lot of the problem is overdriving the led and driver to make it brighter.
Phillips makes a bulb only sold in Dubai, commissioned by the rulers of Dubai. it’s led’s are properly driven with a good quality power supply. BigClive did a youtube review and tear-down of one a few years ago.
It’s not only sold in Dubai, it’s now available in the UK and has been for some time, so I’m assuming available to the rest of Europe if not worldwide.
It’s sold by several manufacturers (Phillips, Crompton etc.) as it’s really just a specification – double the number of LEDs, double the lumen output, yet driven at half the power etc. Usually. Also double the rated lifetime (50,000 hours, typically). Costs more, of course.
We installed over 100 of them (Crompton) 12 months ago, not a single failure so far (average on-time 12 hours per day). In that time, we’d have had about a dozen of the cheaper LED bulbs fail, so hopefully the more expensive efficient bulbs will pay for themselves eventually – reduced power consumption, much less time spent replacing as they last longer, fewer areas in darkness because of failed bulbs (safer), better quality of light due to higher output, what’s not to like?
Usually branded as “Ultra-efficient” here in the UK. Easy to spot – just count the number of LED strings (should be 8, not 4 etc.).
For screw in “bulbs” stay at or below the 60 watt equivalent, above that is too much heat to get rid of in that size. Air cooling a good desk lamp with a brighter light might be worth it. Any light that is hot to the touch is too hot. I’ve seen fold out petal LEDs for overhead shop sockets that you can’t touch. They make a 4 or 7 socket cluster for this type of shop use that can be loaded up with the cheap 60 “w” bulbs and you can mix colors for better light.
Enough of this turn it up to 11 marketing for light sources, at 8 or 9 they last a good deal longer. Same for a TV.
none of the six LED can spotlights in the ceiling of my kitchen have ever been replaced, and they date to the very first generation of LED lighting, back when you had to buy LED bulbs online from specialty stores. when was that, 2010 or so? they were about $20 each at the time.
That means they’re from before LED bulbs were engineered for short lifespans and sustained revenue. The early ones were designed for customers; modern bulbs are designed for shareholders.
“The early ones were designed for customers; modern bulbs are designed for shareholders.”
Love it!
My issues with LED can lights are 1) They can’t easily be dimmed to extinction like incandescent bulbs, and 2) The color temperature stays the same as they’re dimmed. Incandescent bulbs go warmer as they dim. Better for mood lighting.
I’m using Philips “Warm Glow” dimmable LED bulbs that shift their color temperature as they’re dimmed just like incandescents. I’ve mixed them with incandescents in the same room and even the same fixture, replacing the incandescents as they burn out. Their CRI are pretty good and it’s hard to notice the difference between the two except when we turn the lights on and off with our soft on/off wall dimmers–the LEDs will come on/turn off a little bit more sudden than the incandescents.
I have a bucket of dead tuya bulbs. I figured I’d give em a go in the string lights for the Halloween party before tossing em. I shocked the crap out of myself with one of them (with an audience) but the shock turned the no longer wifi bulb red. I call it a win.
When LED bulbs first came out they didn’t last long. I attributed this to the manufacturer running the LEDs at maximum current. If you run it at 90% of max the bulbs will last much much longer with no appreciable decrease in intensity.
So all my projects I run LEDs at 90% or less and I’ve never had a failure.
My LEDs are supplied with 24V I will reduce output voltage of the power supply to around 21V. I should have thought about this – thanks for this tip!
For exactly that reason I opted for 12V bulbs with an external power supply. It needs some extra space in the ceillin, but if the PSU dies, I can just replace it.
I really wish one or two big players would bring something like the Dubai LED’s over, I’m sure many of us would pay plenty extra for a bulb that was really guaranteed to last almost forever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4
Philips have ultra-efficient line, which should be similar to Dubai lamps. Although i am not sure if it’s available outside europe.
They’re available from multiple manufacturers here in the UK, not just Philips.
Usually marketed as “ultra-efficient” (that seems to be a fairly generic marketing term for these “Dubai” type bulbs), also “ultra energy saving”.
We installed over 100 of these from Crompton 12 months ago, all still going strong – would have had at least a dozen failures by now with the cheap, generic overdriven LED bulbs:
https://www.cromptonlamps.com/Catalogue/LED/Filament/A-Class-Energy/A-Class-GLS/LED-A-Class-Filament-GLS-38W-3000K-BC-B22d-15227
Interesting that people are seeing so many failures. I wonder if it’s a 110v/220v world split – here in 240v land, I replaced every single bulb when we moved house 13 years ago (variety of sources from cheap to hue). None have failed.
Having said that, we had a display at work using about 120 smart bulbs. The first set had a high incidence of failures (shonky PSU heat dissipation), but the hue replacements have been good for 8+ years.
I’ve had very good luck with LED bulbs at my house and I suspect some people’s LED failures could be caused by suboptimal power:
Voltage fluctuations/spikes/noise. We have whole-house surge suppression which helps.
Wiring issues. A loose line or neutral wire can cause all kinds of power issues.
Wrong voltage. If your tap off the transformer is a bit too high, that can affect the life of your electronics like LED bulbs.
We also have soft on/off wall dimmers which probably help, although our exterior LED bulbs are on hard on/off automatic switches and they’ve all lasted 8 years so far.
i am surprised by this report. i suspect the failures are just standing out in peoples’ minds and it’s just a very low quality data source. maybe people forgot how unreliable incandescent bulbs are??
in 2015 when they first became widely available at a reasonable price, i went and bought 3 different brands of the cheapest led bulbs on amazon (figuring maybe one of them would last, by luck). that same year, the power company sent me a half dozen of a different cheap brand. i replaced every incandescent bulb in the house at that point. a few failed within the first year, and none since. so my impression is that they’re either faulty and fail immediately or they last ‘forever’. i imagine, beginning their second decade next year, that they are getting dimmer and maybe i will eventually notice that.
and my electric bill did go down.
my favorite LEDs are the ones that look like a regular incadescent, a glass envelope with the yellow ‘filaments’.
i did leave a couple CFLs in service and i believe the last one finally failed this year. talk about a product where the power supply fails first, eh?
I live in 240V-land and use Ikea Tradfri bulbs. 30 of them altogether. Bought them when Ikea started to sell them to replace my old halogen spots.
One has failed in the years since then and I think I saved the price of all the leds in one year looking at my electricity bills. So for me, leds was a big win.
I bought 19 Crees to replace 65W recessed lights in our main living areas in 2011. One began to flicker last year, so I put 4 newer ones in one room and kept the old ones to have color matched spares for the originals.
Thirteen years in, one failure and one bulb changing session.
Ton of money saved, and none of the annoyance. I had gotten to hating repeatedly changing light bulbs.
I use 1uF 600V capacitors in series with all the lamps, in 4 years not one failed. Just a little current reduction works wonders.
I’ve recently had 2 LEDs unexpectedly fail on me. Apart from that I’ve had 1 fail in like 5 years or so, so they are pretty good on average, I guess. At least here in EU. But the two that failed… Oh my god. The CC regulators in them had their markings sanded off, but from the remnants I was able to determine that those were different ICs altogether. So I guess somebody just recycled parts. The bulbs were bought locally, shop-branded product, not really the cheapest out there, more like mid-tier price. Ouch.
As others have said it’s usually the power supply that fails, so I wonder how viable it would be to have a building wide low voltage source from the wall. Anyone know if that’s been tried?
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that running LED’s in an enclosure (like a light box in the wall of a stairway), vs. an open space, like a typical floor lamp, makes a huge difference. Trapping the heat to the point where the base of the bulb really heats up is of course going to diminish the life span quite a bit.
There is a IEEE wall outlet standard for 72 volt DC, mostly for server farms. Parallel operation of many LED’s on low voltage is full of gotchas, 12volt LED pucks and strings have resistors (heat) to limit current not regulate it. All our TV’s have series string LED’s sometimes up to 200-300 volts. LED’s are current devices, old bulbs could run in parallel. When a filament burns out it usually goes open, but sometimes the shorter filament falls on the holder wires and a high current event happens, I’ve lost dimmers cause of that. LED’s usually short out causing higher current unless regulated though the string. When the bond wires fail though the whole string goes dark. One bar I know has all of their TV’s showing 10-20% lights out when you see a full football field shot. Turn down backlight levels dim the lights a little more.
The power, control, and illumination parts of LED modules should be separate sub-modules that you can swap out. So annoying to have to throw everything just because of one part.
My rather large grain of salt, as commented in the video: (I watched it before reading the article)
“As a formar buyer I was much relieved to replace FELs with LEDs as they burned. That way I just needed a couple boxes at hand. Agreed first ones to come up to the market were very short-lived but quality improved with time. Most common fail modes were capacitors or misassembled heat sinks.
But I guess every man’s experience is different…”
To not extend it too much, I didn’t put my experience at home.
When you have to care for 700+ lights of all kinds, it tends to get on one’s tits (as well as maintenance’s) to replace many bulbs. New problem, some hosts (it was an hotel) now take the bulbs home.
At home depends on the use: Bathroom lamps with cycles over 18 hours continuously on with water vapor just make it two or three years at the most. Next, kitchen & living room typically lasting 4.5 on average. Bedrooms 5.5 years and lastly washer room. I lost track of when I last changed that.
The absolute winner is a twin fluorescent ballast-powered lamp we got as a gift and hung on the carport. Takes half the power of the lighting of the rest of the house but there it is soldiering on night after night for over a decade. I made it temporary but decided to leave it as is. when it goes I’ll have to dump the electrics and put all new LED tubes.
They may not last as advertised but their low cost and electricity consumption savings more than offset that issue.
This is uninformed luddite eyecandy posting as some kind of testing.
Thanks to GE incandescent lightbulbs always had a short lifespan, by design. Though capable in the 20s of burning at full brightness for 1500 – 2000 hours they were brought down to 1000 by contracts between GE Osram and Sylvania before WWII and a different larger group of companies after it.
If you want examples of bulbs lasting a long time all you have to do is undervolt them and they will last essentially forever. As evidenced by some edison bulbs burning in a reduced state for 100+ years. It looks from the deep amber color of that example in the video that this may be the case after the dodgy sensor install he mentions.
The damage indicated in the video and many of these comments comes about largely from excess heat. This most often comes from peoply using LED bulbs in older lamps that don’t have any cooling airflow like recessed lighting cans.
Incandescents produce more and whiter light per watt the harder you run them. It costs less to replace the bulb than to pay for the extra power to get the same light from a longer lasting bulb. A filament can even be used for only a few minutes or seconds at very high power, producing a brilliant white, but that’s not cost effective.
The problem at the time was the lemon market effect, where consumers could not trust that a bulb lasts the promised 2500 hours, or that it was equally bright and efficient as promised. They’d pay more for a “better bulb” only to end up getting cheated, so people would only pay the lowest price on the market and the whole thing became a race to the bottom.
You could not compete with quality, because nobody trusted you enough to pay the real price, so the incentive became to make the bulbs worse and worse while making exceedingly outrageous claims that the consumers could not verify before purchase. Sound familiar and relevant today?
That’s why the cartel standardized on 1000 hours – with penalties both for going under and over – so everyone had equal light bulbs and the consumers would trust the market again. If they hadn’t done that, the government would have had to step in and force the same point: a compromise between efficiency and longevity.
The boxes say “X years based on 3 hours use a day”, on every LED bulb I’ve ever seen for the past 15-ish years.
WTF
I repair my LED lights very often. Often LED failures. Replacing, and it’s working for another few months.
I think it’s mostly because the cheap bulbs are built with as cheap cooling as it can be, and LED’s are overheating. I have seen only 1 or 2 PSU errors, mostly blown capacitors.
Here Here ! Nice comment! I’m trying to get our local government to sponsor us and makerspace given that they are the largest landholder of many abandoned industrial buildings in our city. At the same time green peace and the green party here wants everybody to reduce e-waste and so I’m thinking not only combine the makerspace with having first pick at the e-waste which is quite nice and this country but also is startup incubator because that seems to be what they want more and they don’t see the value in a makerspace if it’s not a money-making business like FabLab which we do have but the man who runs it is very clear that he’s there just to make money.
That somehow drives me a little crazy as it’s like turning people’s hobbies and the desire curiosity interest, and dreams of people into a business and I think it’s little irritating when he’s so clear about it. But at the same time, we are going through an ultra-nationalist wing. Which is a little sad because there are very few actually real complete Swiss people left and even the history of Switzerland is one of consensus building as we are made up of four distinct cultural and language groups so the whole idea of anyone being Swiss is kind of ridiculous because up until recently every Canton consider themselves to be their own country. They even had the right to make treaties with foreign countries on their own and they have their own mini IRS in the federal government is pretty weak but there’s been incremental creep…. And the idea that there is people there are people who are actually Swiss and completely Swiss is foolish and many regards because a decade or two ago they would have said which Canton they were from not which country.. The word Switzerland isn’t even correct it’s actually the Confederation Helvetic! The party is called the SVP or the UDP in English and they’re a little silly.