[HN Gopher] There's something off about LED bulbs
___________________________________________________________________
There's something off about LED bulbs
Author : brainfog
Score : 507 points
Date : 2023-03-30 12:42 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nymag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nymag.com)
| elihu wrote:
| It's perhaps worth mentioning that metal halide bulbs are an
| alternative to LEDs that are efficient and produce high quality
| light. They use an electric arc in an inert gas between tungsten
| electrodes. The old high pressure sodium lights used in street
| lights and gymnasiums are basically the same technology, but by
| using a different gas mixture you get a more normal color
| temperature.
|
| They aren't generally used in residential buildings. You could
| install them, but it tends to be kind of expensive and
| complicated because they require a ballast. Also, they tend to be
| most efficient at high wattages, and most people don't want their
| house lit like the surface of the sun.
| broabprobe wrote:
| wow great article and even in the article and comments no mention
| of PAR1789! It's the IEEE standard for limiting flicker in bulbs!
| The Department of Energy has a great presentation on this,
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/articles/flicker-understandi...
| Bluzzard wrote:
| [dead]
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| So much of the problem with LED lights is from the integrated
| power supplies. Why is it not more common by now to just wire up
| indoor lights with 48v DC supplied from a PSU in your wiring
| cabinet and the lights can be just plain LEDs? Lower overall
| cost, more reliable, safer.
| detourdog wrote:
| Has anyone noticed that warmer light LEDs causing blurrier text.
| I did a test and found that my cool light LEDs made small text
| stable and readable while the same text under warm light was
| blurry.
| packetlost wrote:
| It's probably just lowers the effective perceptual contrast
| between a page and the printed text. It's pretty understood
| that cooler light is better for visibility.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Could be lots of things. The CRI (a measure of how well it
| reproduce colors across the visible spectrum) of the bulb is a
| likely candidate.
| toddmorey wrote:
| They just put in some new townhomes near me. The architecture is
| beautiful but all the exterior lighting is cold LED light and it
| looks so strange and frightening at night. Just... off. Amazing
| how the quality and temperature of light matters.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I pay attention to colour temperature. Lights at home are usually
| lighten during evening, so it should be not more then 3000K -
| (for melatonin). I use mostly 2700K, tried even 2000K but that
| was too reddish for my taste.
|
| Keep in mind that after sunset in nature there is only moon light
| that has blue spectrum. Fire, as light source is about 1700K.
| foobarian wrote:
| I had an epiphany this year that I don't need to conform to the
| lightbulb socket interface any longer, now that things like
| straight-wired LED modules [1] are available. They waste a lot
| less space on unnecessary hardware, and can therefore fill more
| space with useful light producing material. I've been slowly
| converting my big round ceiling fixtures and the light and
| dimming performance is nothing short of miraculous.
|
| [1]
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09H3VFG8B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
| Someone1234 wrote:
| So now changing the "lightbulb" becomes an infinitely harder
| task, and in some areas requires you to pull a permit and or
| hire an electrician (e.g. do you think a retiree is going to
| change this themselves?). This seems nice predicated that LEDs
| last 10-years or longer, which per the article and elsewhere
| isn't the case.
|
| This movement away from standard bulb-sockets to direct wiring
| is short-term-ism at its finest. Least of all because very time
| you rewire this, you're going to degrade or shorten the wires.
| foobarian wrote:
| The direct wiring is of course not as easy as changing a
| lightbulb. However I find the trade worth the improved light
| quality and we can agree to disagree about the short-termism
| of it.
| antiterra wrote:
| There's a bit of a basilisk with the cheaper LEDs (though
| sometimes also the ones permanently installed on ceiling fans,
| sometimes luxury brand car accent lighting) where once your learn
| you can see flickering trails following movement, you can't avoid
| seeing it again. Plenty of people don't notice, don't tell them.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah, cheaper LEDs explain most of the complaints I'm reading
| here. Spend a few extra bulbs and you get a far better
| experience. I have no flickering LEDs, I won't tolerate them in
| my house.
| dannyz wrote:
| I have found that there can be huge quality differences between
| cheap and more expensive LED bulbs as well. Specifically the ones
| that use a cheap rectifier. Sometimes I think that I can see them
| flickering out of the corner of my eye.
| noneeeed wrote:
| This is a big part of it. I tend to pay a reasonable amount for
| my LEDs and I've yet to be disappointed. I very rarely replace
| bulbs despite having dozens of fixtures, and the quality of the
| light is good because I made a point of buying the right colour
| temp and getting dimmable ones where it makes sense.
|
| Unfortunately the market is swamped with cheap low quality ones
| that produce pretty crap quality light and burn out quickly. I
| learnt pretty quickly that it was a false economy to skimp on
| them.
| ipython wrote:
| You can - I see the same thing
| eig wrote:
| The irony of this article is that the author is suffering from
| "too much choice". LEDs have so much more capability than
| fluorescent and halogen bulbs that the burden has fallen on the
| consumer to sort out what dimmability, temperature, and lumens
| they need. It used to be that you only had one option so you
| didn't have to think about it.
|
| Anyone who works in stage lighting or art knows that light is
| complicated. We should not fault the technology for now giving us
| too many options, but instead improve the branding and
| advertising.
| the_af wrote:
| What if you don't want to become an expert, which is something
| that wouldn't scale for every piece of tech and equipment?
| (Maybe you enjoy tweaking with lights, but what about chairs,
| tabletop materials, woods, wall paints, and yes -- electronic
| gadgets?).
|
| With LEDs, what's the "I don't want to deal with this, I just
| want something that will work as intended and not introduce
| weird artifacts"?
| eig wrote:
| I totally agree- that's why I think we need better branding
| and marketing in stores. I personally like the Costco model
| of "do the research for the consumer and give them limited
| choices" but it's easy to see how this could go wrong too.
|
| I'm sure early incandescent lightbulb manufacturers had a lot
| of shoddy products and consumers just had to figure out which
| brands to trust themselves. Eventually, it'll even out for
| LEDs too.
| whateveracct wrote:
| why are you acting like you need a college credit in an LED
| survey course in order to buy incandescent-replacement LEDs?
| It's like a new vocabulary of like 5 terms/concepts that can
| all be summarized in a sentence or two.
|
| When I upgraded my house, I spent maybe 30 min reading some
| articles and then 30 more going through product listings [1].
| To upgrade a core piece of infra for my whole house.
|
| [1] I can already hear people saying "an HOUR???" But guess
| what now I know about LED bulbs forever.
| the_af wrote:
| > _why are you acting like you need a college credit in an
| LED survey course in order to buy incandescent-replacement
| LEDs? It 's like a new vocabulary of like 5 terms/concepts
| that can all be summarized in a sentence or two._
|
| I hope by "you" you are also including TFA and the comment
| I was replying to, right?
|
| Your response directly contradicts TFA. I don't know who is
| right, I just know I'm not entirely satisfied with the LEDs
| I have. It's not my most pressing concern, but I'd rather
| not have to deal with 5 concepts when picking a lightbulb.
| whateveracct wrote:
| The article isn't some authoritative source. It's the
| Strategist, which can best be summed up as just some
| people with opinions.
| the_af wrote:
| Doesn't this also apply to people on HN?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I generally buy the lamps that say "warm white". They're
| usually the 2700k variety. I've literally never had an LED
| light go out and the colours look fine. Philips lamps seem
| like a good bet, though I remember seeing an in depth YouTube
| review that showed that IKEA actually had better colour
| representation (many brands add an extra dose of red light to
| boost the warm colours).
|
| Not skimping on lamps helps prevent most problems, usually.
| IKEA sells great LED lights over here in Europe, for prices
| that had me worried at first. Most other budget stores and
| brands sell lamps that mostly emit warm light but will make
| any food look disgusting from missing wavelengths; fine for
| lighting a hallway maybe, but generally not worth it in my
| opinion. It's mostly these bottom of the barrel lamps that
| people buy, not knowing about the effects cheap lighting can
| have, that cause visual problems.
|
| It makes sense: back in the day, a cheap lamp may not have
| lasted as long ,but the colour profile was nearly identical.
| If you were fine buying a lamp every year, you could just
| grab the cheapest bulb on the shelf. With anything beyond
| incandescent light, that's not true anymore.
|
| The difference between a EUR5 lamp and a EUR10 lamp is quite
| significant and worth it considering they'll probably last
| you at least five years anyway. My personal approach is to
| look for "warm white" (or 2700k if they use that instead),
| not pick the very cheapest lamp I can find, and if that
| leaves multiple options, start comparing statistics like CRI.
| s_dev wrote:
| >With LEDs, what's the "I don't want to deal with this, I
| just want something that will work as intended and not
| introduce weird artifacts"?
|
| That sounds like an ideal situation the free market should be
| fixing -- so why isn't it?
| ghaff wrote:
| I think it does? I go into a home improvement store, grab a
| dimmable bulb on the warmer side, and screw it in. That's
| pretty much the sum total of my dealing with LED bulbs.
| nix0n wrote:
| The problem is that the "dimmable" LEDs I have aren't
| actually dimmable, they just get flickery.
|
| The article has a similar sentiment: it's hard to
| translate from what the box says to how it'll actually
| perform in the real world.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Because EU banned the free market. The ideal would have
| been a slow transition where LEDs would have had to compete
| with bulbs.
|
| Like the others I want to buy an LED where the visible
| light cannot be meassured differently from a normal one,
| and with the guarantee that I can return it for a full
| refund if it fails before the 20k hours are up.
| fl0id wrote:
| The free market will never fix that, because there is no
| profit in making it easy for you, nor in offering an
| unlimited return.
| fsh wrote:
| It is quite interesting that 2700K is often considered to be a
| "normal" color temperature, even though it is much yellower
| than sunlight (around 5000K, depending on atmospheric
| scattering). This stems purely from a technological limitation
| of incandescent bulbs. The bulb filaments simply cannot
| withstand a temperature significantly above 2700K. Even though
| LED bulbs have no such limitations, a color temperature of only
| 2700K is often chosen.
| DennisP wrote:
| Sunlight is great during the day but in the evening, you want
| to be closer to the color of sunsets and campfires.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| For this reason I think it's great to connect different
| temperature bulbs to each light switch in your house and
| switch between them during the day. I keep all of my bulbs
| on during the daytime and then switch to just the warm ones
| at night.
| charrondev wrote:
| I have hue builds in my house and have them programmed to
| warm their color temperature as the day progresses into
| the evening, and dim themselves down significantly as it
| gets later.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > For this reason I think it's great to connect different
| temperature bulbs to each light switch in your house and
| switch between them during the day. I keep all of my
| bulbs on during the daytime and then switch to just the
| warm ones at night.
|
| If you care that much about that, it would probably make
| more sense to get something like Philips Hue bulbs that
| can vary their color temperature.
| riskable wrote:
| For reference, a candle has a color temperature around ~1800K
| (with some spots of the candle emitting ~2600K)...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Candle-shows-
| different-c...
|
| I'd imagine that the "warm" color temperature is modeled
| after candle and gas lighting but after reading some articles
| on the history of light bulbs it seems that all the folks
| working on it were trying to make the brightest, whitest
| light they possibly could. Today's "daylight" bulbs would
| probably be perceived as an engineering wonder by those
| folks.
| njarboe wrote:
| Humans have used fire probably for their entire
| evolutionary history. Before language and but after stone
| tools. The desire for a light spectrum at night similar to
| what a fire gives off surely comes mostly from that long
| genetic history.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| 5000k is really uncomfortable in a living area. Fine for work
| but not relaxing. Just living with 5000k lights for a while
| won't change that.
| throw0101b wrote:
| There is another benefit to <3000K indoor lighting: lighting
| is usually used in the evening, close to bed time. So a
| warmer light helps with people's circadian rhythm in
| preparing for sleep. Remember that light at sunset also
| becomes warmer.
|
| If all your indoor lighting was 5000K, then it would be like
| you would be living your indoor life constantly at noon.
|
| It's why software like f.lux was created (and the
| functionality has been incorporated into some OSes as well).
| fsh wrote:
| I believe this is more folklore than science. A significant
| color shift happens only for a couple of minutes during
| sunrise and sunset. The change in brightness is probably
| significant, but it is hard to believe that the color has a
| significant physiological effect (but the placebo could be
| very strong!). In my experience, f.lux and co. make it
| pretty difficult to read text due to the low contrast, and
| simply changing the screen brightness is much more
| effective.
| throw0101b wrote:
| What's true for outdoor lighting is just as true for
| indoor lighting:
|
| > _It is crucial to control upward-directed light, but we
| now know that the color of light is also very important.
| Both LED, and metal halide fixtures contain large amounts
| of blue light in their spectrum. Because blue light
| brightens the night sky more than any other color of
| light, it's important to minimize the amount emitted.
| Exposure to blue light at night has also been shown to
| harm human health[1] and endanger wildlife[2]. IDA
| recommends[3] using lighting that has a color temperature
| of no more than 3000 Kelvins._
|
| * https://www.darksky.org/our-work/lighting/lighting-for-
| citiz...
| cipheredStones wrote:
| > A significant color shift happens only for a couple of
| minutes during sunrise and sunset.
|
| This seems like a very dubious claim - the "golden hour"
| is obvious to everyone, and there's an intuitive
| mechanism for sunlight being "warmer" in the morning and
| evening (blue gets scattered in proportion to the amount
| of air it travels through). Do you have a citation for
| this?
| _greim_ wrote:
| > Even though LED bulbs have no such limitations, a color
| temperature of only 2700K is often chosen.
|
| I think there's a reason for this, which is that sunlight
| supplements indoor lighting during the day. People rely on
| indoor lighting more at night when those warmer tones are
| most desirable.
| [deleted]
| randyrand wrote:
| For evening humans are more used to to campfire color temp
| than to the sun.
|
| For daylight, people typically prefer daylight (5000K) bulbs.
| [deleted]
| m463 wrote:
| I personally think high color temperature lighting is harsh,
| like hospital harsh.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Most people have an expectation that residential lighting is
| on the "warm" (low color temperature!) side. I have a lot of
| Hue and Sengled bulbs in the house which are tunable and my
| son complains that they look "harsh" when they are set to a
| high color temperature. Myself I do art projects that require
| making fine sensory distinctions and it clear to me that I
| can do that better with more blue light.
|
| I've seen high-quality incandescent bulbs however that do
| very well on my tests despite being "warm" but I think a lot
| of people like using daylight from out the north window for
| evaluating prints and it was was a revolution a few decades
| back when art museums realized that higher color temperature
| lights brought out colors better.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Myself I do art projects that require making fine sensory
| distinctions and it clear to me that I can do that better
| with more blue light.
|
| That's what it's good for. But do you want that lighting in
| your living room while you watch tv?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The TV is a good example because the light from TV is
| transmitted light, like a stained glass window. The TV
| can create the widest range of perceptual experience if
| it has R, G and B colors that are precise spectral lines.
|
| If I'm looking at color prints in a book or on the wall
| that is reflective light and it is dependent on the
| spectrum of the room. My main TV room has RGB Hue lights
| that can simulate "warm" or "cold" light but also
| specific colors. I think 100% green is the ideal light
| for hot summer days because a full spectrum is also
| coming in the windows and it gives the most light for the
| minimum amount of heat. I also find other colors fun
| sometimes. The guest room that also has a TV has sengled
| lights that can be tuned from cool to warm.
|
| RGB lights that can produce saturated colors are not
| going to render reflective colors so well, see
|
| https://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/metameric-failure/
|
| Personally I like high color temperature light but with
| the system we have we can have it any way we like. If I
| really need accurate color rendition I bring in high-
| performing spot incandescent and maybe someday LEDs. My
| work is all "born digital" so I spend at least 80% of my
| time looking at screens and looking at prints, handling
| paper and such is a small but essential fraction of that.
|
| What I really gotta do though is set my system up so it
| can vary the room color together with what's on TV, that
| ought to be cool.
| Bloating wrote:
| Its CRI
| HPsquared wrote:
| Not just incandescent filament bulbs, the original artificial
| light was literally incandescent - gas lamps, oil lamps, beef
| tallow, candles, tallow etc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight
| hollerith wrote:
| Nowadays the situation is better, but for years after
| incandescents were banned in California, the only LED bulbs
| available in stores had a huge spike in the blue part of the
| spectrum, which I experienced as painful and now know
| probably caused the death of some of the cones in my retina
| through oxidative stress.
|
| (I am over 60 and have some health problems that chronically
| elevate my levels of oxidative stress -- in all cell types,
| though the light-detecting cells in the retina are more
| vulnerable than other types of cells are.)
|
| I.e., I wanted to buy an LED that vaguely approximated a
| 2700K incandescent, tried many brands, but could not find
| one, so I don't know what you are on about.
|
| Bright blue light will make a brain more alert -- and the
| effect is immediate. That is probably why you young people
| like it, but I am baffled by your "a color temperature of
| only 2700K is often chosen" (not that color temperature is a
| useful way of summarizing the spectrum of and LED bulb).
| alistairSH wrote:
| _It used to be that you only had one option so you didn't have
| to think about it._
|
| But, that single option was at least "good enough". I never
| bought a normal incandescent bulb only to have the color
| rendering/brightness/etc be downright awful.
|
| LEDs come packaged as "daylight" or "bright white" or whatever
| else. I want one that's labelled "just like your normal 60W
| incandescent".
| balfirevic wrote:
| > But, that single option was at least "good enough"
|
| It wasn't if you wanted a good amount of light without having
| kW heater over your head.
| vel0city wrote:
| I highly disagree about it being good enough. Those bulbs got
| hot and were expensive to run over the life of the bulb. I
| like a lot of light, so I'd often end up buying lots of 100W
| lightbulbs throughout my house. My kitchen would have like
| 6x100W lightbulbs on for several hours a day, so ~3.6kWh/day.
| At $0.11/kWh that's $11.88/mo just lighting my kitchen.
| $142.56/year to light one room one quarter of the day. And
| that's before thinking about how much extra heat I'm adding
| to my house when I'm spending tons of money running an AC to
| pump heat out of it. Add up all the rest of the lights in my
| house, its _a lot_ of money just to have the lights on over a
| year.
|
| For comparison, a similar lumen setup with LED lights in my
| kitchen runs ~$19/yr to operate. ~13W compared to ~100W. I
| spent probably less than $80 total swapping out the bulbs and
| have not had any early failures after a couple of years. The
| quality of the lights are excellent, in fact in some ways
| better as I'd prefer closer 5000K in a kitchen as opposed to
| 2500K.
| alistairSH wrote:
| My "good enough" was with regard to light quality.
| Operating costs are definitely much higher for incandescent
| bulbs, no question.
| majormajor wrote:
| They mostly _all_ were pretty awful.
|
| Twenty years ago I remember a lot of PR about "full spectrum"
| incandescents and flourescents - no LEDs then! - there was a
| lot of talk at the time about Seasonal Affective Disorder.
|
| I bought a few different options to check out, and looked at
| some photo prints under them. They blew the "basic"
| incandescents away, the photos popped and looked much more
| lively instead of yellow-tinted and dim.
| 542458 wrote:
| I've found the color/brightness of the GE Relax HD (Yeah,
| they go one step further and label the color temperature as
| "Relax HD") to be pretty good. Lifespan has been hit and miss
| in semi-enclosed fixtures though.
| gorkish wrote:
| Power supplies in all GE bulbs are total horseshit.
|
| Their new bulbs with the selectable color temperature
| gutted the product of its remaining redeeming features. The
| cost of the extra LEDs in the bulb is coming out of the
| quality of the remaining components.
| MBCook wrote:
| > But, that single option was at least "good enough".
|
| Was it? Or was it what we were all used to, good or not, so
| we accepted it as good/correct.
| zippergz wrote:
| Effectively every incandescent bulb has good CRI and can be
| dimmed, so yes.
| vlunkr wrote:
| And the single option was cheap. There are cheap LEDs, but
| they're going to flicker, or hum audibly, and die quickly
| (contrary to the advertising). It's taken many rounds of
| trial and error, many wasted dollars, and I still don't love
| the bulbs I've landed on that much.
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| Sure but it'll cost $100. The efficiency of LEDs is a joke
| when you factor in materials, manufacturing, and subjective
| utility. We're paying more for worse.
| alistairSH wrote:
| For a "lifetime" bulb that doesn't make me crazy, I'd
| gladly pay $100. Well, maybe not quite, but certainly more
| than whatever I pay now for mid-grade (by HD/Lowes
| standards) bulbs.
| derbOac wrote:
| I had a similar reaction to the article.
|
| I actually am opposed to bans on traditional incandescent bulbs
| but vastly prefer LEDs and have no desire to go back to them.
|
| Using LEDs was a shock to me initially mostly because, as you
| point out, with traditional household incandescents there
| wasn't a whole lot of options. So suddenly when I had to pay
| attention to color profiles and so forth more carefully, I
| wasn't expecting it.
|
| But I don't see that as a bad thing, I really love all the
| options, and the better precision in labeling color versus
| power versus brightness.
|
| One problem I've noted, that others in the thread are pointing
| to, is that a lot of shoddy manufacturing has taken advantage
| of many of the claims of LED technology to push unacceptable
| products. One of my pet peeves is how I've suddenly seen
| fixtures with integrated bulbs take over lighting departments,
| poorly constructed and forcing you to remove the entire fixture
| rather than just the bulb, when it dies after a year, much
| earlier than promised. But I guess even there it's just moved
| me to more selective lighting stores where I can still buy
| better fixtures separately from the bulbs.
|
| I do think there's something to be said about declines or fraud
| in lightbulb manufacturing quality compared to what is
| possible, but I see that as a scourge of our age and not
| something unique to LEDs. I have as much trouble finding a
| quality lightbulb as I do a quality pair of pants.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > I actually am opposed to bans on traditional incandescent
| bulbs
|
| AFAIK, there are no simple bans on them [ EDIT: in the USA ].
| What exists are energy performance standards, which these
| bulbs do not meet. If you want, you can say that this is nit-
| picking, and that of course that's a ban.
|
| But when we have energy performance standards for, say, cars,
| nobody says it is a ban on cars, just a effective end to the
| production of inefficient ones.
| ignite wrote:
| Can't buy incandescents in California anymore. Try on
| Amazon, it won't sell to you.
| nerdponx wrote:
| What happened to CFL bulbs? I was very happy with mine, but
| they have rapidly disappeared from shelves.
| ghayes wrote:
| But if we said cars need to achieve over 1000mpg, then it
| would be effectively a ban on ICE, right?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In practice yes. However, someone might also just say "No
| more ICE" and that is semantically different. Sure, in
| the real world, no practical difference.
| salawat wrote:
| ...Some people like me _do_ call those bans.
| Spivak wrote:
| Where the standards are set isn't arbitrary.
|
| If LEDs were exactly as efficient as incandescent bulbs
| there wouldn't be a law that bans all lightbulbs. Also
| there's no way a law would pass that sets the efficiency
| standard of incandescent bulbs because the law would do
| nothing.
|
| It's a ban on incandescent bulbs with the thinnest veneer
| of generalization.
| teawrecks wrote:
| The thing is, a simple carbon tax is already designed to
| handle both of these cases. Burning coal/gas would have a
| cost proportional to the long term effects it has, and at
| the end of the day customers just see a price of
| electricity. If someone wants to pay 10x more for energy to
| power their lightbulbs, let them. As long as the energy
| they buy is sustainably sourced, who gives a shit how they
| use it?
| gmac wrote:
| On the other hand, the integrated bulb/fixtures in our house
| at least use separate driver units, and seem to be lasting
| much better than the average mains-voltage LED bulb (the
| oldest is 8 years old, used every day and still going strong,
| touch wood).
| vel0city wrote:
| So far I've had better experiences with integrated lighting
| than individual bulbs. Normally the integrated lighting means
| they've got more space to try and cram things like power
| supplies in there and can use a lot of the actual fixture to
| cool down the electronics. Meanwhile, fixtures designed to
| not care about the bulbs getting hot roast the LED bulbs and
| can cause early failure.
| derbOac wrote:
| Maybe we've just had bad luck. Our integrated lights all
| failed in less than a year, whereas our bulbs have all
| lasted a few years at least so far without any failures or
| apparent changes.
| jdcarter wrote:
| I've had very good luck with the integrated fixtures. I have
| a number of them in my house and only one has failed (of
| maybe a dozen). This is a lot lower than the failure rate of
| LED bulbs. They are far brighter than the lights they
| replaced, and I personally like their lower profile. I also
| installed a number of the integrated fixtures in my father's
| house, and the increased brightness helps him quite a bit
| (he's 80).
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Yup.
|
| It's unfortunate many of us are not used to terms like lumens
| that are objectively better than using terms like wattage.
|
| However I do feel over the past few years they have become much
| better at displaying the important terms on the front of the
| package.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I think it was worse in the past. I had to chose a daylight,
| warm or soft bulb. Now I buy one bulb capable of changing color
| temp and brightness from my couch and it lasts way longer. This
| is exactly the kinda thing sci fi had when I was a kid and now
| its in every room of my house.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Is there something different about smart bulbs? My oldest hue is
| at least 6 years old, but probably older (as I can't find the
| order confirmation for the bridge, so I'm guessing I bought it
| offline), no flickering, no getting darker.
|
| Logically, I'm thinking that the pure LED components are a much
| smaller part of the price, and that maybe there is less skimping?
| kristjank wrote:
| A funny thing my power electronics TA pointed out at a lab class
| was that, while incandescents radiate heat and waste a lot of
| power to just heat the space below them, we still need to heat
| our classrooms. When the university went from incandescent to
| fluorescent and, later LED lighting, the only thing that changed
| was the power usage shifting from lighting to heating. Granted,
| heating can be more efficient when handled by the systems
| designed to heat, not to illuminate, but at the scale of a
| reasonably big, cold-war era building with moderately
| inappropriate insulation, the gain in efficiency is minuscule. It
| all made me think that we're solving a lot of problems by
| shifting the issue away from us, in this case from the bulbs to
| the radiators. It's comparable to EVs in my opinion: "if we take
| all the pollution and put it in SE Asia, we can cargo cult
| ourselves into thinking that driving that 20yo beater is worse
| than generating new waste"
| Bloating wrote:
| LTF Sunlight 2 are the best light quality LEDs I've personally
| seen. The warm dim is incredibly clear amber
| https://ltftechnology.com
|
| Ketra used to make a good smart bulb, like Hue but much better
| quality light. Bought out by Lutron, who disabled the open
| Restful API
|
| RAB now makes a decent warm-dim, comparable to the Phillips warm-
| dim.
| aimor wrote:
| Some people seem to have different memories than I do of what it
| was like buying lightbulbs before LEDs came out. I remember
| incandescents also having a variety of color quality, lifespan,
| and decorative options. I remember having the choice between
| bargain bin bulbs and luxurious options, making sure to outfit a
| room with a single brand so everything looked the same, realizing
| it's more difficult to read with this one or that, keeping
| receipts in the box in case they don't live up to the "double
| life" (2000 hours!) branding, the annoyance of having a regular
| bulb in a 3-way lamp, or a faulty circuit causing lights to
| flicker, not to mention the fire hazard of having something too
| close to an exposed bulb.
|
| Things are not so different now. As it was then, we still have
| crappy products with too little information and too much
| marketing. Having CRI ratings on the box is a good change (a
| spectrogram would have been nice though), I think it cuts down
| the trial and error it takes to find something suitable. What I
| don't like are all the built-in specialty lighting sources. More
| and more we're seeing fixtures with custom LED panels instead of
| sockets, which often means more expensive trial-and-error when it
| turns out that expensive "dimmable" ceiling light is doing PWM at
| 60 Hz, or when it dies one year out of warranty and you have to
| change the entire decorative housing instead of just replacing a
| bulb. The good news is that it's easier than ever to ask
| strangers what worked for them, and it's still less expensive to
| find and buy high quality LED bulbs than it is to use
| incandescents.
| fsckboy wrote:
| I do have different memories than you about buying lightbulbs.
| I remember thinking 60-watt bulbs are frustratingly dim, 75
| watt bulbs are a minimum, but what I really wanted every time
| was a 100 watt bulb, it just improves visual acuity
| tremendously. And my frustration with LED and flourescents, etc
| is that I can't find the equivalent of my good old 100 watt
| bulb; whatever the new rating systems are, it's all an excuse
| for "it's a little dimmer"
|
| (don't get me wrong, I like dim lighting, I prefer it, I don't
| turn lights on when I get up in the morning, I make coffee, I
| take showers in the dark, people come into spaces that I'm in
| and always snap the lights on and it drives me crazy. I'm
| simply saying, when I want to turn a light on to see, I want it
| to cast a good amount of light.)
|
| (oh, let me add on, I also know that 1 tiny little blue or
| white LED power indicator on each of a few gadgets I buy seem
| able to bathe my bedroom in light when I'm trying sleep.)
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| I ended up buying adaptors that turn a light socket into two
| sockets. Then you can achieve something approaching 100W, or
| better, with a couple of averagely dim LEDs.
| samstave wrote:
| >> _" I like dim lighting, I prefer it, I don't turn lights
| on when I get up in the morning, I make coffee, I take
| showers in the dark, people come into spaces that I'm in and
| always snap the lights on and it drives me crazy."_
|
| Man, My brother is a constant light-stepper (he always has on
| harsh, too bright, lights even when he is not in THAT room,
| or if he falls asleep.
|
| It drives me nuts!
|
| STOP TURNING ON FLOURESCENT TUBE LIGHTS AND FALLING ASLEEP!!
|
| I recognize the visual acuity, but I cannot stand tube-FLs at
| all - and while I have every single bulb in my house an
| addressable RGB LED Alexa bulb (Feit Electric) -- there are
| certain lights I cant replace (a few ceiling fans with
| integrated LED lights, tube lights in certain spots, etc) --
| I have learned that the position of the lights is also
| important.
|
| For example, if the kitchen tube light is on, it lasers-into
| the corner of my eye if I am sitting on the couch at night
| and the kitchen tube light is on. I cant alexify that just
| yet (the alexa light switches require a 3-phase (meaning the
| requirement of a ground wire) to mount -- my house was built
| in 1959 and the wall switches do not have the req ground
| wire....
|
| but yeah - its interesting how sensitive you become to the
| lighting environment once you pay attention to it.
|
| When I was doing architecture, I was always wondering why we
| paid "lighting designers" so much... but after working with
| them, and working with lighting in my own home, I am amazed
| at what they accomplish with lights.
| brewdad wrote:
| I've had good luck finding 100w equivalents at my local big
| box store. Only in the bright white color format though which
| looks terrible indoors. So those get used on outdoor fixtures
| and in my utility room and garage.
|
| Fortunately, my home has plenty of overhead lighting and a
| few lamps, so 60w soft white bulbs are sufficient for the
| other rooms in the house.
| pixiemaster wrote:
| i had a similar view, until i found COB LED stripes (with
| dimmers), with 20W per m (LED W, not equivalent, i have
| mounted a few of those 3-10m (!), and now can have dimmed 1%
| background lights and hospital style brightness as well.
| hultner wrote:
| Do you have a link to these?
| wheels wrote:
| It's really not that hard to find 15w LEDs with CRI95+. 15w
| will be approximately equivalent to a 100 watt bulb. A quick
| Amazon search pulls up multiple options.
|
| Recently I even got out the big guns and bought this thing,
| mainly to replace my halogen floor lamp. It's 40w, and more
| like the equivalent to a 250w incandescent, though it is
| awkwardly ginormous.
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000240793250.html
| wrycoder wrote:
| And yet I have a growlight that specs its output in moles of
| photons per second.
| ccooffee wrote:
| I had been unaware of measurement according to "moles of
| photons", though I suppose it's not surprising. I've never
| really understood what a mole is other than "we decided to
| pick this number as a constant multiplier when doing small
| calculations".
|
| Per wikipedia[0], there's a vaguely defined unit, the
| Einstein, which may be defined as the energy in a mole of
| photons. (The vague definition being because each photon may
| have different amounts of energy, and thus an Einstein would
| be some weird function in order to describe total energy.)
| Wikipedia suggests using measures of Photosynthetically
| Active Radiation (PAR)[1], like Photosynthetic photon flux
| (PPF) instead. I suppose this is because PAR is literally
| defined to measure according to "what plants crave", but it
| also allows bounding the "total joules of energy" above and
| below by the PAR wavelength limits.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_(unit)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetically_active_r
| adi...
| hinkley wrote:
| I'd been dealing with flickering CFL bulbs for some time
| already. My fovea is about 10hz slower than the rest of my
| retina. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 58hz versus 68hz (70Hz
| CRT displays were a goddamned revelation for me, when I could
| finally afford them. Thank you Iiyama.)
|
| Things flickering in the corner of your vision is distracting
| af.
|
| But then my partner started complaining about headaches
| reading, but only in certain rooms in the house. I put two and
| two together and stopped buying a brand of CFL (I might have
| upgraded to LEDs at this point, I don't recall).
|
| More recent advice was to go to the hardware store and record a
| slow motion video of the demo bulbs, to see if you can detect
| flicker during playback, but I think I've only succeeded in
| that one time and so I'm not sure if it doesn't work as well as
| advertised or if retailers have gotten better vendors.
| mcguire wrote:
| Can you get 3-way LEDs? I have some 3-way lamps and I've been
| casually looking for bulbs but haven't found any.
|
| (Yes, I know I could search online and order them. It's not
| that important.)
| aimor wrote:
| Yes, but not at bargain bin prices.
| drcongo wrote:
| I don't recognise any of the issues mentioned in this article at
| all and there must be a hundred odd LED bulbs in my house. I'm
| wondering if this is a US-specific thing, I'm in the UK.
| gniv wrote:
| > I'm wondering if this is a US-specific thing, I'm in the UK.
|
| I think so. I am in France now and all I can easily buy are
| expensive and good quality bulbs. In US the quality was all
| over the place and price was not always a good proxy.
| 99_00 wrote:
| The fact that they had to ban incandescent should have been the
| big red flag.
| ipython wrote:
| I am sensitive to low refresh rates - back in the crt days I
| would visibly notice low refresh monitors and it would give me
| headaches. Some (low cost?) led bulbs give me the same effect- I
| can see the rapid flicker. Some hotel rooms are notorious for
| this.
|
| I have led bulbs everywhere (new build, recessed lights).
| Thankfully they don't have the flicker effect I've seen on other
| bulbs. And I've found that I actually prefer the more "daylight"
| bulbs in certain areas such as kitchens. The cans do have
| adjustable color temperature (a physical switch) so it's not too
| bad if I decide I'd like a warmer light down the road.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| I have had the flicker effect with some of the particularly
| cheap LED work lamps
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Those early Cadillac taillights put me on the verge of puking.
| Lights on newer cars are better, but still a distraction.
| yabones wrote:
| A lot of cheap LED retrofits on older halogen headlights do
| this. The only thing worse than being tailgated by a F-150
| with ultra-blaster highbeams is an old junker with cheap
| flickering LEDs. I've even noticed a lot of DRLs flickering
| lately as well. We need stricter laws on headlight brightness
| and intensity in North America, and we need them yesterday.
| Whitespace wrote:
| I recently bought EcoSmart bulbs from Home Depot (they're a HD
| brand) that have a color temperature selector on the side (2700k
| to 5000k). But it also has an option called DuoBright, which will
| change the temperature in response to the standard cheap Lutron
| Diva dimmer I have.
|
| It works *perfectly*! I can max the dimmer and it's bright white
| daylight, or I can dim it down to a very dim 2000k. There's no
| buzzing, no weird high-temp/low-light weirdness. It works
| magically. And it's the cheap option!
|
| I replaced all BR30 & BR40 bulbs with it. I wish it came in more
| shapes! I'd replace every lightbulb in the house with them. I
| paid $5-$13 per bulb.
|
| No one seems to know about them, not even the guy at Home Depot
| who worked in the aisle. He was surprised how much I raved about
| them.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Some of my LEDs continue to glow faintly when off. I assume the
| efficiency of the bulbs is converting a small trickle of power
| into light. Has anyone experienced this? Anything to be done?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Unscrew the bulb. Is it still glowing? If so, it's the
| persistence of the phosphor. That's been my experience.
| tilsammans wrote:
| Yes! This is fairly common. It usually happens when the power
| leads pick up a small amount of electricity via induction. You
| can place a compensator near the fixture to take care of it.
| (Basically a high voltage capacitor)
| pimlottc wrote:
| Can you go into more detail about this compensator? Is this a
| consumer product you can buy to fix a misbehaving light or a
| component that the manufacturer needs to include in the bulb?
| ilikejam wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uEmX5XClPY
| projektfu wrote:
| For how long? LEDs produce broad-spectrum light using
| phosphorescence activated by discrete-spectrum light. Those
| phosphors will glow for a few seconds after you turn them off,
| or if you're really sensitive you may see a glow-in-the-dark
| phenomenon. When you unplug a lamp or turn off a true switch,
| there should be no residual current.
|
| If you are using the bulb itself to adjust the power level,
| like with some smart bulbs that you are supposed to leave
| switched on, it's possible that they never turn off the power
| completely for some reason. LEDs are dimmed using PWM so they
| may have an off setting that is like 1% of duty cycle or
| something, who knows.
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| Long story short: Its the wiring.
|
| Could be a number of reasons but the most common is either its
| wired to a dimmer or similar which is leaking some current when
| its "switched off" or its switched on the netural side and the
| wiring is acting as a capacitor and letting some current flow.
|
| EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bgUy6zA0ts
| BozeWolf wrote:
| Short story longer: if the led is connected to a dimmer, it
| can also be that the led is not-dimmable. Or not compatible
| with the dimmer.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| I've got dimmable LEDs on a non-dimmable switch that are
| glowing. I guess the next step would be to replace the
| switch with a dimmable one...
| dghughes wrote:
| I have an old floor lamp that I converted from halogen to LED.
| It has a dimmer knob but even when off it didn't turn off the
| light it was very faint. I thought it was the
| potentiometer/knob leaking current. I think I also had the
| issue on a room that also had a dimmer switch, an actual light
| in the ceiling not a lamp. So it seems to be the dimmer feature
| that is the issue for me.
| scythe wrote:
| I'm still waiting for the FCC or ITU to define a band for
| electrodeless plasma lamps.
|
| For the uninitiated, these are microwave-driven light sources
| that are about half as efficient as the best LEDs, but still way
| more efficient than incandescent. The light output spectrum is
| continuous and single-peaked, and in the case of sulfur lamps, so
| close to solar that they are routinely used as a "synthetic
| sunlight" for testing solar panels.
|
| The MW band used in existing appliances is generally the 2.45 GHz
| Bluetooth and microwave oven band, because it's unregulated, but
| the high output power and the need for a transparent housing
| means that they can interfere with other consumer electronics.
| There is virtually no risk of two bulbs interfering with each
| other, so even a relatively narrow dedicated band should work
| fine. As I understand it, the light output is continuous -- no
| flicker -- and anyway the beam power of a circularly polarized
| microwave _should_ be continuous.
|
| Usually, microwaves are created using magnetrons -- vacuum tubes
| -- which have a high minimum power output (think floodlight).
| Microwave diodes do exist, although they haven't yet been applied
| to electrodeless lamps, because consumers won't be interested in
| using a light bulb that kills Bluetooth.
|
| But it _is_ physically possible for us to enjoy an efficient
| light source that looks nice. There are just a few kinks to work
| out.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" 'Hungarian-made GE Basica bulbs ... with a bold stamp on the
| side reading, NOT FOR SALE FOR USE IN THE UNITED STATES."_
|
| This seems odd considering they surely can't be used in Hungary
| either. The EU started phasing out incandescent bulbs more than a
| decade ago!
|
| Don't miss them, personally. LED lighting is excellent _if_ you
| buy good quality ones. And I certainly don 't miss having to
| periodically go around the house changing blown bulbs!
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| The EU regulations were against sales of incandescent bulbs.
| But in most countries they are still available rebranded as
| "heat bulbs" or "workshop bulbs" with a large "NOT INTENDED FOR
| HOUSEHOLD USAGE" 'warning' sign.
| rietta wrote:
| In my personal experience the LED bulbs at Home Depot are
| extremely expensive compared to traditional bulbs we used to buy.
| Don't list anywhere near the advertised long lives. And are
| difficult to recycle and worse in landfill than the historical
| bit of glass and metal bulbs.
| ineedasername wrote:
| While my led bulbs last much longer Incandescent, and end
| probably save money and energy, they consistently fail very long
| before their stated lifetime.
|
| I believe this is due to the poor quality of the electronics that
| comprise the base of the bulb and control the LEDs. The same
| issue with compact fluorescent bulbs I had opened up some of
| those cf. bulbs when they burned out prematurely and found burnt
| ou components.
|
| I haven't bothered to do this with LED bulbs because I have every
| reason to assume they're the same manufactures that need the CF
| bulbs and are making the LED bulbs are pulling the same trick.
|
| It was a race to the bottom to make the cheapest bulb stand
| compete on price may have resulted in bulbs that are far more
| faulty than they need to be.
| wnevets wrote:
| > they consistently fail very long before their stated lifetime
|
| Do you mean the stated lifetime of a specific LED or the
| lifetime promises generally assigned to LEDs. In my experience
| you get what you pay for.
| noneeeed wrote:
| I've noticed that my LEDs seem to have a bimodal lifespan. In
| parts of the house where we have many of the same kind, we went
| through a period early on where a few lasted much less time than
| I expected and had to be replaced, but now I've not had to
| replace any for several years.
|
| There seems to be an element of luck with the cheaper ones. The
| ones in a batch that work well just keep going, while a small
| number fail relatively quickly. Once you've gone through a few
| replacements you are left with just good ones that just keep
| going.
| elil17 wrote:
| In failure engineering this is called the "bathtub curve."
| Those early failures are called "infant mortality" and are
| typically due to errors in the factory. In 20-30 years you'll
| get wear out failures, as the components hit the end of thier
| designed lifespans. Generally in manufacturing any new
| product/process has a pretty high infant mortality rate which
| then gets worked out over years of improvements to design and
| manufacturing process. You can either do factory testing
| (probably what high quality LED brands are doing) or just ship
| the product and let the customer handle it.
| teajunky wrote:
| Anyone watching Star Trek Picard knows that we all will sit in
| the dark in the future.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I think most people in this audience are aware but in case some
| are not, the other thing with LED is that it is not possible to
| dim them. So dimming works by making them flash at a higher
| frequency than what the human eye can see. Which is ok-ish for
| humans, but will drive dogs crazy as they see at a much higher
| frame rate.
| hedora wrote:
| That's not fundamental. They could flicker the individual LEDs
| at different phases. A typical bulb contains many LEDs. This
| would cost money, of course.
| nitins_jakta wrote:
| There's a forum/community of people who get migraines / severe
| eyestrain from LED bulbs at LEDStrain.org. It's likely related to
| any LEDs that flicker (PWM).
|
| Also a PhDs website: www.FlickerSense.org
| boesboes wrote:
| I haven't seen a 'normal' bulb in over 10 years. I only have LED
| lights and they are great. They used to be a bit shit yes, but
| over the past 5 years they have surpassed my expectations. I
| can't even find any that don't have a nice color profile and are
| spec'ed to some temperature etc.
|
| imo, modern led lights are much, much, much better then the
| incandessent bulbs & these power-saving lamps we used to have.
| Both in durabillity & color etc
| phoyd wrote:
| >If you're lucky, the LED will have a CRI of 90 or higher
|
| EU has banned incandescent lights years ago and the situation for
| LED buyers is much different here. My local drug store chain
| (Rossmann in Germany) sells 1000lm E27 bulbs under their own
| Rubin brand with CRI>97 for 4.99EUR. No flickering and available
| as 2700K or 4000K. My Opple Light Master 3 even reads CRI 100. So
| for me right now, it's just going to the drug store and buying a
| bulb, like before the ban.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I read a lot of the other comments here before yours and they
| all seemed to describe a reality very different from my own
| experience. Then I saw yours and it suddenly makes sense. I am
| also in the Europe, most other commenters seem to be from the
| US.
|
| Here I find it is very easy to find good LED bulbs with the
| strength and color profile of my choice and I have used LED in
| all rooms of my house for the last 10+ years without any
| failing so far.
| fy20 wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is the norm in Europe, the only chain
| store I know that sells high CRI (>90) bulbs is IKEA. If I go
| to my local home store or supermarket, they are all junk
| Chinese bulbs that I doubt are really even 80 CRI.
|
| CRI isn't even something you can filter by on their online
| catalogues. At least the new EU energy labeling let's you see
| what the specs are.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Cheap bulbs do a lot of "CRI hacking":
|
| https://www.waveformlighting.com/tech/what-is-cri-r9-and-
| why...
|
| It's easy to make a bulb that scores higher than 80 -
| still, they usually have poor R9 (red reference light
| source) scores, which is noticeable.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I am also in the Europe, most other commenters seem to be
| from the US.
|
| You're falling for the "Europe is better than the US, of
| course" mindset. What you are actually seeing are partisans
| spinning a narrative to fit their ideology, not an accurate
| description of reality.
|
| We have really high CRI bulbs here, too, and they're
| inexpensive. I can go down to the home store and buy them by
| the dozen. I'll bet you money that bulbs in the US and bulbs
| in Europe are mostly manufactured in the same place...
| zippergz wrote:
| Please link me to a 95+ CRI bulb available at Home Depot or
| Lowe's.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=site%253Ahomedepot.com+CR
| I
|
| Cree, GE's "HD" line, Phillips' high CRI line, and I
| believe "Feit", the HD brand, also has high CRI bulbs.
|
| You can only get Cree bulbs from HD via shipping; they
| don't stock them in store, at least in my area.
|
| Phillips and GE HD bulbs are available in a lot of local
| hardware stores and even pharmacies.
| wil421 wrote:
| Greater than 95 or including 95? Most of the Philips
| brand dimmable LEDs have a CRI of 95. The eco smart is
| crap at 80 and that's to be excepted from the cheap house
| brand.
|
| The in ceiling lights I bought to replace a bottom dollar
| Amazon light was are 94 and I'm pretty sure I bought the
| cheapest I could that would change temp to match my
| existing ones.
|
| Your friend has shared a link to a Home Depot product
| they think you would be interested in seeing.
|
| https://www.homedepot.com/p/Philips-Soft-
| White-A19-LED-60W-E...
|
| Looks like GE's Sunshine brand has a CRI of 97 and is
| $8.99 on Amazon.
|
| GE Sun Filled LED Light Bulb, 60 Watt Eqv, Soft White,
| A21 Standard Bulb, Medium Base https://a.co/d/fLkL8wr
| zippergz wrote:
| Legit helpful reply. Thank you.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Wifi bulb with an App? Now I have to worry about light
| bulb security and it selling me out?
| myko wrote:
| fwiw i am also in the US and never had an issue finding the
| right LED, which are far superior to the older bulbs in every
| way from my perspective
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I'm in the US and every single LED bulb I've ever bought -
| some ten years old - still work fine.
|
| I also don't buy the shitty cheap bulbs. I buy mostly Cree's
| high CRI dimmable bulbs, Phillips high CRI dimmable, or GE
| high-CRI bulbs if I can't find the Crees (Home Depot stopped
| carrying them in-store.)
|
| The problem is that both the author and a ton of people in
| this discussion buy shitty, cheap, no-name bulbs and then
| they're shocked when they flicker, don't dim well, and fail
| often.
|
| This whole discussion is a bunch of angry old men yelling at
| clouds because the guvmint won't allow them to waste 4x as
| much electricity to light their home.
|
| Even high-CRI bulbs aren't a "perfect" replacement for an
| incandescent, but the energy savings, especially if you're in
| an area where you use air conditioning and thus the heat of
| an incandescent bulb equals more energy usage for cooling, is
| worth the small sacrifice.
| kldavis4 wrote:
| actual Amazon customer reviews of Cree's
| TBR30-14050FLFH25-12DE26-1-E1-MP (25,000 hour rated life,
| 90+ CRI):
|
| - Fails after 12 months - Nice and bright while they last -
| 6 months in, 2 already burned out. - I've already had two
| die in less than 6 months
| rvba wrote:
| As much as I like EU, the new bulbs are flickery shit.
|
| I bought a stockpile of 150W incandescent bulbs marked as
| 'shock resistant' (they are definitely not) and they give
| decent light. The 100W LEDs give more like 50W and flicker
| too..
| dboreham wrote:
| Hmm. I'm pretty picky about CRI but for me the last few years'
| LED lights are really great. Much better than any fluorescent
| source. Much brighter than any incandescent. Very reliable.
| Dimmable too.
| distortedsignal wrote:
| > The impetus is on you to decide when things have started to
| look uncanny. "I wish that would be addressed by the industry --
| like, maybe if it reached a certain light-loss factor, it would
| just shut down, you know?" Nelson said. "Or if it shifted in
| color past a certain point, it went into failure mode."
|
| This is complicated, and I don't think the consumer knows what
| they're asking for. From my understanding (and watching a lot of
| Big Clive lightbulb teardowns on YouTube), this would require an
| active sensor in the bulb. Most of the circuits in these bulbs
| are embarrassingly simple - 3-4 mostly passive components, and
| 1-2 silicon based chips or raw transistors. If you add an active
| sensor to that system, your cost balloons significantly. Then you
| have to calibrate the sensors. Then we get into the "printer
| cartridge" problem, where "my light bulb won't turn on because
| it's insufficiently cyan, but I only want a red light."
|
| We didn't know that we wanted things when we had incandescent
| bulbs. Now that we're being forced to switch away from
| incandescent bulbs and use a new technology, users are able to
| ask for things. I think that's partially exciting (users having
| preferences is good!), but it's also potentially complicated by
| companies not providing low-cost solutions that are as good as
| the old thing. So, overall, good and bad.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| A smoke-test i had not really thought of: shoot a quick video in
| slow motion on your phone and watch the result to see if there's
| a light flicker .
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| That works really well! Tried it on a cheap LED that I notice
| the flicker on some times and it really showed up. Also tried
| an expensive one that I don't notice any flicker from and there
| was a very fast flicker on slow mo. Tried daylight as a control
| and there's no flicker.
| [deleted]
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| I've never even seen a LED bulb that wasn't 2700K. Also, do some
| bulb packs not list the incandescent equivalent wattage in
| addition to the Lumens?
| roamerz wrote:
| I really like LED bulbs and use them everywhere I can.
| Unfortunately they suffer the same as anything that is forced by
| congress rather than evolving at the natural pace and replacing
| standard lighting sources when the technology is mature enough.
| Take for instance cell phones. They replaced landlines and were
| adopted by users because the technology was ready and they were
| better than the product they replaced. Imagine if congress had
| outlawed landlines. Same can be said for EV's. IC vehicles are
| better in almost every aspect yet congress is doing everything it
| can to force their obsolescence before their time. The problem
| with that is that every time they do something like that they
| chip away at their credibility and when some real emergency comes
| along we the people aren't so easily fooled.
| duxup wrote:
| I think things like price pressure/ consumers just buying the
| cheapest bulb possible happens regardless.
| TheAtomic wrote:
| First world problems
| tbihl wrote:
| Non-dimmable bulbs are the author's problem.
|
| First, bans on incandescent bulbs are foolish because they
| encourage defeatist foolishness like this article (as far as I
| can tell, for the sake of virtue signaling and modest
| acceleration of a change that was already happening.)
|
| The CFLs which preceded LEDs were really awful, especially for
| closets (where they'll linger for decades, given the low
| utilization of those bulbs,) but LEDs are fine, amd really nice
| if your 70 year old house gets retrofitted for AC and you need
| the reclaimed electrical capacity. This author just needs to pony
| up for dimmable LEDs, which aren't expensive except by
| comparison. Non-dimmable LEDs are right up there with running
| toilets and rodents in the pantheon of things to make homeowners
| lose their minds.
| mhb wrote:
| > Non-dimmable LEDs are right up there with running toilets and
| rodents in the pantheon of things to make homeowners lose their
| minds.
|
| Really? I've never understood the affection for dimming lights.
| Essentially always I want lights on or off.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| For me it's like if the sound on your computer was either on
| or off. I adjust the light to the specific task, time of day,
| my mood & energy level, and what the natural light is doing
| to the room which also varies by season, time and weather.
|
| I'm really miserable in a too-bright room. I have some
| sensory processing issues which contributes a lot to this
| admittedly, but when I talk about it with people who don't
| they often understand it immediately or admit to experiencing
| the same thing, though to a smaller extent.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I've never understood the affection for dimming lights.
| Essentially always I want lights on or off.
|
| It's about choice. I have several dozen LED can lights in my
| house producing 1600 lumens each. Sometimes I want every bit
| of that power, but I also like being able to turn them down a
| bit in the evening when I don't need it.
| thfuran wrote:
| And you never want even more lighting than you currently
| have? Not even so much as a lamp to adjust lighting in a
| room?
| mhb wrote:
| Occasionally. And I would use a non-dimmable lamp for that.
| vel0city wrote:
| One example is my living room. Sometimes I'm hosting people
| over, and I just want the whole room to be really bright as
| we're all gathering around, talking, maybe playing games,
| etc. I want that room practically as bright as I can get it
| during those times.
|
| But other times I'm just wanting to cozy up to the fireplace
| with a book and some light music and a dram of whiskey late
| in the evening. I don't need the room to be super bright, so
| I might just have the lights over the fireplace on set very
| dimly.
|
| Same goes with the kitchen. When I'm actively cooking a meal,
| I want it very bright. But I don't always need it that
| bright, sometimes I just want it a bit more ambient in its
| lighting.
|
| Or the dining room. Sometimes I use that space for projects
| as it has the large table, and I'll want it as bright as
| possible. But other times, I could probably stand to have it
| at about 75% of its brightness as we're just sitting around
| together having a meal, and with my home layout its a bit of
| a central space so its nice having it at like 20% brightness
| to act as a bit of a night light as people go through the
| house.
| tbihl wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't clear at all. The non-dimmable ones seem
| prone to flickering with changing voltage, and all grids have
| varying voltage. And then, at least if you're like me, you
| start thinking of all the broken things that might manifest
| in flickering lights.
| hedora wrote:
| Since the electricity they use is basically free, and there
| is (almost) no practical constraint on heat emissions, LEDs
| are generally too bright.
|
| You could hire a lighting consultant, then buy expensive
| bespoke bulbs so that having them at 100% is the right
| choice, or you could spend an extra ~ $50 per room for a
| dimmer.
| orev wrote:
| Many people complain about sleep problems. Light exposure is
| essential to regulating sleep cycles, and going from full
| brightness to full darkness at night can easily contribute to
| those problems. Dimmers allow finer control of exposure.
| mhb wrote:
| I am skeptical that any significant portion of the
| population outside HN is tailoring their room lighting, via
| dimming, to their activity schedule.
|
| It also is a tad hyperbolic to include non-dimmable bulbs
| in the pantheon of things to make homeowners lose their
| minds.
| orev wrote:
| A very large portion of lamps purchased at home goods
| stores have dimmer switches (a knob that you turn instead
| of flipping a switch), and dimmers have been widely
| available at home improvement stores for decades. This
| idea is not some niche thing limited only to smart home
| tech people. It doesn't have to be automated--one can
| just get up and set the brightness to their liking.
|
| I think the big surprise for most people would be that
| many LED bulbs are not dimmable, as that hasn't been
| something they had to worry about with older bulbs (it
| was also an issue with CFLs, but people avoided them
| because of the harsh color)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree that it's probably still niche, but judging by
| the expanding section of smart lighting at my local Home
| Depot, my guess is it has gone beyond techies at this
| point. Home Depot definitely doesn't cater to tech folks.
| toast0 wrote:
| I have a lot of dimmers in my house because they were there.
| It's nice to turn the hall lights down at night when I'm the
| last one awake (but not if they get too flickery; older
| dimmers built for incandescent don't always work with
| dimmable leds), and very nice when watching or starting a
| movie, etc.
|
| But, dimmable bulbs are also an indicator of quality. Someone
| cared enough to make sure it worked in that situation, so
| there's evidence that someone was caring during the design.
| mhb wrote:
| > But, dimmable bulbs are also an indicator of quality.
| Someone cared enough to make sure it worked in that
| situation, so there's evidence that someone was caring
| during the design.
|
| Maybe. It could also be to avoid the situation in which the
| average consumer just picks up the cheapest bulb and, when
| he gets it home and it is flaky when used with the dimmer,
| returns it to the store.
|
| Or maybe it's a low quality way of ticking a feature that a
| customer has been told to look for regardless of whether it
| is relevant to his situation.
| jt2190 wrote:
| Yes. This immediately stood out:
|
| > We were renovating our apartment, and one day our contractor
| summoned me to the bathroom in dismay. He adjusted the dimmer
| switch he'd just installed, and a new LED fixture began
| strobing like we were in a seven-by-eight-foot basement dance
| club.
|
| I'm not sure what skill-level of contractor he was using, but
| it's pretty obvious that nobody checked that the light fixture
| was dimmable with that particular switch.
| eimrine wrote:
| Non-dimmableness is only one of the problems. For me the
| biggest problem is that all LEDs are blue, despite of any
| light-filters. I can not use it in bedroom when I use to read
| books before sleep and in bathroom when my aestetical needs of
| seing bare body have been not met. I have even changed my place
| of living since Sodium lamps have been replaced with LEDs on my
| old street. And if I need a really bright light or really high
| CRI then I'm going to use MHL. My point is that LED is not
| really a good source of light except of if I need energy-
| efficient source and/or with high tolerance to often on/off.
| jwestbury wrote:
| > For me the biggest problem is that all LEDs are blue,
| despite of any light-filters.
|
| It's likely that you're buying bulbs with a low CRI.
| Unfortunately, this is poorly-marketed (and CRI still doesn't
| capture certain edge cases).
|
| I'm a fairly serious amateur photographer, and until I moved
| overseas, I'd set up a room as an edit and print studio, with
| a pro-grade photo printer. I specifically sourced high-CRI
| bulbs, and found that my eye couldn't tell the difference
| between my room at night (with a measured color temperature
| of 4500K or so) and my room during the day with the blinds
| open (with about the same color temperature), even looking at
| a variety of photo prints.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My home is full of bright, warm yellow/orange LEDs.
|
| I also have a lot of "sunlight" LEDs which I'll describe as
| "white" and I LOVE them for big rooms and making daytime feel
| like daytime. Great for my office.
|
| I recall blue being a big problem when LEDs for homes were
| new, but when I bought a house 3 years ago and revisited it,
| I was delighted to find so many very solid options. Dimmable,
| non-flicker, warm LED bulbs. The Canadian government also
| chipped in with my tax dollars so they were about 50 cents
| each.
|
| My one complaint is that even the fancier, pricier ones seem
| to burn out too. In 3 years I've had to replace 4 ceiling
| bulbs of about 50 (the builder went nutty with recessed
| ceiling lights). I think they're just driven really harshly
| by the A/C.
| eimrine wrote:
| "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes
| which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light
| sources"
|
| This is what drives your "warm" lamps. No deep red at all,
| man.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I guess my lying eyes deceive me.
|
| By filtering out other wavelengths I'm left with all this
| warm light rather than nothing.
| rini17 wrote:
| For reading in the bedroom I use RGB strip behind furniture,
| preset to yellow. Diffuse light, no blue at all. Of course
| poor color rendering but I don't mind for this use case.
| eimrine wrote:
| > no blue at all
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35373754
| rini17 wrote:
| That is true only for white LEDs. The RGB strip does not
| have them (there are some that include white LEDs but not
| this one). If you set it to yellow, only pure red and
| green elements are on, blue elements are completely off.
| eimrine wrote:
| There is no such thing as a pure red LED. Those are blue
| ones but with light filters. If you don't see blue which
| is actually present and you see deep red which is
| actually absent then maybe consider yourself as
| brainwashed by marketologists.
| seszett wrote:
| I think you misunderstand the fundamental difference
| between "white" LEDs which are generally a blue LED
| associated with various phosphors that convert the
| monochromatic blue light into a mostly continuous
| spectrum going from blue to red, and the monochromatic R,
| G and B LEDs that each emit a fairly narrow band that is
| either red (with no blue or green at all) green (no blue
| or red) or blue (no red or green).
|
| Blue LEDs are used to create white because it's easier to
| convert blue to lower frequencies. But red and green LEDs
| absolutely exist. LEDs exist for a wide range of narrow
| wavelengths, including for example infrared LEDs that
| emit at 940 nm without a trace of blue (obviously,
| otherwise they would be visible!).
| eimrine wrote:
| > infrared LEDs that emit at 940 nm
|
| Is there any LED capable of emitting 780nm? Or maybe a
| luminophore for letting manufactures to convert invisible
| 940nm into anything visible? AFAIK both answers are
| negative.
| seszett wrote:
| https://www.lumixtar.com/5w-ir-780nm-high-power-led.html
|
| This seems to match what you're asking for. But
| converting longer wavelengths to shorter ones is always
| going to be difficult, so I don't think there exists a
| practical way to make visible light from 940nm.
| rini17 wrote:
| No.
| kodt wrote:
| That and you need LED compatible dimmer switches. Old dimmers
| do not play well with dimmable LEDs.
| antiterra wrote:
| It's not ass simple as dimmable or not dimmable. Not all
| dimmable leds work with all dimmers, some do and make a
| horrible hum but are still highly recommended in reviews by
| people who don't have those issues. The situation is a
| nightmare for someone just wanting to go to a local store and
| buy a bunch of bulbs for the room where they eat.
|
| Further, if you dare to mix bulbs you'll often get different
| color/brightness behavior at different levels of dimming.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Even the cheapest, crappiest (though you shouldn't compromise on
| colour rendition) LED bulbs are better for your wallet than
| incandescents. Simply because of the huge amount of power they
| save.
|
| I'm not sure yet about the light fixtures that have non-
| replaceable LEDs in them. Generally these are heatsinked well and
| use higher quality power supplies though.
| elil17 wrote:
| Lots of people here are arguing about whether LEDs actually look
| worse. Who cares? Even a modest environmental benefit is worth
| it. If you want nice-looking light, just go outside - it's free.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > If you want nice-looking light, just go outside - it's free.
|
| Did you read the article? It discusses this quite extensively
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Lots of people live in areas where for half a year, the days
| are short, cloudy, and cold.
| elil17 wrote:
| Outdoor light is pleasant (to me at least) even when it's
| overcast. And, yeah, if you live in an area with polar night
| or whatever I don't think society should begrudge you an
| incandescent bulb if that's what gets you through the winter.
| noncoml wrote:
| Thy these folks before making up your mind about LED lights:
|
| https://www.waveformlighting.com/
|
| No flickering, high CRI.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| Who sponsored this terrible article? Should we also go back to
| 25" console tv's that sit on the floor, with decorative brass
| handles just so this author can avoid ever having anything be
| different in their life? I've never, not even once, had an LED
| bulb misbehave as described in this article. They are at least as
| reliable as CFLs were, and although there are tradeoffs with
| other bulb types both good and bad, LEDs consume effectively no
| power compared to incandescent.
|
| From the article: ``` I'd put one in the bedroom-ceiling fixture
| only a few months before. In theory, it should have been the last
| I would put up there for years, maybe even a decade. Instead, the
| bulb was a dim, dull orange, its levels of brightness visibly
| fluttering through the frosted dome. ```
|
| What? And then they go on to talk about how hard it is to
| illegally find incandescent bulbs. This screams cognitive
| dissonance. An incandescent bulb's normal way of responding after
| several months to a year was to just not work anymore at all.
| That was just 'normal' and you would swap them out. If you went
| to any room in the country and looked at the light fixtures, you
| had a very good chance of finding bulbs that were burned out. It
| was normal to hear or say "we really need to replace the bulb in
| the pantry" but in the meantime not be able to see in there very
| well. Finding one led bulb that fails early is not an indictment
| of the technology, even if it was defective. For all we know his
| kid might have been throwing water balloons at it.
|
| LED bulbs are great, they are now incredibly cheap and there is
| no reason to keep producing CO2 because of misoneic propaganda.
| If we want to reduce carbon emissions, we either have to pass the
| true cost of carbon to consumers, which would mean dramatically
| increasing energy costs to people who likely can't afford that,
| or we need to make it less likely to consume all that
| artificially cheap electricity wastefully. LED bulbs are a great
| way to do this.
| CalRobert wrote:
| This article discusses indoor lighting, but it's worth noting
| that cheap, efficient outdoor LED lighting is destroying our
| night sky, bathing everyone nearby (including animals!) in light
| that screws up their circadian rhythms, and makes the city at
| night a harsher place.
|
| savingourstars.org
| karaterobot wrote:
| Counterpoint: The transition to LEDs has been fine, even cheap
| LEDs are fine, and this article feels like an unnecessary
| problematizing.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| LED bulbs suck. CFLs suck. The light is poor and though they cost
| an order of magnitude more than incandescents did, they are built
| so cheaply that they don't last any longer. And they qualify as
| hazardous waste when they need to be disposed of. At times I've
| seriously considered trying oil lamps.
|
| The only LED bulbs I buy now are the "filament" types. Their
| bulbs are filled with helium so heat transfer is good, and they
| have a close-to-incandescent warm light color. I have had good
| luck with their longevity so far, but haven't really used them
| long enough to judge.
| stasmo wrote:
| It feels weird to me to see this kind of comment on HN. I'm
| sure somewhere out there on the internet there are people
| complaining that computers suck because they bought a few cheap
| computers and didn't have a good experience, so they're
| assuming all computers are bad.
|
| Without any sort of detail about what brand or what it was used
| for and why it was a bad experience, it's really not adding
| anything to the conversation. It's just a blanket judgement on
| a technology that has a great deal of variation and options and
| uses.
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| The regular consumer, like us, don't give a rats ass about
| the technology behind the light, we just want them to work
| well. The light is much, much worse than incandescents for
| the typical consumer. That's what the article is about. Your
| comment if anything is the weird one.
| rwalle wrote:
| What? What is weird about that comment? An LED light from a
| random brand purchased from a random grocery store is very
| likely to work just fine, and that is many people's
| experience, so if your experience is different, you should
| provide concrete evidence instead of hand waving or using
| words like "worse" with no substance whatsoever.
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| Nothing hand-wavy about it. The article that this thread
| is based on provides the evidence, and you are refuting
| it. I am refuting your refutation. My experience aligns
| exactly with the article, that nothing really got better,
| and especially not the light in my rooms.
| hoffs wrote:
| The oil lamp is epitome of HN
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Whatever brands in the major stores. WalMart, Target, Lowes.
| They all suck. I don't care to keep notes and do research on
| _light bulbs_ , for fuck's sake. My spare time is worth more
| to me than that.
| e40 wrote:
| Can you give an example sku?
| bombcar wrote:
| LEDs really DO suck and they're not tremendously bothering to
| "unsuck" them.
|
| You do want to consider kerosine lamps - check out
| https://www.sevarg.net/2022/10/09/keropunk-part-1-kerosene-l...
| - browse around and he does some spectrum analysis of LED
| bulbs, too - https://www.sevarg.net/2023/02/26/feit-electric-
| wifi-rgb-bul...
| gravesisme wrote:
| I have gradually replaced every light bulb in my house since 2017
| with Philips Hue bulbs (most color, but some white only) and not
| one of them has flickered, become more dim, or failed. On the
| other hand, the "cheap $10" LED bulbs that I originally installed
| when first moving in - because I could not afford $50 a bulb -
| have all died and were part of my motivation for upgrading to
| Hue. This has also happened with the cheaper LED bulbs that my
| mother and in-laws installed, which lasted about a year. I wonder
| why the Hue bulbs last so much longer? They have been well worth
| the money and have become a staple of my home automation.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Can someone please make an "archive.is" clone that just does GPT
| summaries for us HN folk?
| zokier wrote:
| LED lighting is just another victim of the general malaise of
| consumer goods that is just unbounded race to the bottom, and
| making it impossible for consumers to make informed choices and
| instead having market flooded with lemons all around.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| I think the bulb versions of LEDs really do suck.
|
| Like... I was used to the GE Reveal 100W Incandescent Bulbs. For
| comparison, the light bulbs with like a slight blue tint to them
| that just worked great.
|
| I had them all over my house.
|
| But then when I did my remodel, I put in can lights. LEDs.
|
| And the can LEDs are really great.
|
| They're bright, they're the right color, they give off plenty of
| consistent light. I went with 6" cans, and I used about 50% more
| than they said to use... so like on the box it said, "Use 4 for a
| room that's X by Y feet..." And I put in 6. No more than 1 every
| 8 feet, no less than 1 every 5 feet.
|
| The cans have this little color toggle on the back, the only
| thing I wish I had done is I wish they were all wifi lights... so
| that I could use a different warmth after sundown.
|
| But hey, that'll be my next house. (=
|
| I think it's becoming more of an easy option for most contractors
| to set up.
|
| https://justgetflux.com/lighting/
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| This is weird. I buy the most basic Dollar Tree LED bulbs for
| every outlet in my home and I haven't had any of the problems in
| the article (for about 4 years so far). Occasionally one will
| blow then I just toss in another dollar bulb (maybe 4-5 so far).
| The light color and "quality" is perfect too. Granted, I don't
| have any fancy dimmer switches or anything but hey, maybe try the
| basic Dollar Tree bulbs :)
| willchis wrote:
| I was about to post the exact same thing. They even had a
| couple of warmth options and the 2700K ones seem to work just
| fine in lamps that I use every day around the house.
| simongray wrote:
| This article and comment section is bizarre to me. It's like
| travelling back in time to the 2000s.
|
| We've _only_ used LEDs in my country for, what, 15 years now?
| They are perfectly fine, no issues really, much cheaper than
| incandescent bulbs of course. We just buy the ones in IKEA and
| they haven 't really failed us so far.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > It's like travelling back in time to the 2000s.
|
| That's because it is. George W. Bush signed the death warrant
| for the incandescent bulb in the US in 2007. Incandescent bulbs
| are a niche product in the US, LEDs have been the mainstream
| choice for years.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Seriously. I always thought I was very picky, both to
| flickering and color temp(3000k FTW). Sure, the >3000K bulbs
| look like death, and I've had issues with some bulbs
| flickering, but overall I'm really happy with the light output
| of my LEDs(color temp, CRI, stability, longevity). I'm in the
| US too. Not sure what folks are complaining about.
| cal85 wrote:
| I guess you can't tell the difference? For me it's huge. I
| recently changed my bathroom downlights from dimmable LEDs to
| dimmable halogens, and it's so much nicer. The colour
| temperature was the same, so I guess it's not that. It's
| something else about the way they work. I don't profess to know
| why, but I can absolutely tell the difference, and I have a
| very clear preference now. And this is after a decade of me
| being very bullish on LEDs for environmental reasons and
| proudly fitting LEDs everywhere possible (expensive, carefully
| chosen ones too, with appropriate colour temperature). At the
| end of the day, LED light is just horrible for some reason.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I think it's the flicker. Pulse width modulation is evil. I'm
| not aware of a single instance where it's preferable over an
| analogue adjustment. It's a horrible and thoroughly "non-
| human" solution to a problem. The most annoying thing for me
| is that car headlights are now PWM LEDs. I can see the
| flicker, especially in my peripheral vision. It's highly
| distracting and annoying.
| mastercheif wrote:
| PWM headlights should be illegal. Full stop.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I think PWM can be used with success if the frequency is
| high enough. https://www.dxomark.com/flicker-the-display-
| affliction/ claims that most people should be ok with PWM
| above 250Hz.
| CapsAdmin wrote:
| I also have the ikea home smart bubls. They're dimmable and
| can change color.
|
| It seems like some people are more sensetive to flickering
| light. I've asked people every now and then when in a group
| if they can tell the light is flickering, and I'm usually the
| only one. The effect is pronounced in my peripheral vision
| and somehow even more when drunk.
|
| I don't think these lights emit the entire spectrum of light
| either, but a spectrum that "fools" us to think we're seeing
| the whole spectrum. Maybe that feels uncomfortable for some?
|
| The ikea bulbs I have flicker a little when dimmed, but I
| don't really mind.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I had literally the exact opposite experience when swapping
| mine out. Both the incandescent and halogen replacements
| resulted in a _way_ better quality of lighting. And these
| were just like "first ones off the shelf" from the Home Depot
| or something- I'm not exactly sure it was maybe 10 years ago.
| But I vividly remember thinking how much better the lighting
| quality was, and I had far more options in terms of color
| temp, which was great.
| simongray wrote:
| I'm sorry, but to me you mostly just sound like an audiophile
| talking about how vinyl sounds better than CDs...
| Spivak wrote:
| They sound _different_ and that's the point. There's a
| whole genre of music that sounds like vinyl or staticy
| tapes. Clearly people like it.
|
| People are going to express preferences for one or the
| other, telling people that LEDs are exact equivalents is
| just wrong.
|
| We can say, "yes they're different, but the environment is
| more important [1], suck it up" but it changes the tone.
|
| [1] Which is such a joke, the waste from my electric stove
| or leaving the window open with the AC on uses more than
| the savings from LEDs. Halogens are already more expensive
| and you pay per watt so there's not some horrible
| externality not being priced in.
| cal85 wrote:
| Fair! Although I'm just reporting my preference and not
| making any contestable claims, other than that I can tell
| the difference. If someone can make an LED bulb where I
| can't tell the difference, then I'd fit my house with them,
| but it seems like this must be impossible or someone would
| have done it.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Just came to say I agree with your assessment 100%. I
| think it's about the fact that incandescent light is a
| broader spectrum. It seems to affect the say shadows are
| cast etc. It's just not as nice as incandescent.
| UberFly wrote:
| That article was feverish. I think the author is making it a bit
| too complicated. Also, there's much talk about the Met and their
| art collection. Even with the challenges of LED bulbs, they
| wouldn't go back. Damaging UV is no longer a problem with LEDs.
| sizzle wrote:
| Bought several boxes of 10 LED bulbs from Costco, the brand
| "Feit" and literally every bulb flickered and died in a few
| months. So disappointing.
| cyberax wrote:
| One thing that bothers me is that our current wiring is not well-
| suited for LEDs. Each lamp has to have a rectifier, and there's
| only so much you can do to squeeze in enough circuitry into the
| LED base.
|
| So I shopped around for alternatives. It turns out that we're now
| standardizing on 24V DC wiring for lighting for commercial
| buildings, which makes sense. 24V can be directly used by LEDs
| wired in series, and the wiring cross-section is similar to 120V
| lamps.
|
| I even found some dim-to-warm 24V LEDs. But so far they are all
| kinda niche. I don't want to risk buying hardware from a supplier
| that can go out of business in a couple of years, leaving me with
| a slowly degrading system.
|
| If you want to try, then search Google for "tunable-white
| lighting".
| antisthenes wrote:
| I have begun to use grow lights everywhere as regular lights.
|
| They emit a pleasant looking spectrum, have good heat sinks for
| longevity, have high-quality ballasts, built-in dimmers and do
| not flicker.
|
| They also blow out any alternative out of the water when it comes
| to pure brightness for precision work (soldering, painting minis,
| etc.)
|
| They are also fairly cheap (can find some lights as low as
| 50c/watt on sale)
|
| Oh and lastly - I can always just move them and use them to grow
| any kind of plants (wink wink, nudge)
| dashundchen wrote:
| Don't many grow lamps emit UV? I would be slightly concerned
| about potential eye and skin damage over time.
| antisthenes wrote:
| So does the Sun.
|
| Also, you never look at the light directly.
| AlanYx wrote:
| The sun's spectrum is relatively smooth, whereas there are
| some grow lights that have a narrow, intense spike of UV
| designed to match chlorophyll B's absorption. Not all grow
| lights have this spectrum, but it's worth being careful.
| It's one of the reasons why some grow lights come with a
| warning about using eye protection.
| antisthenes wrote:
| That's a good point, although I'm pretty sure the Sun
| still trumps any kind of LED grow light output,
| especially during summer months.
|
| That being said, maybe it's a good idea to use a
| plexiglass UV filter when using it as a workshop light.
| dashundchen wrote:
| My understanding is outside, your pupils will dilate as
| the light increases, protecting your retina from
| increased UV. If you had a strong emitter of UV in a
| relatively dim room, your pupils wouldn't shrink and
| would allow more damaging UV to hit your retinas.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I'm not sure where you got this understanding from, but
| the LED lights I'm talking about (grow lights) are
| definitely bright enough to make your pupils shrink.
|
| > If you had a strong emitter of UV in a relatively dim
| room
|
| A 150 watt LED right above your head is the opposite of
| dim.
| cramjabsyn wrote:
| Cheap LED bulbs generate the worst light I've ever experienced.
| But after some research I found that there are options that make
| a nice warm light with no perceptible flickering.
|
| Personally I prefer the phillips warm glow dimmable bulbs
| btbuilder wrote:
| Have you had any lifetime issues with these? I bought a dozen
| and a significant number started emitting warm color while at
| full brightness instead of just dimmed.
| anotheryou wrote:
| Mine lasted 3 years. (100w equivalent, 3 dim stages built in
| ("sceneswitch")).
|
| Now I had some flickers in recent weeks but they went away
| again, not sure what had caused it.
| cramjabsyn wrote:
| No lifetime issues so far. I've been using their GU10 halogen
| substitutes for I want to say about 5 years
| npteljes wrote:
| Right up there with the horrible neon light my schools had.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah this is one of those things where quality really makes the
| difference. If you buy cheap LED bulbs, you'll hate LED bulbs.
| Buy goods ones, and you love them. The dichotomy is really
| stark in the overall HN discussion.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I fucking hate LEDs. Turned my back on them years ago because the
| tech and its salesmen turned their back on me. Nothing but lies.
|
| I've been using 15-25 watt traditional incandescents in a bunch
| of lamps around the house and they're absolutely amazing.
| Consistent light, cheap, and comfy _as hell_ - the warm fire-like
| glow appeals to my caveman sensibilities. So much better than
| soulless, flickering, sun-bright but ice-cold LEDs. I feel
| better, see better, sleep better, my house is just so cozy.
|
| Thankfully, the low-watt appliance bulbs that I use seem to be
| exempt under the coming ban. And if they were banned, I'd find a
| way to make them on my own - I'm never parting with them.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I was an LED early adopter and many more of them have failed
| early than I expected, even if I followed the rules of not
| putting them inside an enclosure not open to the air, etc.
|
| Regarding the color criticism(s), it's wonderfully subjective and
| it's definitely a case of "once you see it, you can't unsee it".
| Early bulbs were too blue in color temperature; later ones
| finally got the color temperature right (at least technically)
| but something else still seems "off" sometimes.
|
| There needs to be a way to read reviews of these, AND people need
| to be willing to spend more money on quality.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| LED bulbs make me made because I can't yell at my kids to turn
| off the lights like my dad used to do to me.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Sure you can. My wife yells at me all the time. I says they are
| LED stop complaining. She says they are still wasting energy,
| doesn't matter the amount.
| balfirevic wrote:
| Sure you can, but only if you're willing to be unreasonable.
| ghaff wrote:
| I still reflexively tend to turn off lights. Even though I
| intellectually know that, besides some halogen track lights I
| still have, my LED bulbs don't really move the power needle
| for my house.
| shusaku wrote:
| LED Christmas lights are great because I can leave them on
| guilt free
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| I on the other hand hate when people yell at you to turn off
| the light!
| davidy123 wrote:
| Incandescent generate heat, they're great if you need heat and
| one tone of light and that's it.
|
| LEDs are part of a progression to everything being addressable,
| think of them as pixels. There's a decreasing incentive to not
| make everything addressable and support not just dimming but also
| colour. This is ultimately a completely different approach to
| environments. Transitioning from "the lights are on and I can
| easily see my broccoli" to very fine relationships between
| sources and qualities of light and their interpretation. Some of
| the benefits will be emergent, which sounds like hand-waving, and
| sometimes it is. (-:
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My benchmark for light quality is "can I tell the difference
| between the two sides of
|
| https://www.redrivercatalog.com/browse/60lb-polar-matte.html
|
| ?" and I'd say that LED bulbs do OK when I set them on the high
| color temperature (blueish) settings and poorly on the warm color
| temperature side. This company
|
| https://www.solux.net/cgi-bin/tlistore/index.html
|
| became famous for high color temperature lights for art museums
| also used to make an advanced incandescent bulb that had
| something like a halogen bulb inside of it. Those bulbs do really
| well on my test, I still have a stock of them, and I use them
| when I need to make fine color distinctions. I've seen bulbs with
| a similar construction for sale at Dollar General but I haven't
| tested them.
|
| Note there is a tradeoff between an RGB bulb that gives really
| saturated colors and one that gives good color rendition. If
| saturation was what mattered you'd want laser-like spectral
| lines, for color rendition you want each component to have a
| broad spectrum.
|
| There's no reason why LED light can't have excellent quality
| however anyone defines quality because you're not limited to the
| raw output of the LED but you can tune the output with a
| phosphor. Consumers have to demand something better though and
| the market has to respond.
| aftbit wrote:
| I'm still looking for an ideal LED bulb for use everywhere. I've
| mostly settled on Hyperikon. My desired specs: *
| A19 base * 2700K * 7-11W (at typical efficiencies,
| not sure about lumens) * dimmable with very high dynamic
| range (fully dimmed should be just barely lit) * good color
| rendering (high CRI / R9) * good PSU design for long life
| * flicker free under all circumstances * cheapish (<
| $10/bulb)
|
| The irony is that there is a deep flashlight enthusiast community
| that focus on all of these specs (except maybe the high dynamic
| range), but when you look for A19 bulbs, they're all just using
| whatever is at Home Depot. :/
| selimnairb wrote:
| I find that with LED bulbs you need to read the box carefully.
| Putting an LED bulb not rated for enclosures into an enclosure
| often results in early failures.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Focusing on reliability, quality and performance I've had nothing
| but an excellent run with LEDs, both retro and built into the
| home for 10 years. Never replaced anything on any of them. And
| not just me proud I've talked with as well.
|
| The only issue I have with LED is the light isn't as nice as
| incandescent and although I'm not certain it may not be as good
| for your health.
|
| Be interesting to know more about the context is the authors
| experience doesn't seem to be the same for everyone
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I was just staying in a hotel where it was obvious that the
| hallway lighting was all LED.
|
| It had that harsh, strange white hue to it and I found it
| incredibly distracting and unattractive.
|
| I'm no expert in the field, and I assume there are bulbs that put
| out a more natural spectrum, but clearly this hotel didn't buy
| _those_ bulbs. It felt strange to walk down that hallway, just
| something "off" about it.
| gaudat wrote:
| Is it just me or is there something off about this article? It
| reads quite incoherent.
|
| I happen to work with a lot of LED light sources nowadays and I
| can see most problems discussed are related to the light fixture,
| driver or psychology. More often than not it is the capacitors in
| these mains powered LEDs that fail first, because the circuit is
| designed to run at the highest temperature possible to lower the
| cost of the final product. The bulbs, or LED chips, looks quite
| innocent in this regard.
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| Lol, there is no problem, you're the problem, actually it is
| faulty.
| last_responder wrote:
| Green account . A mod? Admin? Either way reported.
| malfist wrote:
| Green accounts mean it's new, if you couldn't tell by their
| trollish post.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > run at the highest temperature possible
|
| So consumers in hot climates who abstain from A/C cooling will
| suffer such failures disproportionately.
| melff wrote:
| Well, I'd guess for most people it doesn't matter whether the
| LED-chips themselves, capacitors, or some other part of the
| circuitry fails. If cost-cut cheap LED bulbs with components
| driven to the max are the norm, consumers will obviously
| associate LED bulbs with the kind of problems that causes and
| not with what LED tech could be if it'd be given more budget to
| breathe.
| jonas21 wrote:
| For me, the biggest issue with LED bulbs is flicker. And there's
| a lot of variation between different bulbs, even ones that claim
| to be flicker-free. There are metrics for quantifying flicker
| [1], and hopefully they'll be required to print this on the
| packaging at some point.
|
| For now, I always go to see bulbs in person before buying them,
| and record them in slow-motion video on my phone. This makes it
| easy to tell which ones flicker badly and which don't.
|
| [1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/articles/flicker-
| understandi...
| FpUser wrote:
| I do not really use LED light bulbs. I use already made LED
| lamps. Big round ones for ceiling and some long strips in my
| office on bottom side of shelves. All cheap China made stuff.
| Works for years not a single problem. Color temp is ok.
| roryisok wrote:
| This post reads awfully whiny to me. Who cares if the new bulb
| that's 90% more energy efficient than your old incandescent is
| not exactly the same color as the totally unnatural electric
| light you grew up with? Sure, there are some niche areas like the
| gallery mentioned, where the color and evenness of the light is
| quite important to display a work of art properly, but the bulb
| in your downstairs toilet not being yellow enough is not
| something to get worked up over.
|
| This is as vapid and facile an argument as petrol heads
| complaining that electric cars don't sound right.
| TylerE wrote:
| And even if you are... I use Wi-Fi smart bulbs that cost less
| than $10 each, full then as well as a white temperature
| adjustable from an extreme warm orange to piercing blue. 90+
| CRI too.
| sydd wrote:
| Because there are many more issues:
|
| - The issue is not that they are "not the same color", but that
| they have a low CRI which means that they make look everything
| bland and greyscale.
|
| - That they use some shitty low frequency PWM to drive the
| light causing eye fatigue and headaches
|
| - That they use low quality electronics causing your bulb to
| fail as fast as an iridescent one that costs 5 times less.
|
| What you are saying sounds a bit like someone complaining why
| people want to move on from CRT monitors.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| LED bulbs that have a similar color as old incandescent bulbs are
| widely available now for in-home use. It's no longer limited to
| fancy bulbs like Philips Hue.
|
| That being said, I am not a fan of the white LED streetlights.
| Streetlight LED's should be orange.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| My pool pump and AC will cost me about $700 US this month.
| Switching from incandescent to LED bulbs might have saved me a
| few dollars. And for what? For expensive bulbs that flicker,
| don't reproduce colors well, last less than a year, and undulate
| and buzz when dimmed (yes, the dimmable ones)? I think we've been
| bamboozled by the light bulb industry.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Wow, what kind of awful bulbs are you buying? I have literally
| a house full of LED bulbs, some of which are on dimmers, and
| have experienced literally none of these problems. Just for
| starters, I haven't had a single LED bulb fail in the 8-odd
| years I've been using them in my home.
|
| But maybe there's an argument that you have to pay a
| significant premium to get a bulb that doesn't have the issues
| you've run into and, once you factor that premium into account,
| LED bulbs aren't worth it. But some of the broad claims here,
| and in the article, about the allegedly poor performance of LED
| bulbs just don't cohere at all with my experience with them. I
| made a point of buying high quality bulbs that are dimmable,
| don't flicker, and have the color temperature and CRI that I
| want and...well...that's exactly what I got.
| axus wrote:
| I've had plenty fail, stuff from the grocery store, Home
| Depot, Lowes. Actually the fan-size bulbs I ordered from
| Amazon were the worst ones, which I expected since it was
| almost the cheapest. Interestingly, the generic ones I got
| from a state-sponsored efficiency program have been the best.
|
| But the ones that didn't fail have been fine, and lasted for
| years. Like CPUs, the yields aren't good but the ones that
| pass give good service for a long time.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Perhaps it's the 50 year old house I live in, but lots of
| Phillips brand, also whatever the Lowes and Home Depot in-
| house brands are. I bought Kree in bulk for my last house
| about 10 years ago and that was a huge mistake.
|
| As for the color reproduction issue... you do experience it,
| I imagine you haven't done color critical work under
| incandescent and then under LEDs?
|
| I do have some stupidly expensive $29 D-50 compliant LEDs in
| my office that don't bother me at all. One failed after about
| 9 months, but the company replaced it for free.
|
| Anyway, I'm highly sensitive to LED flicker, and my wife
| apparently can hear the buzz from rooms away.
|
| At risk of sounding like a consistent theorist...The market
| factors that led to the lighting industry forming a "cartel"
| 100 years ago are certainly alive and well today. I think
| it's likely that these manufacturers are only selling energy
| efficient lightbulbs to make more money than they otherwise
| would -- it's certainly not to save the planet.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| > As for the color reproduction issue... you do experience
| it, I imagine you haven't done color critical work under
| incandescent and then under LEDs?
|
| High quality LEDs with a good CRI are vastly better for
| that sort of work. You don't want to be doing anything like
| that under 2700k incandescent light.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Well yeah, that's why I said I have $29 D-50 compliant
| LEDs in my office. Though CRI, to an extent is more
| important than color temperature, since with high CRI
| under warm light you can still get a great sense for
| relative colors and contrast, but not so much with a
| mediocre CRI under a daylight bulb.
|
| I'm not an LED hater. But I do think the Lightbulb
| industry has taken advantage of us in not so honest ways,
| as expected by their shareholders.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| What brand do you buy and how did you evaluate it beforehand?
| noneeeed wrote:
| I'm reading these comments and thinking the same. While I
| have had a handful fail quicker than I think they should, on
| the whole ours are great. A bunch of them are dimmable, most
| are warm-white for a cosier light.
|
| We can turn on every light in the house and it will use less
| than 200w. With incandescents and halogens (for gu10s) I'd be
| looking at more than that just to light the bathroom. The
| whole house would use about 1.5kw. Given that the lights are
| on a lot outside of summer (I'm in the UK) that's a pretty
| big saving.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| We wire our homes with a whole bunch of AC circuits. These are
| basically busses, right? Why not add more kinds of busses? Why
| not a DC bus? Every light in my home is an LED, and most
| appliances (by count) are DC.
|
| I understand that moving DC long distances can be problematic.
| But is 100-300 feet too long? Am I completely off on this?
|
| This feels like a legacy inefficiency issue.
| sbradford26 wrote:
| DC actually tends to be more efficient at long distances at the
| same voltage. DC lighting does exist in the commercial space
| where lighting costs actually start to add up more than
| household use. The main barrier to DC systems in homes is
| simply that it would require houses to be rewired and a whole
| new standard for plugs and such. The benefit is also hard to
| describe to the customer.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The limitations you describe make sense. But they seem like
| we can overcome them.
|
| My home has 3 non-plumbing busses: AC to every room. Twisted
| pair to like 6 rooms that will never see use. Coax to 7 rooms
| that is only used for a modem in one room.
|
| If we can run all that wiring, I think we can introduce a new
| standard for upcoming homes.
|
| In fact, now that I think of it, my home has a trait that the
| homes I grew up in never had: the overhead lighting and the
| wall receptacles are never on the same circuits. ... I wonder
| if I can re-use the 14-2 Romex for DC and retrofit one or two
| rooms myself and see how it works? (I recognize this is a bad
| idea for many reasons, such as them being indistinguishable
| and wrongly colour coded, making it a dangerous trap for
| future owners).
| mindslight wrote:
| It's definitely a path dependency issue. Last mile
| neighborhood distribution is still done with traditional
| transformers, so trying to push in this direction you'd
| ultimately just be _adding_ another conversion step in
| homes. IMO the only time it makes (individual) sense is if
| your home has a huge bank of storage batteries for off-grid
| operation.
|
| The main advantage you'd get is no 120Hz flickering (light
| bulbs would still need power electronics because LEDs are
| driven by current rather than voltage), no 60Hz hum on
| motors, etc. But you'd be stepping away from the massive
| economies of scale of the consumer market.
|
| FWIW what voltage(s) would you pick, and why? There's no
| free lunch here.
| sbradford26 wrote:
| So POE lighting is something that is taking off for
| businesses but could also be more easily retrofitted into a
| house. This would put the conversion from AC to DC in a
| centralized area which allows for more efficient hardware
| to be used.
|
| Ubiquiti for a while had hardware you can order not sure if
| they still do.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| There's a lot wrong with LEDs in general and retrofit (E27 bulbs)
| in particular. In no particular order
|
| - LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly
|
| - Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail
| quickly
|
| - Poor CRI and SSRI
|
| - Flickering
|
| - Dim-to-warm is uncommon
|
| - Poorly designed power supplies that age and fail quickly
|
| - The same light _quality_ is vastly more expensive to achieve
| with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. Good
| indoor lighting is now something only people with plenty of
| disposable income can afford.
|
| - It is quite difficult to even buy high quality LEDs as a mere
| mortal
|
| - Retrofits generally work poorly on principle
|
| - LEDs mix exceptionally poorly, making things even more
| expensive
| guerrilla wrote:
| - LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail
| quickly - Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons,
| age and fail quickly - Poorly designed power supplies
| that age and fail quickly
|
| These are all features from the producers POV. Planned
| obsolescence. - Poor CRI and SSRI
|
| This is true for all cheap lights, you gotta pay for that.
| timw4mail wrote:
| Not to mention space constraints for power supplies, and
| cooling the LEDs enough.
|
| For all the benefits of LED lights, incandescent bulbs are
| infinitely simpler.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Simpler and better light, but bad energy efficiency.
|
| Although, as was pointed out to me at some point, because
| LEDs are more efficient, people feel less guilty about having
| more of them; replacing 1x40 watt bulb with 8x5 watt LEDs
| means the net result is the same. I've got like 7 cute LED
| spotlights in my TV closet for example, I wouldn't have had
| that setup if I was forced to use incandescent lamps.
| sgregnt wrote:
| Energy efficiency wise, in cold weather it warms the
| apartment which is desirable in my case.
| saulpw wrote:
| Jevons Paradox in action.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| > cooling the LEDs enough
|
| Maybe I am missing something from this conversation, but all
| of my LED bulbs produce far _less_ heat than incandescent
| bulbs. The lamp in my bedroom no longer keeps me warm!
| rini17 wrote:
| But LEDs are very sensitive to heat, so even the small
| amount of heat will cause gradual dimming.
| orev wrote:
| By cooling the issue is that LEDs and the driving
| electronics will become damaged with heat, while an
| incandescent has simple parts which can easily survive
| inside an oven. This matters when used in fixtures like
| recessed ceiling cans where there's no ventilation. The
| LEDs just cook themselves while incandescents don't care.
| organsnyder wrote:
| When my garage+office was built a few years ago, the
| electrician used a bunch of faux-recessed LED fixtures
| (the brand name is "I Can't Believe It's Not Recessed!",
| which is certainly memorable). They surface-mount over
| standard ceiling junction boxes, but appear similar to
| recessed lights once installed. We have ~20 of these
| fixtures, both interior and exterior. They're quiet,
| flicker-free, and have a great dimming curve (with the
| standard Z-wave dimmers I've used). We've had no failures
| so far after almost four years, so they've passed the
| leading edge of the bathtub curve.
|
| I think it's much easier to design entire fixtures than
| retrofit bulbs, as there's much more control over heat
| dissipation and so on. Finding trusted manufacturers (and
| supply chains that resist counterfeits) is also extremely
| important.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| The faux-recessed LED fixtures are a really interesting
| case because they're either going to be the most reliable
| LED in your house, or one of the least! This is because
| heat is the LED diode killer (as well as the power
| supplies driving the diodes)
|
| Can lights have historically been an issue for insulation
| of houses, as they provide a channel for the warm ceiling
| air to enter the plenum space between floors or the
| attic. Thats bad for insulation, but actually amazing for
| a retrofitted LED light, because it's the only fixture
| that will provide airflow to cool it!
|
| On the other hand, faux-recessed LEDs can also be
| installed directly on top of the ceiling drywall, without
| any penetration. Thats the worst case scenario for heat
| build up, as heat rises and it's completely trapped by
| the dish of the light and the ceiling.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Absolutely! The faux-recessed lights made it a ton easier
| to do air-sealing, which is now essential to pass
| mandatory blower-door tests.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| You will find that you will need to search a bit harder to
| find an LED light that is rated to work with enclosed
| fixtures. Enclosed fixtures don't allow the same amount of
| cooling as a normal lamp.
| weberer wrote:
| Yes, but incandescent bulbs don't need to be cooled at all
| because they're just tungsten and glass. High powered LEDs
| require a heat sink to not damage the diode.
| willis936 wrote:
| I've moved three times with one set of cheap LED bulbs
| without having to replace a single one. I'd have gone
| thorough dozens of incandescent bulbs in the same time
| period. I'd have also burned my hand on a few.
|
| LEDs are definitely simpler than incandescent from a user
| perspective.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It is interesting you cite that the cost has went up for
| lighting. Where I live the government owned utility often
| raises their rates per kwHr. One of the reasons they cite is
| the increase in efficiency leading to a drop in revenue each
| year.
|
| The same utility pays for those efficiency projects.
| xeromal wrote:
| On my first read of this, it makes sense though. The mileage
| of infrastructure is the same regardless of use. Those
| powerlines still need maintenance even if LEDs are making
| homes more efficient.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Sure, but I'm billed by kw-Hr. Bill me for the
| infrastructure if that is what costs money.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| > - Dim-to-warm is uncommon
|
| Yeah, I love Alec's Technology Connections video on some bulbs
| with that feature, but he pointed it partly because some of the
| few bulbs that offered it seemed to be getting phased out.
|
| Its much like a bunch of other points on the list. There are a
| fair few that would only add a small amount of additional cost,
| but because the companies can save money by not doing it, they
| don't.
|
| It does not actually cost all that much more to add a few more
| diodes, to avoid severely overdriving the ones on the board, or
| to improve the power supply circuitry so that it will likely
| last longer.
|
| But it really sucks that even if you chose to buy the more
| premium tier bulbs being offered at the big box store, they
| often don't fix some of these issues. They may have a better
| CRI, but are still often overdriven, with questionable power
| supply designs.
| lacrosse_tannin wrote:
| What is the embodied energy of all those high tech parts?
|
| An incandescent lightbulb is a piece of tungsten wire.
| Bluzzard wrote:
| [dead]
| samstave wrote:
| I have every single light bulb in my house (and outside my
| house) as an LED RGB Alexa-addressible light, and I love it.
|
| "Set all the lights to red" and every single bulb in my house
| and porch and walkway and garage etc, all turn red.
|
| "Turn on/off all the light"
|
| Set kitchen to firebrick...
|
| Etc.
|
| I LOVE IT.
|
| During the day I rarely have any lights on at all - but at
| night I have precise control over every bulb in my house with
| alexa voice.
|
| I initially would never have put alexa in my home, but now that
| I have it and all bulbs on it, as well as several alexa-fied
| power outlets, its just a very nice thing to have.
|
| Im not too concerned over "lighting quality" - as I get exactly
| what I want.
|
| The bulbs I bought were from Costco, where they had them on
| sale for $5 for a (2) pack. so I replaced all CFLs with RGB
| Wifi LEDs with alexa, and it was ~$70 to do the whole house
| (27) bulbs.
|
| EDIT: Dimmability "Alexa Set Kitchen to 10%" --> I can dim or
| brighten all the lights at once "Alexa set house to 100%"
| etc...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > There's a lot wrong with LEDs in general and retrofit (E27
| bulbs) in particular. In no particular order
|
| If all that's true, it explains my experience that LEDs have
| totally failed to live up to their promise. Sure, they use less
| power than incandescents, but they're far more expensive and
| also more finicky. They were supposed to last a decade, but I'm
| lucky if I get a year or two out of them. I wonder what the
| environmental impact is when you factor in e-waste and
| manufacturing costs.
|
| About the only clear win for me is they run much cooler, which
| is nice when you have underpowered AC (or no AC).
|
| > - LEDs mix exceptionally poorly, making things even more
| expensive
|
| I'm not sure exactly what you mean here, but (compared to
| incandescents), different models of LED differ significantly in
| light characteristics and start up time. More than once I've
| had to replace all the bulbs in a fixture, because I couldn't
| buy and equivalent replacement for one that failed.
| amluto wrote:
| > The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve
| with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices.
|
| In a screw base, maybe. But compare:
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i...
|
| $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient.
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30...
|
| $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W.
| (Efficiency goes up quite a bit if you settle for 90 CRI.)
|
| So that gives about 2000lm at about 25W, for <$30.
|
| Wikipedia gives about 16 lm/W for incandescent, so 125W. At 10
| hour per day, the LED options pays for itself quickly even at
| national average prices. In CA, it's very fast.
|
| To be fair, for high-end LEDs like this, the balance of the
| system is more expensive, because you need a heat sink.
| Incandescent lamps run very hot and don't need heat sinks.
|
| I think this is potentially promising, but I don't think you
| can buy it:
|
| https://tlo.mit.edu/technologies/high-efficiency-incandescen...
| DougN7 wrote:
| This is just an anecdote, but I've had multiple "10 year" LED
| bulbs fail after just a year or two. I suspect much of the
| claims for these bulbs are theoretical as they just don't
| hold up, probably for reasons the grandparent poster is
| pointing out.
| iso1631 wrote:
| On the other hand I lived in my last house for 5 years and
| didn't replace a single bulb.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| When I moved into my current place 5 years ago a lot of
| the lighting was 12V MR16 halogen bulbs. I replaced most
| of them with high CRI Philips Master LEDspots
| (specifically marketed as having a longer lifetime aimed
| at commercial installations but they weren't
| significantly more expensive vs "consumer" versions at
| the time if you were looking for high CRI anyway) and
| kept the transformers in place. I've had one fail out of
| probably 50 or so bulbs in that time, which feels about
| par for the course to me.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Others have commented, but to reiterate
|
| - Older LEDs house bulbs were much worse than newer ones;
| far more prone to failure from "things". I had many of them
| fail after only a few months because our power was
| "flickery" and their power supplies could not handle it.
| That's _far_ less common now.
|
| - The power supply / controller circuitry is not a fan of
| heat. Don't mount them upside down (so the heat floats up
| to the circuit) and never mount them in a recessed mount.
| The heat buildup will destroy them a lot quicker. That
| being said, this advice can be ignored is you're paying
| attention... mounts that have a way to heat to escape;
| bulbs that are designed to go in upside-down mounts
| (maybe?), etc.
|
| - While you certainly don't want to always buy the most
| expensive bulb, you also don't want to buy the cheap ones.
| They are far more likely to be made from poor, failure
| prone components.
| ajross wrote:
| I have too. I have significantly more in my 11-year-old
| renovation that are still working. That's just the way
| statistics work.
|
| A lot of this topic smells like typical geek snobbery.
| They're lights, folks. Cheap consumer products have always
| been cheap. Halogen bulbs suck too.
| sgc wrote:
| I have had at least 10 bulbs die on me within months,
| while others have lasted much longer, but the average
| lifespan on bulbs in our house can't be over 18 months.
| So I don't think people are complaining to be snobs, just
| noting that led bulbs don't last nearly as long as
| claimed. I have no idea why you needed to fall into
| personal attacks rather than concluding that bulbs
| readily available 11 years ago might be made better than
| those readily available now, and that most led bulbs are
| a lot newer than yours.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| People have a terrible tendency as well to blame the bulb
| when it's just overheating in a really bad fixture.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| All the big name brand(Cree etc.) bulbs I've bought have
| been going strong for 5-12 years. Out of dozens the only
| ones I've ever had fail were off brand or special purpose
| like LIFX wifi bulbs.
| kldavis4 wrote:
| 3 year warranty instead of 10, but I've had a lot of
| problems with Philips LED Flicker-Free Dimmable BR30 Indoor
| Light Bulb. They consistently die and need to be replaced
| within a year or so. I replaced a couple under warranty but
| just gave up after the hassle involved. I've tried other
| brands without success and would love to know what a good
| reliable alternative would be.
| sizzle wrote:
| Same for me the brand is "Feit Electric" from Costco. Avoid
| this brand!
| dwighttk wrote:
| In my experience LEDs have been a little more reliable than
| CFL, but that's not saying much... those things you could
| almost watch burn out.
| gambiting wrote:
| If we're sharing anecdotes - I've had my homes 100%(or
| close) LED equipped for over a decade now and never had a
| single LED bulb fail.
| jhartwig wrote:
| I wish I could say that. I have a 3 year old house that
| is about 3k square feet wiht alot of bulbs. Every bulb
| installed was LED and I have replaced most of them at
| this point, and some more then once. I have even had the
| electrical company come out thinking there was something
| wrong with the power in my house or the breaker box.
| Nothing...
| smolder wrote:
| I'm repeating myself a lot in this thread, so I'm sorry.
| What fixtures are the bulbs in? Are they a generic design
| meant for incandescents? A huge number of fixtures out
| there don't allow for enough heat to convect away and the
| bulbs overheat.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It usually comes down to the brand, factors you can't be
| aware of like component choice, and the light fixture
| itself. A lot of LED edison socket lights die quickly in
| recessed lighting or other tight fixtures because the
| heat is death to them. Manufacturers build the worst
| technically functional capacitors into the power supplies
| with a low temperature rating, meaning they really can't
| handle anything above ambient.
|
| This is also the same industry and the same players that
| were perfectly fine with agreeing to not improve
| incandescent light past 1000 lifetime hours, illegally. I
| have no doubt that there is a tacit agreement not to make
| good lighting, as that would extremely disrupt the
| industry.
| imtringued wrote:
| Lightbulbs are a bad form factor. I have some lights
| without bulbs and no issue. Meanwhile the halogen
| emulating LEDs break all the time.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Exactly. Luckily halogens were commonly installed in
| pots. So for longevity, replace the pot rather than the
| bulb.
| samtho wrote:
| I am in the same boat, but they do tend to become
| significantly dimmer over time.
| jghn wrote:
| My understanding is that the quality of LED bulbs has
| been going down over time. In other words, newer bulbs
| are less likely to stand the test of time than older
| bulbs.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I think there might be something about the wiring in some
| homes. Some of my LED bulbs have been going for a decade
| now without issues. I have a few fixtures where bulbs
| keep hauling in specific sockets after a few months. I
| have one fixture in my bathroom where a bulb was fine for
| a few months and then two replacement bulbs failed
| instantly and three third one failed again after a year
| or so. Maybe the voltage is wrong and keeps breaking the
| power supply?
| smolder wrote:
| It could be sensitive power circuitry failing due to
| power quality, but is more likely a heat buildup. LEDs
| bulbs fail rapidly without good convective cooling
| ability, particularly in locations where you have the
| bulb on for great lengths of time.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Similarly, I started buying Philips Hue bulbs back around
| 2015 and none of those have failed in the time since,
| even being used every night since then.
|
| They're all in freestanding floor lamps installed in a
| horizontal orientation, which might have something to do
| with it. That seems like it'd dissipate heat a lot better
| than e.g. a pot light housing in the ceiling.
| katbyte wrote:
| +1 for hue colour/white adjustable ones
|
| They produce great light at the temperature you want and
| I've yet to have one fail after nearly 10 years using
| them.
|
| Not cheap, but given I've never had to replace one maybe
| in the end they are
| xxpor wrote:
| They were expensive pre-covid, but since covid they have
| become completely unhinged.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Hue-Bluetooth-compatible-
| Assi...
|
| $45 a bulb! That's probably >$2000 to replace a house's
| worth.
|
| The white, color-temp only ones are about half the price,
| which is better, but still not cheap:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Ambiance-Hue-Equivalent-
| Assis...
| pm215 wrote:
| My experience has fallen into two categories:
|
| * bulbs with the UK-standard bayonet fitting in light
| sockets that are suspended from cables from the ceiling
| with lampshades -- these I don't think I've ever had fail
| on me yet
|
| * 4.6W bulbs with a GU10 fitting in recessed spotlights
| -- these fail on me more frequently (perhaps every few
| years to every five years)
|
| My assumption is that this is all down to the spotlight-
| fitting bulbs being in a confined space and getting a lot
| hotter. I use Philips bulbs in both cases.
| vel0city wrote:
| I've had some generally good experiences with LEDs as
| well. The only places that I've had somewhat higher
| failure rates for LEDs were places where I wanted a lot
| of light but the existing fixture had the bulbs trapped
| deep inside an enclosed fixture. I ended up buying a
| different brand than I normally do since it seemed the
| bulbs I had been going with just couldn't survive that
| hotbox, but since trying another brand the bulbs have
| lasted a couple of years so far.
|
| Otherwise, for probably at least 40 or so bulbs swapped
| for LEDs over the years, I've experienced maybe 4 or 5
| failures. The vast majority of my bulbs have been Feit
| and GE. I never buy smart bulbs. My best experiences have
| usually been to just buy LED fixtures though, I replaced
| a lot of my flush mount ceiling fixtures and ceiling fans
| for ones with integrated LEDs and have not had a single
| failure so far after a few years, knock on wood.
|
| I had some problems with my old dimmer switches, but
| upgrading dimmers to newer ones which advertised good LED
| dimming and ensuring I had bulbs which stated dimming
| compatibility it eliminated my noise and flicker issues.
| There's a recent standard out there, NEMA SSL 7A, which
| seeks to ensure good compatibility. I set my dimmers to
| this SSL 7A mode and I've had no problems since.
|
| https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/asset/docu
| men...
| britzkopf wrote:
| I'll add a second identical anecdote. I've witnessed about
| a dozen die after about doing about 1/10th their promised
| duty.
| smolder wrote:
| Are they in fixtures designed for incandescents? "Boob
| lamps" for example are highly efficient LED bulb
| destroyers, since they don't breathe, and the bulbs
| overheat.
| ubercore wrote:
| More anecdata, but I had ~20 lights, of various quality
| (many Hue, some cheaper Home Depot specials) in boob
| lamps that survived at least 11 summers in a New England
| house without AC. Still there probably, but I moved out
| so I can only vouch for 11 years.
| vikingerik wrote:
| 10 years isn't a minimum threshold for every item. Any
| individual item could fail any time, and the overall
| distribution will have a shape somewhere between a bell
| curve and a long tail.
|
| I don't know if there are any regulations around the
| 10-year claim, but if there are then I'd expect that it's
| either an average or something like a one-standard-
| deviation threshold, like 68% last past that but 32% don't.
|
| "Guaranteed 10 years" doesn't actually say anything about
| expected lifetime at all, just that they'll do a warranty
| replacement if it fails sooner.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| One standard deviation would mean that 16% fail early and
| 16% last extra long. If the distribution is normal.
|
| Personally I'd want a durability guarantee to be more
| like two standard deviations, on top of replacement in
| case of early failure.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power supply
| died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves. I harvest
| the LEDs out of dead bulbs to use in hobby projects.
|
| With Edison-style bulbs, anyway, the orientation they're
| mounted in makes a huge amount of difference. They're last
| a lot longer if they're oriented upright (base down) than
| in any other orientation because it reduces the heat
| buildup in the power supply.
| jandrese wrote:
| Sometimes it is the power supply, but I've also had a
| number that died simply because one LED burned out and
| failed open. Because they are wired in series it only
| takes one failed LED to take out the entire bulb. If
| you're a cheapskate you can sometimes get a bulb working
| again by testing the circuit and bypassing the burned out
| LED with a jumper wire.
|
| If the bulb dies but you notice that all of the elements
| are still just barely on (like a dim spot of light in the
| middle of each one) then that's a good indication that
| you have a dead LED.
| cogman10 wrote:
| This is the frustrating thing about LEDs that IDK we can
| change.
|
| If there was a "DC" light socket in the house we could
| have LEDs outlasting owners, and for cheap. Nearly all
| the expense of LED bulbs is the power supply. Everything
| else is dirt cheap. A single home DC power supply with
| ~200W of output could light an entire house, flicker
| free.
|
| What's even more frustrating is I think we could fix it.
| A national regulation for DC light sockets would fix it.
| Mandate a voltage, shape, and max amperage and BAM,
| you'll get 1000 different manufactures making standard
| compliant bulbs and home power supplies that will last an
| eternity.
| petra wrote:
| Would this system need new electrical wiring ?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Yes. For the commercial DC lighting installations I've
| seen they were using power over ethernet. That's not
| necessarily the only way to deliver DC power but whatever
| you do it's going to be wired differently from 120 VAC.
| samtho wrote:
| I used to do electrical installs in commercial buildings
| and this was starting to catch on, mainly because the the
| practice of running ethernet (including the 8P8C aka RJ45
| connector, patch paneling, etc) is already established.
| This always felt very roundabout and requires expensive
| networking equipment just to run lights which I do not
| personally like because it will just cause confusion.
| xxpor wrote:
| You also get (the wiring for) remote control for free
| though, which is nice.
|
| It seems like there would be a market for cheap as
| possible 10 mbit switches with 802.3bt/802.3af support
| though.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Gigabit-802-3af-100Mbps-250Meter-
| Unma... is pretty cheap as is, I'm sure you could buy
| something in bulk for cheaper.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We've had 2 standard DC outlets for a while now: 12V
| cigarette lighter and 5V USB. You do often see them in
| odd places. But the voltage and wattage of those specs is
| too low to be useful, so they haven't evolved into DC
| power distribution.
|
| USB-C PD is at a useful voltage & wattage level, and so
| is Ethernet POE. I wouldn't be surprised to see them
| start to be used for general power distribution in niche
| applications, like RV's and off-grid cabins.
|
| I don't think we're going to ever get a bulb standard,
| though.
| zaroth wrote:
| Cars are starting to move to 48V DC. My under cabinet
| lighting in the kitchen are powered by DC from a power
| supply in the basement.
|
| I could definitely see this becoming more common.
| Powering the ~100 watts of fixed lighting spread across
| my whole house on ten different 15A 120v circuits, each
| with their own arcfault breaker and 12 gauge copper
| electrical lines running back to the panel is
| _fabulously_ expensive for what could be done with a
| bunch of CAT5 in each floor running to some conveniently
| located "POE injector" type devices.
|
| You would want to be able to take a standard fixture and
| just push DC through it and use special bulbs with a
| standard A19 base, but that's problematic when the next
| owner tries to screw in a standard bulb - what happens
| when it sees 48V DC?
|
| I would guess if for safety reasons it has to be a
| non-A19 connector, then your light fixture choices get
| cut down to almost nothing and no one will make the
| switch?
|
| It's really interesting to think about, most everything
| I'm plugging into AC outlets in my house, the first step
| is converting it to DC. A lot of my outlets I've switched
| to include USB ports so I don't need the wall warts. If
| you have solar and battery backup even more-so you start
| to question why we are wasting so much money moving
| everything back and forth between DC/AC/DC within a
| house.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >screw in a standard bulb - what happens when it sees 48V
| DC?
|
| Either it lights up or not? I don't see a problem here.
|
| But I'm not sure moving part of power supply elsewhere
| will help that much, it needs current driver electronics
| anyway.
| pwg wrote:
| > but that's problematic when the next owner tries to
| screw in a standard bulb - what happens when it sees 48V
| DC?
|
| If by "standard" you mean a incandescent tungsten
| filament bulb, nothing at all.
|
| For a true LED driver power supply, it would be constant
| current, so the tungsten filament would see 25mA (or
| whatever the constant current is set for) of DC, and
| nothing bad would happen (the filament also would not
| likely illuminate either).
|
| Screwing in an LED bulb with integrated power supply, the
| external supply will still feed the constant current
| value, so what happens depends upon the design of the LED
| bulb's integrated power supply. If 25mA is enough to
| drive everything, the LED bulb might light up. If 25mA is
| not enough to drive everything, most likely nothing
| lights up.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 48V without a current limit shouldn't be _nothing_ , but
| you should expect less than 10% brightness.
|
| For constant current, you'd need to drive at least 9
| watts so it would be more like 250mA if not higher.
|
| A 1600 lumen LED module might take as much or more
| current than a 60w incandescent. If your constant current
| supply can output between 0 volts and input volts, and
| it's set for a bulb with such a module, it would be able
| to power an incandescent bulb.
| Zak wrote:
| Trying to cram all the infrastructure for an LED lamp
| into the shape of a light bulb is a bad idea, even if the
| input power is DC. Good designs for LED lighting have
| larger surface areas for heat dissipation and some
| physical/thermal separation between the LEDs and the
| power supply. A quality power supply does not produce
| flicker. As other comments have noted, dimming, or even
| predictable output requires some sort of power regulation
| even with DC input.
|
| I think the way to change it is to replace sockets with
| hardwired LED fixtures. This is easy for something like a
| standalone ceiling light. It may be harder for other
| devices like ceiling fans that integrate a light bulb
| socket, but converting those devices to take DC power as
| in your proposal isn't easy either (most would just get
| discarded and replaced).
|
| Doing it well is more expensive in the short-term than
| screw-in bulbs. A quick look on Amazon suggests
| integrated ceiling lights are about 10x the price of LED
| bulbs, though I suspect the longer service life pays for
| itself.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > Trying to cram all the infrastructure for an LED lamp
| into the shape of a light bulb is a bad idea, even if the
| input power is DC.
|
| Absolutely, the incandescent light bulbs have that shape
| for a reason: the screw is small because there is nothing
| to put in it and it doesn't heat, the bulb is large to
| dissipate all the light and heat it generates. And the
| LED light bulbs have _exactly_ opposite problems: almost
| all of the heat is generated near the screw while the
| bulb itself generates almost none and the light-emitter
| doesn 't even need the bulb that large around of it. Oh,
| and the casing around the screw is plastic so the thermal
| conductivity is horrible. Honestly, it's a profoundly
| terrible form-factor which we're now stuck with.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There _are_ finned LED bulbs which can fit standard
| Edison Screw sockets, e.g.:
|
| <https://www.designboom.com/technology/self-
| cooling-100-watt-...>
|
| <https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b5/c2/c5/b5c2c5d69fb240a5
| 71ba...>
|
| It's also helpful to recognise that _existing_ lighting
| fixtures and lamps were designed around the constraints
| of incandescent bulbs. The first generation of LED bulbs
| and lamps _largely_ conform to these. As LEDs mature,
| both fixtures and lamps which address the limitations and
| requirements of the technology (transformers, perhaps
| dedicated 12v circuits, heat dissipation for the
| transformer rather than lighting elements themselves, and
| better light-temperature and intensity regulation)
| _should_ emerge.
|
| We're presently in the somewhat-messy half-emerged state.
| Think horseless carriages, wireless, and the days of dual
| gas/electric lighting and lamping systems (yes, these
| existed, and yes, the failure modes were ... much as you
| might imagine).
| amluto wrote:
| I sure hope 12V doesn't happen. 12V is absurdly low for
| lighting and needs extremely thick wires to get decent
| efficiency.
|
| 24V is okay. 48V would be nicer for indoor use.
| robocat wrote:
| > needs extremely thick wires
|
| Not extremely thick. Wire losses remain similar at 12V as
| they were at 110V (Replace 100W bulb with a 10W bulb at
| 12V, current remains ~1A so wire losses stay the same as
| the were). Wire losses might be say 1W for 1mm2 cabling.
| 240V example: https://ausinet.com.au/voltage-drop/
|
| Agree that it is worth upping voltage to chase a few more
| percent savings, but still need to consider other
| constraints.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Wiring up a house with 48V for lights and 120V for plugs
| would be such a pain. Pulling 2 different wires to every
| room. Weird circuit breakers. Yuck.
| robocat wrote:
| Already happens in New Zealand: lighting is usually low
| current 1mm2 wiring, and everything else is heavier
| gauge. Circuit breakers mostly care about Amps (all
| breakers could be rated to mains voltage if you wanted to
| avoid "weird").
|
| Also low voltage wiring can legally be done by anyone in
| NZ (a bonus when doing your own work, and a pitfall when
| buying a house?)
| Turskarama wrote:
| A lot of countries already have lighting on a separate
| circuit. It means that when something trips a breaker you
| don't lose all your lights as well.
| Zak wrote:
| I don't think we're exactly _stuck_ with the old form
| factor. We can start phasing them out. Replacement of
| screw sockets with modern fixtures is well within the
| capabilities of the average DIYer (though perhaps some
| places it 's illegal for anyone but a professional
| electrician to touch anything hardwired).
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Well, one of the main sales point of the LED bulbs was
| compatibility with existing E14/E27/etc sockets: no need
| to change the wiring, or the fixtures, just buy a new,
| better light bulb and screw it right in! It will also
| serve longer and be better for the environment, what's
| not to like? We'll even ban the sales of 100W and higher
| incandescent light bulbs to help you make the right
| choice!
|
| That's also the pitch of the smart bulbs: a sane way
| would be to make a smart light switch but what if you
| can't do that (e.g., you rent the apartment)? So we'll
| shove the controller chip into a disposable light bulb,
| that's still perfectly fine for the environment.
|
| By the way, I don't know how things turned out in your
| part of the world but over here, after the ban went into
| the force the manufacturers of incandescent lightbulb
| started selling 95W light bulbs 8D
| petrocrat wrote:
| Probably going to sound crazy, but we could start running
| water pipes in front of the walls and under the ceilings
| and mounting the LED's directly on the pipes for cooling.
| Creativity, thinking wholistically... the entire
| contemporary western house design needs a rethink
| frankly, from DC circuits to electrification to modular,
| mass-produceable utility drop-in pods, all with an eye
| towards integrated systems design paired with scalable
| modularity.
| Thrymr wrote:
| We _could_ even have standard DC bulbs for lamps with
| built-in standard power supplies, but they don't really
| exist.
| samtho wrote:
| I am designing an off-grid cabin with a solar panel array
| charging a bank of batteries with a propane generator
| backup. I run ethernet as power with a custom designed
| PCB that terminates at the outlet side where it exposes a
| 20 watt USB charging port and an ethernet port.
|
| The lights are all basically cut 12v light strips inside
| of old light fixtures with a custom controller that also
| terminates PoE. The 48 volts that most PoE standards
| specify is more than enough to push power down the line
| for < 100 meter runs.
|
| The advantage of PoE here is that anything under 50 volts
| is considered low voltage and does not need to follow the
| same rules as normal house wiring. I did not like that
| everything is hinging upon a beefy PoE switch so I
| actually made it passive PoE instead by design.
| int0x2e wrote:
| If you're willing to share your design, I'm sure there
| are other folks like myself who think this is a cool
| idea. I've wanted to do PoE (or passive PoE) for lights
| for a while now...
| samtho wrote:
| I am going to open source it. The goal was to be able to
| get all the SMD stuff available at JLPCB so you can just
| send it to be fabbed (with some thru-hole components you
| would just solder yourself) or I would also sell them at
| cost + 10%. My brother designed some 802.3at chips and
| was going to have him review my work first as I don't
| want to send out into the world a poorly design power
| system (there are enough of those things out there
| unfortunately).
| amluto wrote:
| I think this falls apart in the details. LEDs want
| constant current power supplies, and their owners
| frequently want them to dim. So you will still need a
| power supply.
|
| You can fudge it with resisters like in an LED strip, but
| you lose efficiency and dimming quality.
|
| That being said, I expect that power supplies with 48VDC
| input or so would be cheaper.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Maybe this could be a prosumer retrofit thing, where the
| AC voltage gets converted to DC in the junction box, and
| then DC is sent down to the fixture.
|
| Probably with some sort of current sensing system to make
| it compatible with dimmers.
|
| Pair that with DC A19 LED bulbs that have no internal
| power systems.
|
| Probably expensive to put together and to install, but if
| the goal was to have LEDs that last longer, that would do
| it.
| xxs wrote:
| You will see need to current drive the LEDs, DC alone
| won't help.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Maybe this could be a prosumer retrofit thing, where the
| AC voltage gets converted to DC in the junction box, and
| then DC is sent down to the fixture.
|
| The problem is that in 99.99% of homes outlets are on the
| same circuits as light fixtures, you would need to do
| some major rewiring.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| No, I'm saying you put a module into the junction box
| that the light fixture is attached to that serves as an
| AC/DC adapter, current limiting driver, and possibly a
| dimming sensor that would then provide downstream DC
| voltage to retrofit A19 bulbs.
|
| Those bulbs would then have no internal switching systems
| to burn out and rely entirely on the module hidden behind
| the wall to handle their power needs.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Low voltage DC lighting is a thing that has existed for a
| very, very long time. That most houses don't have it is
| more cultural than anything else, in my opinion.
|
| That means it's totally fixable. You can install such a
| system in existing buildings right now, and it's not
| crazy expensive unless you want to run the wires inside
| the walls.
|
| If we could shift cultural expectations around this,
| adding a LV system in new construction would not
| significantly increase the construction costs. It will
| start to be done if buyers start demanding it.
| xxs wrote:
| 12V requires quite a lot of amps for enough light, so low
| DC is not optimal. Also LEDs are current driven devices,
| i.e. they will be sensitive to voltage changes (even with
| a current limiting resistor)
| JohnFen wrote:
| Low-voltage doesn't necessarily mean 12V. I think it's
| anything below about 50, although lighting systems
| currently marketed as "low voltage" are usually 12 or 24
| volts.
|
| The constant current thing is true, but that's not a
| terribly difficult problem.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's complicated.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_voltage
|
| Depending on who you ask, the limit for low voltage DC
| might be 42 or 50 or maybe 60 or 120 or _1500_.
| yencabulator wrote:
| For example: the stairwell shin-height lights in this 90s
| house are 12 VDC. There's a transformer plugged into a
| wall outlet in the nearby storage closet.
| coryrc wrote:
| LEDs must be powered by a constant-current supply, and
| distribution does not work well at constant-current, and
| is always constant voltage. So no matter what you will
| need some sort of switching power supply.
|
| LEDs are like 15% efficient and power supplies are >95%.
| They just need to be separated slightly so the LEDs
| aren't heating the power supply. Most recessed LED
| lighting now has a separate junction box with the power
| supply.
| samtho wrote:
| > LEDs must be powered by a constant-current supply, and
| distribution does not work well at constant-current, and
| is always constant voltage. So no matter what you will
| need some sort of switching power supply.
|
| I think the biggest problem is that many cheap power
| supplies cycle at lower frequencies that cause flickering
| which is perceptible subconsciously. A modern switchmode
| power supply might operate in the 50-500khz range which
| will not cause perceivable flickers.
| int0x2e wrote:
| The really cheap stuff actually doesn't even have a power
| supply! There's a breed of LEDs that takes straight AC
| and rectifies it using the LEDs themselves. By using a
| large number of tiny LEDs in series (typically in COB
| form), you can easily reach close to 110v or even 220v,
| and then you add a small current limiting controller in
| series that's dirt cheap compared to magnetics... These
| are super cheap, and appear bright, but they flicker at
| 120hz, which can be annoying when there's motion or if
| you're sensitive to it.
|
| I'd say it's a very bad choice for a bedroom or living
| room light, but I have nothing against it for the outdoor
| lights, signage and a bunch of other applications where
| cost is king.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Branding matters. If your brand is a light that flickers,
| you might want to consider the old adage penny wise,
| pound foolish. As a consumer, why would I choose to shop
| at an establishment that has flickering lights when I
| could shop at a different one that did not? Unless of
| course, I had no choice.
|
| But then, a wise entrepreneur would recognize paying
| extra to have non-flickering signage would attract some
| customers.
|
| Flickering lights can induce migraines in susceptible
| people, so literally, saving a penny here actively drives
| away business.
| amluto wrote:
| I have a serious problem with it for outdoor lighting and
| signage: it gives me a headache. Enough exposure will
| make me feel actively sick. The effect is not subtle.
|
| Just don't use these devices, please.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| You're right though I want to mention the LEDs are also
| damaged by the heat, their color temperature will wander,
| lifetime will be reduced, and brightness per watt will
| also be reduced. Still useful for projects and areas
| where perfect lighting isn't as important.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Indeed. And, as another commenter pointed out, LED bulbs
| often overdrive the LEDs in order to maximize light
| output -- but doing so significantly decreases the
| lifespan of the LEDs themselves.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| >> I harvest the LEDs out of dead bulbs to use in hobby
| projects.
|
| This is a great idea and I would love it if you would
| post a Youtube how-to video. It might encourage a bunch
| of hobbyists to do something useful with those dead
| bulbs.
|
| I've had a number of LED's fail after only a year or two,
| in fact more quickly than the average incandescent bulb.
| Seems like it defeats the whole purpose of "upgrading"
| and in fact may be more of a downgrade.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The LEDs are surface mount (although big surface mount
| components, so not particularly difficult to work with).
| I desolder them with hot air (although you can totally do
| it with a soldering iron), then use them later as any
| other surface mount LED. I don't have access to YouTube
| right now, so can't search for you, but there are tons of
| videos covering how to desolder and solder surface mount
| components. I'd be willing to bet there are multiple
| videos covering this for LEDs specifically, too.
| xxs wrote:
| LEDs tend to be mounted on heat sinks, so de-soldering
| sort of sucks.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yeah, it's not as easy as if they were mounted on a
| normal PCB, but it's not really all that bad (using hot
| air, anyway).
| xxs wrote:
| Actually it's a terrible idea - those LEDs have been
| overdriven to hell and back, their luminosity and overall
| lifetime decreased.
|
| LEDs are super cheap. I bought few hundred pre-covid for
| $3.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Whether or not using them is a good idea depends on what
| you're using them for. I tend to use them for projects
| where none of that really matters.
|
| LEDs are indeed extremely cheap, but for me, the benefit
| is reducing the amount of electronic waste I produce, not
| cost-savings.
| smolder wrote:
| They're remarkably heat sensitive, especially cheap ones.
| Some bulbs would gladly run for 10 years in a room
| slightly above freezing temperature, but put them in a
| semi-enclosed fixture in a normal living space, and
| they're dead in a few months. Fully enclosed fixtures
| destroy them in no time, unless you buy really exotic
| bulbs with truly massive aluminum heatsinks, rated for
| high temp operating environments. I can't even find
| domestic suppliers for those, and had to order from
| China.
| xxs wrote:
| >Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power
| supply died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves.
|
| I have the exact opposite experience, virtually every
| single light bulb I have torn down - one LED (all in
| series) has a black dot, if I shorten it - it will 'work'
| again. The bulbs I have seen tend to drive the LEDs so
| hard that some of the latter fail, power supplies might
| have huge ripple but generally don't fail
| catastrophically.
|
| Edit: now thinking, it can be a US thing, with the
| voltage being ~120. Lower AC voltages means worse
| efficiency for the power supply (and all of them tend to
| be universal, unless totally cheapen out on the primary
| capacitor [250V] for the US market). Generally speaking
| low AC voltages have mostly disadvantages.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It could very well be more of a US problem. In the bulbs
| that I've torn down, they all have used a capacitive
| dropper power supply, and it's usually been the capacitor
| that failed.
|
| I have had lamps that lived long enough to see LED
| failures (the "black dot of death") but that's not the
| most usual failure mode that I've personally encountered.
|
| I've been considering following in the footsteps of Big
| Clive and modifying new LED bulbs to stop them from
| overdriving the LEDs, but my interest in doing that
| hasn't yet overcome my inherent laziness.
| titzer wrote:
| Your comment is just regurgitating tech specs. In reality,
| the bulbs that are at hand vary so much in quality, that tech
| spec discussions are almost useless. The flickering is a real
| issue. I'm not aware of any standard way of rating the
| flickering of LED bulbs; they can vary from really bad
| (literally dark 50% of the duty cycle because one stupid
| diode) to decent (bidirectional diodes), to very good (full
| voltage regulator).
| amluto wrote:
| It's not, though.
|
| First, this driver actually specifies flicker, and it has a
| credible number. Second, I own several and have tested
| them. Performance is excellent. It dims well, too. If you
| want a _crappy_ driver, you don't need to spend $25 for it
| :)
|
| Second, this LED chip is a serious one, with a serious data
| sheet, intended for people building their own fixtures.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Where exactly would you mount a light like the one you
| linked?
|
| 10 hours per day sounds like a crazy amount of time to use a
| light. I think we use some lights in our house maybe 4 hours
| per day on average max. Maybe I just have a lot of windows
| and don't live in Alaska in the winter.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _10 hours per day sounds like a crazy amount of time to use
| a light._
|
| I think the Alaska point is close. Yet even in (for
| example) southern Canada, the sun just doesn't get high
| over the horizon in winter. So you have 7 hour days, but
| those days are mostly dim and dark.
|
| Even without clouds.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Sounds depressing. That's how I feel when days are like
| that
| fzzzy wrote:
| It is.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I'm in Oregon, just about on the 45th parallel. Not
| nearly as far north as some people, but winters can be
| pretty hard light-wise, and SAD is a bitch. I really
| should move to Arizona or Mexico in the winter.
|
| On the other hand, summers are spectacular.
| amluto wrote:
| On a nice piece of thick metal, with heat sink compound,
| aimed at a reflector or diffuser?
| bbarnett wrote:
| https://www.hydroquebec.com/data/documents-
| donnees/pdf/annua...
|
| Sadly, with San Fran anywhere from 4.5x, or more than where I
| live (Quebec), and with LED products lastly barely longer
| than incandescent bulbs, it is typically a loss.
|
| Maybe a 5 year warranty on LED bulbs should be a law, to
| ensure better quality control and build. The competitors can
| compete around that requirement.
| charrondev wrote:
| To be fair in Quebec we have what is probably the cheapest
| electricity cost in all of North America.
|
| I've had the dimmable coloured hue bulbs for a while and
| while expensive I can say none have ever died on me in ~5
| years. Certainly no flickering.
| megous wrote:
| Heatsink costs?
| amluto wrote:
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/led-thermal-
| produ...
|
| A whole fixture with nice components like this is not
| cheap.
| ljf wrote:
| I would agree - BUT try 'Edison style' warm leds - these use
| the filament style.
|
| They last for YEARS, and give a soft warm light - the bulbs I
| have a dim (but then 'Edison style squirrel cage bulbs have
| always been dim).
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons
|
| > Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons
|
| Can you elaborate? What does "hard" mean here, I don't
| understand.
| dboreham wrote:
| Placed under operating conditions very close to their
| specified limits.
|
| Like if you were to drive your car in 2nd gear on the
| freeway, at 6000rpm. The engine would wear out much quicker
| than if you drove in 5th gear, at 1500rpm.
| elzbardico wrote:
| In most cases, they are run too hot with barely adequate heat
| dissipation.
| userbinator wrote:
| At the limits of their ratings. They _could_ make LED bulbs
| last many orders of magnitude longer and be more efficient,
| but they don 't (unless forced to[1]) because they prefer
| planned obsolescence.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793
| organsnyder wrote:
| I've been installing Kauf brand smart-bulbs, which come
| pre-flashed with ESPHome for integration with Home
| Assistant. Some of my earlier bulbs failed, and I recently
| noticed that the founder of the company commented on the
| issue and said he specced a more robust capacitor after
| early failures: https://github.com/KaufHA/kauf-rgbww-
| bulbs/issues/31#issueco...
|
| I haven't contacted them for replacements yet, but seeing
| their comment makes me much more likely to purchase them in
| the future, despite my early issues.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Thanks! Having flashed esphome to smartbulbs the hard
| way, ootb support sounds lovely.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Aside from the quality issues with that first batch,
| they've been great.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Thank you for making me aware those exist. I have a mix
| of Hue & cheap Walmart color wifi bulbs. The Hue bulbs
| are undoubtedly much high quality (in both output &
| reliability) but you pay for it. The Walmart ones are 1/5
| the cost, but very hit & miss on whether you can easily
| flash tasmota/esphome - and there is no way of knowing
| until you try because of newer firmwares being shipped in
| the same packaging.
| jsheard wrote:
| More recently Philips has started selling the Dubai-style
| bulbs worldwide, branded as the "Ultra Efficient" range.
| They're expensive though, as you'd expect.
| swimfar wrote:
| Are you sure those are the same bulbs? The ultra
| efficient versions sold on Amazon have reviews going back
| to 2017. Supposedly the Dubai-style bulbs were only
| available in Dubai even a few years ago.
| jsheard wrote:
| The Ultra Efficient series only just launched in
| November: https://www.signify.com/en-gb/our-
| company/news/press-release...
|
| There must be some kind of listing error on Amazon, maybe
| an old listing being repurposed without clearing the old
| reviews.
| userbinator wrote:
| I believe BigClive did a video on those, and while they
| did indeed use more LEDs for improved efficiency, they
| also had a more complex and thus failure-prone driver
| than the original Dubai ones.
|
| In other words, more efficient, but not longer lifespan.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or because, as with many products and services, many people
| go into Home Depot or wherever and buy whatever is cheapest
| --especially in a world where higher price does not
| necessarily equate to higher quality or longer life.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > especially in a world where higher price does not
| necessarily equate to higher quality or longer life.
|
| There's the kicker; how can you tell when something is
| better quality anymore? Qualifiers like "is this device
| run at max capacity or is there leeway" are never listed
| on packaging or product features.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's often hard to know, especially for items you're not
| going to individually research in great depth, whether
| you're actually paying for quality or for a name on the
| package even though it actually came off the same
| assembly line in China as any number of knock-offs. And,
| even if it is higher quality by some standard, does that
| really affect consumer outcomes?
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I do not, nor will I ever, excuse penny-pinching by
| companies by agreeing that they're forced to do it
| because people will always buy the cheapest thing they
| can. It's trotted out as the lame excuse for bag check
| fees and other declining flying services, cheap consumer
| goods, cheap electronics, you name it.
|
| To accept the premise is to believe that anything made of
| quality will never get bought/used which is manifestly
| not the case. And it strangely completely ignores the
| incentives companies have to make things as shitty as
| possible, namely lower expenses and planned obsolescence.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| The problem is evaluating quality before purchase.
| There's not a great way of expressing the sorts of
| factors that differentiate between good and bad LED bulbs
| that consumers can easily understand, let alone anything
| to encourage different manufacturers to use the same
| measurements. If the consumer can't tell what is quality,
| what's to get them to spend the money for it?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >To accept the premise is to believe that anything made
| of quality will never get bought/used which is manifestly
| not the case.
|
| I disagree. It is a ratio of quality to price. People
| have different opinions about what the acceptable minimum
| ratio is, and it varies by product, and by time. For
| example, many people find Costco to hit the right ratio
| most of the time.
|
| For example, I have been using LEDs and dimmable LEDs
| from soft white (~2700K) to cool white (~4000K) with no
| problem, all purchased at Home Depot/Lowes/Costco. Some
| have failed earlier than anticipated, but nowhere near
| enough to cancel out the cost savings.
| ghaff wrote:
| And it's a matter of individual consumer priorities.
|
| Some consumers will happily pay for business class
| seating on planes. Others will generally overlook
| inconvenience and less comfort if they can save $50.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, another example is clothing. I have no interest in
| buying high quality clothing that I have to spend time
| taking care of. I want whatever lasts longest, while
| still being able to throw in the washer and dryer on
| default settings without having to separate colors.
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| 100 years of training make most people think of light bulbs
| as a trivial purchase. And now a product that cost $0.50 20
| years ago is $10, and often performs worse for its purpose.
|
| So the economics just drive cost down no matter what. And
| even a picky consumer is hard pressed to get what he wants
| when you go to the bulb aisle at Lowe's. They literally went
| from 10 SKUs to 250, with no meaningful standards.
| paulrpotts wrote:
| This is my biggest barrier to finding decent bulbs. The
| search engines on sites like homedepot.com offer very
| little help, especially since they always show promoted
| items higher in the results, even if they don't match any
| keywords I put in my search. Then, if I do find what looks
| like the right thing, they're invariably out of stock
| everywhere.
| VLM wrote:
| The e-waste issues of having to replace entire LED units every
| two to three years are worse than replacing an old fashioned
| bulb every decade.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Agreed the e-waste issues are real, but how did you get
| incandescents to last 10 years? I replaced every dang one
| after 12 months or less, every time.
| Majromax wrote:
| > how did you get incandescents to last 10 years?
|
| As a general answer, dimming. Incandescent bulbs are
| fantastically sensitive to applied voltage; Wikipedia's
| article on the subject
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamp_rerating) notes that
| bulb lifespan is inversely proportional to the applied
| voltage to the fourteenth power or so.
|
| In an ordinary home you can't directly reduce the supply
| voltage, but dimming a higher-rated bulb will get you
| somewhere in the ballpark through a reduction in the duty
| cycle.
|
| However, this comes at the expense of luminous efficiency.
| Reducing the applied electrical power reduces the filament
| temperature, and the black-body spectrum of a lower-
| temperature filament has proportionally more output in the
| infrared region.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Gotcha, thanks!
| golem14 wrote:
| Putting them on a dimmer and running at 90% hugely
| increases lifetime
| knodi123 wrote:
| my grandma's incandescent nightlight has lasted 35 years
| and counting. (it's a special bulb, and runs at a very low
| wattage- perhaps under-spec?)
| hedora wrote:
| I didn't hit many of these issues (our house has 100% LED
| bulbs, from different manufacturers).
|
| I made sure they were all the same color temperature, and also
| all >> 90 CRI.
|
| The main issue I've seen is that dimmer switches are usually
| not compatible with the electronics in high-end fixtures, and
| that high-end fixtures often take a long time to power on.
| (Like, walk across the room and open the fridge amounts of
| time.)
|
| They should choose a standard way of dimming bulbs that doesn't
| result in noticeable 60hz flicker, and that dictates a max
| 100ms turn on latency, then ban the sale of "dimmer compatible"
| LED bulbs, or "LED compatible" dimmer switches that are not
| compliant with that standard.
|
| Also, bulb reliability should be tracked, and any product with
| a > 5% failure rate in the first 5 years should either be
| banned, or the company should have to put replacement funds
| into escrow.
|
| (Current bulbs have a ~ 5-10% failure rate from what I've
| seen.)
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| There are YouTube channels dedicated to repairing non-
| functional LED bulbs. In every case the issue is usually that
| one of n leds has failed, and if you solder a bypass then the
| remaining leds work fine. After that the only real problem is
| that all the adhesives used in the construction of the bulb
| more or less require that you destroy the bulb in order to get
| to the point you can repair or bypass the one LED.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| How much of this is driven by the actual cost of properly
| provisioning emitters and fielding a good power supply vs the
| inability of consumers to hold manufacturers accountable?
| mleo wrote:
| Does the average person remember the brand of lightbulb they
| purchased at Walmart or the hardware store? I would hope the
| buyers at stores would have better sense to buy half decent
| brand vs utter trash available through 3rd party sellers
| online. Not much hope though.
| reaperman wrote:
| What is "SSRI" in the context of LEDs?
| toby- wrote:
| I believe they meant SSI, which is Spectral Similarity Index.
|
| https://www.oscars.org/science-
| technology/projects/spectral-...
| Dave_Rosenthal wrote:
| A misspelling of "SSI", Spectral Similarity Index, another
| color accuracy metric.
|
| Basically the industry figured out how to win at the CRI game
| without actually creating the same underlying spectral
| distribution of light. So they same up with another metric to
| try to optimize called SSI (also TLCI, etc.) SSI is mostly
| relevant in the digital cinema space, where the observer is a
| digital camera, not a human eye, as they can't be tricked the
| same way because they have different underlying RGB spectral
| sensitivities.
| carride wrote:
| Primarily it is the E27 bulbs that are the problem. Designed to
| ease people into simple replacement into the old light sockets
| 10+ years ago. Now in 2023 the new LED products with the well
| designed power supplies work much better and efficiency. The
| author mentions renovations, but still using ancient fixtures,
| wiring and switches. A new house, or partial renovation, should
| now be wired with 24v for all wall and ceiling lights.
| gorkish wrote:
| > The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve
| with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices.
| Good indoor lighting is now something only people with plenty
| of disposable income can afford.
|
| Where? How? I can no longer buy quality LED lighting at any
| price. I have a bunch of Sylvania Ultra Sunset Effects bulbs
| purchased ~15 years or so ago that nothing since even comes
| close to.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| What's an example of what you consider to be a high quality
| led? I'm pretty happy with everything that I have in my home
| but I'm curious what you're talking about
| doitLP wrote:
| Check out https://www.waveformlighting.com/ for some very
| high quality LEDs and education about how they work.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I was about to order some of these when I realized their
| only shipping option to Canada is $70 CAD. Almost much
| doubles the price of a six-pack.
| _rs wrote:
| Sadly they don't sell dimmable bulbs (at least that meet my
| criteria: 2700-3000K, 60W equiv / ~800 lumens)
| brodouevencode wrote:
| I can't imagine paying $150 for a six pack, when Home
| Depot's private label LEDs are $12 for a six pack. I could
| replace it 10 times before I hit that mark - not sure it's
| worth that.
| basch wrote:
| that doesnt really fix the flickering problem.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| I had one room that had a flicker problem. Replaced the
| fixture (was going to do this anyway because The Wife
| Said So) and it went away. I guess that's why some of the
| complaints seem foreign to me.
| Kalium wrote:
| A lot of people, including this article, blame flickering
| on bulbs. Usually because introducing an LED bulb is what
| shows the issue.
|
| That the underlying issue might be the fixture, or in the
| older electrical system, is not always an intuitive jump.
| jdcarter wrote:
| I bought many of the Home Depot private label LEDs...and
| had to replace every single one of them. Outright
| failure, buzzing, flickering. They're just terrible. I've
| replaced them with Philips.
| Arubis wrote:
| If you told me you could make one room of my house
| consistently color-balanced with LED lighting that I
| would have no reason to hate, I would ball up a couple
| hundred dollar bills and throw them at you.
|
| (Edit: I'm also coming from buying Philips Hue bulbs for
| precisely this reason, so in fairness, it's not as big a
| price jump.)
| brodouevencode wrote:
| I have a few Hues and they are great, and last much
| longer. But in this house I cannot justify even that. In
| my kitchen/breakfast nook alone I have 10 lightbulbs plus
| an overhead flushmount.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Makes me think of this
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X-ZVOYwNLU
| doitLP wrote:
| Keep in mind: all LEDs leak blue light even the warm ones
| (color is achieved by average so you can have high red
| and high blue and it looks balanced visually). These
| bright blue leaking LEDs are great during the day --
| especially those with high CRI and R9 values. But not at
| night when you're trying to go to bed! Switch to
| incandescent only in the evenings until they figure out
| blue-less dimmable LEDs
| rini17 wrote:
| Not all, only white LEDs. You can use any cheap LED RGB
| strip without white components and set it to
| yellow/orange light with blue completely off. It has poor
| CRI though.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > ball up a couple hundred dollar bills and throw them at
| you
|
| this is why more and more businesses only accept cards.
| :-P
| lacrosse_tannin wrote:
| incandescent bulbs used to cost like $0.60 each
| zippergz wrote:
| And this is the exact reason that the market for good
| quality LEDs is so small. You care about price but not
| light quality (primarily CRI but also flicker and
| dimmability). That's fine, it's totally your decision to
| make. But the two products are incredibly far from
| equivalent.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I can't imagine sitting in a room with the color
| temperature of a gas station bathroom with random
| flickering and fading out every couple of years.
| reaperman wrote:
| They have several different warm LED's at Home Depot. You
| can generally find 2100K to 3000K. Sometimes even 1800K
| in the specialty bulbs there.
|
| They're not terrible, but the low CRI keeps me coming
| back to halogen.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| I have those HD bulbs. They are nowhere near as bad as
| what you just described.
| roughly wrote:
| I hear you, but I bought two waveforms just to try them
| out, and they're absolutely incredible. It's a shockingly
| better light than the $2 home depot light. It's the
| equivalent of going from an underpowered computer to one
| that's up to the job - you don't really notice how bad
| the old one was until you get something up to the task.
| electroly wrote:
| I recently replaced all my bulbs with Waveform Lighting
| bulbs. They're good but IMO overrated and overpriced, and
| their shipping prices are absurd. You can get high-CRI
| bulbs at Home Depot, it's just a matter of trying a couple
| until you find one that doesn't flicker (use your phone's
| slow motion camera) if you don't want to go the route of
| specialty bulbs. My Cree bulbs all flickered but my Philips
| bulbs did not; to my eye, there's no difference between the
| cheaper Philips bulbs and the much more expensive Waveform
| Lighting bulbs.
|
| One of my Waveform Lighting bulbs arrived defective, and it
| flickers all the time. I couldn't detect the Cree flicker
| with the naked eye but the defective Waveform bulb flickers
| visibly. Not sure if Waveform's QA is up to snuff.
| reaperman wrote:
| In contrast to the other child comment of this... Thank
| You!! Any additional suggestions for high quality LED's
| would be super appreciated. I'm still on mostly halogen
| lighting in my home. I keep trying to switch the LED's but
| for some reason with my vision, the low CRI of even
| "decent" LED bulbs make it so I feel like I can't actually
| see anything.
| Smrchy wrote:
| Check out https://www.occhio.com/en-lv/about-light/light-
| quality/outst... for some high end lights...
| [deleted]
| tourgen wrote:
| [dead]
| Bloating wrote:
| LTF: https://ltftechnology.com/sunlight2-dim-to-
| warm-3000k-to-180...
|
| Ketra was good, smart bulbs like Hue with an open API, but
| far better than Hue. Lutron bought them, killed the API and
| and proceeded to require inferior and costly priority
| controls
| justin66 wrote:
| Philips' Dubai lamps are really interesting (sorry about the
| goofy title on the video)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _- Poor CRI and SSRI_
|
| So having a minimum CRI of 80-90 is a good starting point,
| there are issues with the CRI measure itself:
|
| > _Ra is the average value of R1-R8; other values from R9 to
| R15 are not used in the calculation of Ra, including R9
| "saturated red", R13 "skin color (light)", and R15 "skin color
| (medium)", which are all difficult colors to faithfully
| reproduce. R9 is a vital index in high-CRI lighting, as many
| applications require red lights, such as film and video
| lighting, medical lighting, art lighting, etc. However, in the
| general CRI (Ra) calculation R9 is not included._
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index#Special_...
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index#Criticis...
|
| There are initiatives to come up with a better metric, but
| there doesn't seem to be much traction:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_quality_scale
| _rs wrote:
| > - It is quite difficult to even buy high quality LEDs as a
| mere mortal
|
| I'm going through this again now. At one point I found Philips
| EyeComfort bulbs on Amazon which checked all my boxes
| (2700-3000K, 60W, dimmable, almost non-existent flicker). I've
| had a couple bulbs die on me now, and I cannot for the life of
| me find replacements, it's like they stopped manufacturing
| them. I have no clue what to replace them with now
| xxs wrote:
| The same topic about LEDs has so many entries on HN in the
| recent years. I have posted about it a lot. To add to the list
| - low power factor (usually 50%). - cheap passives,
| caps/coils - terrible heat dissipation, e27/e14 are no
| good target, but see overdriven again - close to no input
| protection (see power supplies, again), so motors totally wreck
| them with their induction kickback
|
| OTOH, constant (not over)driven LEDs with dedicated power
| supplies (pref. isolated, so safer), with decent area, aluminum
| PCBs can last long.
|
| A cheap advice if you have to buy a retrofit LED bulb, buy the
| heaviest one, i.e. get a scale with (at least) gram precision
| and weight them. More mass - better heat dissipation, better
| passives.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| We're mostly on the same page, but there are some caveats to
| buying the heavier bulbs, even assuming the weight is all
| heat sink- because that won't matter if the heated air has no
| where to go!
|
| An expensive bulb with a nice heat sink will fail just as
| quickly as a cheap one when you put it in a well-sealed can
| light or something else that traps all the hot air.
| moogly wrote:
| To add a thing to the list: RF interference.
|
| I wanted to upgrade the super faint positional lights in my two
| garage openers, and I need to stay <= 10W, so I tried some
| LEDs. But they kill the 433 MHz remote signal, sadly. Tried 3
| different brands, a couple of which don't actually fully turn
| off, or give off a loud hum to boot.
|
| The openers use rear car light bulbs, for some reason (BA15s).
| roel_v wrote:
| "Good indoor lightning"
|
| Man I'd love me some indoor lightning, no matter the cost.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Tesla coils aren't _that_ expensive; go live your dreams:)
| shagie wrote:
| Your new stereo system, courtesy ArcAttack -
| https://youtu.be/6OdubOdFS-Y (DIY kit from them
| https://arcattack.com/kits-accessories/thundermouse-tesla-
| co... )
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Tesla_coil
| orangepurple wrote:
| Building a fire death machine using soviet military tech
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNisqZOAaAs
| jfrej wrote:
| You can get it in a bottle.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-93Ij5WIcok&t=28s
| xnx wrote:
| Quantity (lumens) is its own type of quality.
| sam_goody wrote:
| There is also IoT in some of these bulbs, especially the more
| expensive ones.
|
| That there is a huge turn off for me, even if I don't have a
| smartphone handy ;)
| twawaaay wrote:
| As an amateur EE, I have analysed some of LEDs when I wanted to
| light up my kitchen counters. I wanted flicker-free LEDs with
| high CRI and temperature matching the rest of my apartment.
|
| I ordered samples of a lot of LEDs and found that almost all of
| them are using their parts, especially capacitors, well above
| the specs.
|
| Driving caps at well above their specs, at high temperature,
| basically ensures speedy failure. Not only that, but undersized
| smoothing capacitor causes visible 100Hz flicker.
|
| What's even more interesting is at the price point putting
| better caps was almost inconsequential to the price of the
| product. I have ordered capacitors that should have been there
| in the first place and replaced the original ones with the new
| ones. Not only LEDs are flicker free now, I suspect they will
| be serving me for much longer.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >almost all of them are using their parts, especially
| capacitors, well above the specs
|
| Well, the LEDs themselves will last up to 20 years, so they
| have to make something in the bulb fail before that. Can't
| have people only buying replacement bulbs every other decade.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Not sure why you are being downvoted, when that is exactly
| what has happened with incandescent light bulbs one century
| ago:
|
| > How exactly did the cartel pull off this engineering
| feat? It wasn't just a matter of making an inferior or
| sloppy product; anybody could have done that. But to create
| one that reliably failed after an agreed-upon 1,000 hours
| took some doing over a number of years. The household
| lightbulb in 1924 was already technologically
| sophisticated: The light yield was considerable; the
| burning time was easily 2,500 hours or more. By striving
| for something less, the cartel would systematically reverse
| decades of progress.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy
| bombcar wrote:
| They've started marking LED bulbs as "not for enclosed
| fixtures" which is .... 90% of existing fixtures?
|
| They overheat and die really fast if used in something that's
| not vented/cooled. You need fixtures that fully expose the bulb
| so it doesn't burn itself out.
|
| Amusing that LED bulbs, the energy savers, die from excess
| _heat_.
| dawnerd wrote:
| And if you want enclosed rated bulbs there's not many
| choices. The GE ones I picked up flicker like crazy.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've taken to just replacing fixtures instead of trying to
| make bulbs work with existing, though I'm --> <-- this
| close to just throwing them all away and going back to
| kerosene lanterns and some incandescents.
| dawnerd wrote:
| That's what I did and the flickering didn't go away. I
| don't like the idea of buying fully integrated led
| fixtures though. Although I might just cave.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Is that because they are "downscaling" (totally made up term,
| IDK electronics) the energy coming into them?
| bombcar wrote:
| Part of it is that but part of it is just heat loss as the
| other reply mentioned.
|
| If you get an LED strip, the power supply itself can become
| warm; but even a LED with no voltage changing needed will
| warm up.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's because despite being far more efficient than
| incandescent they are still only about 30% efficient at
| producing visible light. The rest is heat, and unlike
| incandescent an LED does not want to be hot. The device
| must be cooled or it becomes less efficient and wears out
| faster. There is no good way to get the heat out of the
| front of the device because that's the side you are
| supposed to see, so in practice all the heat is removed
| from the back, i.e. the part inside the fixture.
|
| Other solutions to this include using much larger devices,
| but that costs proportionally more and has application
| issues because people want their light bulbs to act like
| either line or point sources, not as areal sources. So most
| lights on the market use a single small LED, unless they
| are targeted to a buyer demanding high efficiency and long
| life, like a city streetlight.
| nielsbot wrote:
| They're pricier but you can get LED bulbs that have better
| color rendering
|
| For example https://www.soraa.com/products/50-Soraa-
| VIVID-A19-(120v).php...
| smm11 wrote:
| They flicker, they die, and all at a more rapid rate that old
| school bulbs, despite the boxes saying they'll run 10 years or
| more. Ridiculous.
| bofaGuy wrote:
| LEDs also cause interference with WiFi and other radio signals.
| Found out after putting a LED bulb in my smart garage door
| opener.. which immediately went offline.
| its-summertime wrote:
| Feels like a different world to my experiences: while the cheaper
| lights we have are a bit more dim compared to what I'd like, we
| also have stupidly bright LED lights installed (really need to do
| a clean sweep and get all the sockets onto 1 kind), We also have
| dimmable downlights (some of the first LEDs in the house, due to
| water damage messing up the prior lights) which are dimmer than
| I'd like, but they were bought very early so I find that
| reasonable.
|
| But I really can't think of more than 1 or 2 failures over more
| than enough years.
|
| We still have florescent and incandescent, but I get the most
| useful lighting in a room with 5 LED lights and nothing else (and
| most of the time its actually kinda painful with how bright they
| are!)
|
| If I cared much about the flicker, I'd get a
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/test-equipment?sort=latest OpticSpy
| or Labrador, or something cheaper, and just go into a store with
| a light display and check each one.
|
| - - -
|
| > Apple's software will convert the image according to what it
| has machine-learned that white ought to be
|
| My old lexam camera apparently has machine learning built in too?
|
| Unlike my frustrating old camera, iPhones should be able to lock
| the white balance, exposure, et al, right? through which,
| comparisons can still be made.
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| >But I really can't think of more than 1 or 2 failures over
| more than enough years.
|
| It's bad luck for us. We've had at least 10 bulbs die within
| the past two years, at least half of which had been installed
| just months before. I'd guess they were a poor quality batch in
| the box we bought at Costco.
|
| Meanwhile, the Philips Hue led lights we bought ages ago are
| still working perfectly.
| rcarmo wrote:
| The piece lost me when it mentioned the LED flaking out with a
| dimmer. That's a well-known shortcoming of "average" LED bulbs
| (whose drivers cannot cope with the decreased peaks that come
| with a standard dimmer).
|
| Most of it felt like what things would be like if you had
| frequent brownouts or just a bad electrical setup.
|
| [edit]: tried again and stopped when it mentioned painting LED
| bulbs in amber varnish. I have RGBW LED strips, getting a
| "beautiful" tone is a solved problem.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Just some notes on LEDs for anyone having problems with dimmer
| switches:-
|
| - Make sure your dimmer switch is compatible with LEDs - ideally
| only compatible with LEDs, as sometimes the ones that also handle
| halogen bulbs can buzz
|
| - Make sure your bulbs are dimmable
|
| - The LED and dimmer switch need to either both be leading edge,
| or both be trailing edge (but almost all are trailing edge now)
|
| - If your bulbs are too dim, read the manual for your dimmer
| switch - there will be a series of pushes and twists to configure
| it and/or manufacture reset
|
| - Lights starting up slower than a normal on/off switch is normal
| - it's the bulb and dimmer "negotiating", and it makes them both
| last longer
| amluto wrote:
| > Lights starting up slower than a normal on/off switch is
| normal - it's the bulb and dimmer "negotiating", and it makes
| them both last longer
|
| Negotiating? Some dimmers might "adapt" and choose which style
| to be (leading or trailing edge), but most don't. I think the
| real issue is the startup time of the power supply, especially
| when starting dimmed and therefore getting a horrible waveform.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Watch the level of social disease spike once this becomes
| mandatory.
| sarusso wrote:
| I still can't find decent G4 LED bulbs.. Tried several from
| Amazon, they where alle terrible at color rendering (even if
| nominal CRI was ok-ish). Any suggestions?
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| I saw a linked article on that site that gives their LED bulb
| recommendations. Brightness, CRI, color temp, and value are all
| considered for various applications.
|
| https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-led-light-bulbs.ht...
| snvzz wrote:
| Engineered obsolesce.
| Dowwie wrote:
| I haven't had an LED bulb that didn't go out within less than a
| year of use, not even 300 hours.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| My peeve is with intermediate base bulbs. They forced ceiling
| fans to use them but it's nigh impossible to find suitable
| dimmable LEDs for them. I had a candelabra adapter short out and
| destroy a dimmer so that isn't an option either.
| wankle wrote:
| https://www.stouchlighting.com/blog/light-comparison-led-lig....
|
| "New LEDs can last 50,000 to 100,000 hours or more. The typical
| lifespan for an incandescent bulb, by comparison, is 1-5% as long
| at best (roughly 1,200 hours)."
|
| I've never seen more than 15000 hours from an LED bulb at best.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb
|
| "The chart below lists values of luminous efficacy and efficiency
| for some general service, 120-volt, 1000-hour lifespan
| incandescent bulb"
|
| I spent most of my life in incandescent bulb lighting and rarely
| remember changing a light bulb. LED bulbs I can remember changing
| multiple times in the last few years since we started using them.
|
| It's almost like there's a conspiracy to convince consumers
| incandescent lighting didn't last long which is odd given the
| following:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light#:~:text=The%2....
|
| "The Centennial Light is the world's longest-lasting light bulb,
| burning since 1901, and almost never turned off."
| zaroth wrote:
| The lifespan on incandescent isn't a conspiracy. Cheap bright
| incandescents don't last very long.
|
| The centennial light was neither cheap or bright - presently
| it's about the strength of a 4-watt nightlight. You put enough
| power through a thick filament it will glow for a very very
| long time, but no one wants to illuminate their house that way!
| treffer wrote:
| It is not a conspiracy, it was a well known cartel that made
| light bulbs horrible:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
|
| The 1200h are slightly above the 1000h target put in place by
| the cartel.
| ClarityJones wrote:
| My understanding - which may be wrong - was that long-life
| bulbs used more electricity to operate and that the
| efficiency gains of a 1,000/hr bulb reduced the overall cost.
|
| So, making up numbers, a 2,500 hour bulb may cost $5 to
| replace and would incur $20 of electricical charges for a
| total cost of $25 or 1 Cent/hr. Meanwhile, 1,000 hour bulbs
| would cost $10 ($4 * 2.5) while incurring $10 of electrical
| charges for a cost $20 or 0.8 Cent/hr... even factoring in
| the cost of having to replace the bulbs.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's still happening to LEDs as well. Big brands are over
| driving LED chips, degrading their lifespan significantly.
|
| The story of the Dubai bulbs show that the industry could
| easily make bulbs that last (even) longer, but there's no
| money in selling products you'll never need to replace.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It lasts long because it's not turned off. When an incandescent
| bulb turns on the filament shakes violently.
| Crusoe123 wrote:
| My experience is opposite of yours. I have not yet had to
| change an LED light in the last 8-9 years since I started using
| them and replacing incandescent ones in my apartment. On the
| other hand I remember changing incandescent ones quite often
| and using up all the surplus ones I had after I started the
| transition to LED.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Yeah ~10 years of LED bulbs and I've never replaced one. I've
| moved multiple times and brought my bulbs with me. Used to
| have a drawer with a bunch of incandescent ones ready to go
| because it was a regular occurrence.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I've seen it go both ways, at least for LEDs.
|
| My house came with installed LED bulbs that were absolute shit.
| Within a year all the can lights eventually would turn a
| purpley dim color and slowly all started to fail within the
| same time and would fail to turn on. Same thing with the
| smaller fixtures - all started to fail around the same time.
|
| Each time one failed I replaced it with a higher quality LED
| and every bulb has now been replaced. Most lights I've only
| replaced once and it's been 6-7 years at least for many of them
| without any problems.
|
| Previously I used to use incandescent lights and replacing them
| was a frequent occurrence and just an expected thing to
| maintain.
| jrumbut wrote:
| That's funny, I remember going through incandescent bulbs
| pretty quickly. I always knew where the extra light bulbs were
| in the house and they were a not-uncommon grocery list item.
|
| It's been a long time since I thought of that. I don't keep
| spare bulbs around anymore and can't remember the last time an
| LED bulb burnt out.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. It's not like changing incandescent bulbs was a weekly
| occurrence for me but it was certainly not at all a rare
| occurrence.
| bobbyasdfasdf7 wrote:
| [dead]
| IshKebab wrote:
| You're buying terrible bulbs if you've _never_ seen one last
| 15k hours. Just buy some reputable branded bulbs (e.g.
| Phillips) rather than no-name cheapo crap from Amazon.
|
| I can't really remember how long incandescent bulbs lasted,
| given that it's been over a decade since anyone in the EU used
| them... But good LED bulbs last plenty long enough.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > I've never seen more than 15000 hours from an LED bulb at
| best.
|
| With the LED bulbs at our home (many of which have failed!),
| the problem is always the inverter. They just start flickering
| wildly and inconsistently one day, which is never pleasant, and
| they need to be replaced. It's frustrating because when the
| LEDs have stable power, they can produce just as much
| brightness as before, but their integrated power-conversion
| circuitry sucks in reliability.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I wonder if it'd be worth it to centralize the inverter...
| wankle wrote:
| gjsman-1000's point and yours make sense and somewhere on
| the page it was suggested to start running DC power just
| for LED lighting in homes. Until then, our new plan is to
| use LED light strips and stop buying LED bulbs. The idea is
| that the strips have an external power supply so I'm hoping
| the LED's will have the lifetime they deserve.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| This is where the idea meets the real world implementation.
| Yes, LED's can last longer, but the additional electrics used
| to convert from house-hold AC power can't.
| 01100011 wrote:
| For me, LED bulbs have a failure curve like any other
| electronic device: high level initially and quickly levelling
| off to zero. I've probably had... 10% of my bulbs purchased in
| the last decade or so go back to the store because they've
| either failed or started flickering. Outside of that, I have
| zero failures after having the bulb for a month or two. I have
| a box of bulbs and some of them are bulbs I bought years ago
| and pulled out of my house when I moved, and I've used them at
| various apartments since. Still going great.
|
| Edit: one other thing, I'm also sensitive to the cooling needs
| of LEDs, so maybe that helps. At my last apartment, I had the
| 'ceiling boob' style built-in fixtures which didn't allow
| proper airflow for the LED. I built a little spacer and got a
| longer mounting rod to allow a 1/8" gap around the bottom,
| central hole and the top edge of the glass. That kept the LEDs
| cool and wasn't noticeable.
| dashundchen wrote:
| I think just like CFLs and incandescents before, quality is going
| vary and people will need to stick to a brand that works. I've
| had a lot of success with Cree light bulbs. They seem to have
| much better light quality than some of the hardware store brands.
|
| They definitely cost a bit more, but I had one fail 5 years out
| and I was able to call Cree up for a replacement. The rep
| collected a few questions - model, when it was bought and what
| type of room and fixture it was installed - and then sent me a
| new one. Despite being a different model, it matched the temp and
| tone of the old set of bulbs.
|
| I empathize with the author, but at the end of the day, a lot of
| people seem completely unaware of lighting to begin with. Walk
| down a US street at night and look inside, you'll see clashing
| warm and cold color temperatures in the same room, sterile cold
| bulbs in entryways and living rooms, dreaded boob light
| everywhere.
| basch wrote:
| I have "Is It Snappy?" on my phone, and before I buy any bulbs
| or fixtures I check to see how badly they flicker. Walking down
| the Home Depot or Menards lighting isle and taking video of
| each fixture, there is infinite variation, and not always tied
| to price.
|
| By being conscious and careful, I believe I've managed to have
| a pretty flicker free house. Cree has always been my go to non
| smart bulb, but I have not purchased any (I guess other than
| dimmable cans) since their acquisition. I was not impressed
| with their smart ecosystem and returned all of it. The software
| wasn't ready and the firmware was glitchy.
|
| Another thing mentioned not mentioned in the article, is how
| bad light looks to pets. Dogs can see the flickering, and with
| one previous fixture that is now gone, I noticed the dogs
| getting more anxious when the light was on. They didn't like me
| moving at them suddenly. I can only imagine how choppy the
| light made the world to them. Imagine a world where to everyone
| else things look fine, but to you everything is strobing.
|
| A small link dump of resources I found on hn over the years.
|
| https://optimizeyourbiology.com/light-bulb-database
|
| https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Pages/LEDCompatibilityTool/Comp...
|
| http://www.ledbenchmark.com/
|
| http://sle.se/michael/led/
|
| https://www.derlichtpeter.de/en/light-flicker/market-tests/
|
| http://fastvoice.net/led-testberichte/
|
| https://gembared.com/blogs/musings/the-best-daytime-white-li...
|
| And Light Brands / Shopping
|
| https://www.yujilighting.com/
|
| https://www.waveformlighting.com/
|
| https://bedtimebulb.com/
|
| https://brightgreen.com/
|
| https://www.ledlightexpert.com/
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Wanted to give a tentative endorsement to Cree. I bought a box
| of LEDs at the hardware store and about a third of them failed
| early. I wanted to spend good money on good product; Cree is
| well-regarded, and so far (a few months) I've been way happier
| with their bulbs than the cheap stuff.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Cree has been good to me so far. Haven't actually had one
| fail yet, though I've had a few of the lesser brand ones
| (Feit, from Costco, mostly) fail. As they go, I replace with
| Cree.
| stevage wrote:
| Strange. I live in Australia, where incandescents were banned
| years ago. I have noticed literally none of these supposed
| issues. I never see LED lights flickering or making weird colours
| or humming or anything.
| roflyear wrote:
| Incandescent bulbs are used for other things than light. Like
| heating sometimes. Specific applications but I wonder if you'll
| still be able to get them?
| blakesterz wrote:
| Someone is, or at least was, doing just this. Selling them as
| "heaters":
|
| https://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/09/27/1351242/selling-inc...
| dboreham wrote:
| You can still buy the "IR" red light bulbs. Search under
| chicken heating. Also there are "non-bulb" things now that fit
| into a light bulb socket but are just resistive heaters. Also
| search under chicken coop supplies.
| gtk40 wrote:
| We have a pet tortoise that we use incandescent flood bulbs to
| heat and provide light. The only consistent place we can find
| them is at a small mom and pop hardware store (similar to the
| reference in the article). I just checked our supply and they
| have a weird import sticker and have text in multiple
| languages.
| roflyear wrote:
| Haha, well makes sense I guess!
| dghughes wrote:
| Easybake toy ovens used incandescent bulbs to bake brownies.
| goalieca wrote:
| I live somewhere that snow on traffic lights can be a problem.
| Same with headlights and tail lights.
| alden5 wrote:
| one application where led's won't work at all is oven lights.
| Nobody makes an led oven light because they're required to
| withstand really high temperatures, glass enclosed
| incandescents can handle the heat just fine while led's just
| melt.
| twoodfin wrote:
| The hidden, diffuse social & economic cost of forgoing a carbon
| tax.
| apienx wrote:
| It went like this in the EU: "Bulk purchasing of incandescent
| bulbs was reported ahead of the EU lightbulb ban. Many retailers
| in Britain, Poland, Austria, Germany and Hungary have reported
| bulk purchasing,[126][127][132][133][134] and in Germany, sales
| rose by up to 150% in 2009 in comparison to 2008.[125] Two-thirds
| of Austrians surveyed stated they believe the phase-out to be
| "nonsensical", with 53.6% believing their health to be at risk of
| mercury poisoning.[135] 72% of Americans believe the government
| has no right to dictate which light bulb they may use.[136] Czech
| Republic President Vaclav Klaus urged people to stockpile enough
| incandescent bulbs to last their lifetime.[137]"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_li...
|
| From my understanding, the ban will start somewhere around Q4
| this year. Still, you'll always be able to buy them for
| "decoration purposes".
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| Seems like a great time to start designing space heaters that
| accept 10-20 E27 incandescent 'heating elements'. (Well, until
| this is banned too.)
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Back then LEDs were still quite a bit worse, so I got some
| spare incandescents too. I still have about 20 bulbs somewhere
| that I got for cheap as retailers were emptying their
| inventories. I have switched almost all lights to Ikea Tradfri
| bulbs that are controlled via Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant
| and I wouldn't go back. I still have an incandescent bulb in
| one lamp, but the Ikea ones set to the right temperature are so
| close I don't think I could tell them apart.
| account42 wrote:
| > From my understanding, the ban will start somewhere around Q4
| this year. Still, you'll always be able to buy them for
| "decoration purposes".
|
| They are very efficient heat bulbs after all.
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| As we continue to shift our primary motivation for creating
| products away from what is best for the consumer towards what is
| best for an artificially determined goal we will increasingly see
| the compounding secondary effects of those choices.
| elil17 wrote:
| The "artificially determined goal" here is not roasting
| ourselves alive in 50 years, which I for one think is a better
| goal than "satisfying consumer preferences."
| fifticon wrote:
| let's also not forget maximizing shareholder value, if only
| for a brief beautiful moment.
| jwestbury wrote:
| I believe that "not creating an uninhabitable environment" is
| probably best for the consumer, yes? Surely, if you are posting
| on hn, you are aware that people do not always make the best
| decisions for themselves in the long term, and that putting
| guard rails in place is a good mechanism to prevent us from
| accruing (technical|environmental) debt?
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| [flagged]
| uranium wrote:
| One thing I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere is that the energy
| savings of LEDs may not actually be what you expect. We heat our
| home something like 330 days of the year. If we use LED bulbs
| instead of incandescents, we just have to run the gas furnace
| more to make up for the "saved" heat energy.
|
| Add in the fact that LEDs have a much higher embedded energy of
| manufacture, and the fact that they seem to last a lot less than
| the 10 years they're specced for, and switching my house to LEDs
| appears to have increased our carbon footprint. Plus now we're
| using more heavy metals and such in circuit boards. Aaaaand the
| light sucks.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Depending on how warm your summers are, LED bulbs will reduce
| the amount of air conditioning you need.
| bmacho wrote:
| Of course. It's the market and negative selection. The companies
| that accidentally made long-lasting LED bulbs all went bankrupt.
|
| Governments (or other non-profit organizations) should create
| light bulbs, for the people, and not for the stockholders.
| timbit42 wrote:
| They should have advertised they were long-lasting and charged
| more.
| daneel_w wrote:
| I've been surprised several times the past decade by how many
| people just don't notice the poor quality of light with low CRI,
| that the light is "hollow" and missing a chunk in the red/yellow
| part of the spectrum. Thankfully LED bulbs are getting better,
| and a lot of affordable offerings these days hover around 90 CRI.
| Same goes for the problem with indirect flickering, which the
| past few years have mostly gone away thanks to producers finally
| spending two cents more per bulb to fit them with adequate
| capacitors.
| jwie wrote:
| We can only imagine what the lightbulb world would look like if
| the Phoebus cartel didn't hamstring R&D.
|
| Some might be tempted to believe that we'd have discovered what
| technology they suppressed, but they are insufficiently
| pessimistic. Technology gets worse all the time, and lightbulbs
| are a great example of that happening on purpose.
| V__ wrote:
| Technology Connection had a video about how hard it is to find
| LEDs which have a more classically warm appearance these days:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvVnOxb1AI
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| I hate how many of these things aren't limits of the technology
| but rather the result of cost optimization and general apathy
| towards the customer. We know how to mass-produce quality LEDs to
| the point entire TVs are made of the things. We know how to mass-
| produce rectifiers pretty much ever since diodes existed. We know
| how to cool mass-produced objects in compact spaces. But because
| we apparently can't have nice things, we don't get the product of
| all that knowledge; instead we get whatever cost optimized
| bullshit gets shat out of a factory run by MBAs.
|
| This same reasoning is why I'm not bullish on AI; what the
| potential is and what we peasants get to use are vastly different
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _rather the result of cost optimization and general apathy
| towards the customer_
|
| Apathy _towards_ the consumer, or _by_ the consumer? I don't
| think I'm alone when I say that I just buy name brand LED bulbs
| (usually Phillips) in the color temperature of my choice and am
| completely satisfied with them. Color rendition is fine, no
| noticeable flicker, long lifetime. In the past 7 years I
| haven't had any fail prematurely, though I've replaced some
| early to change color temperature.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| > the result of cost optimization and general apathy towards
| the customer
|
| aka capitalism? People prioritize price over quality, but you
| can't make something better the cheaper it gets. So in an open
| and "fair" competitive market, all goods and services get
| shittier over time. It's a race to the bottom.
| markdestouches wrote:
| > This same reasoning is why I'm not bullish on AI; what the
| potential is and what we peasants get to use are vastly
| different
|
| It's not peasants who's gonna use AI, it's the elite. Peasants
| are gonna get nothing.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| This is a trend that has spread into every aspect of
| specifically American society.
|
| Items have been replaced with poorer quality versions, and the
| originals become incredibly expensive or impossible to find.
| Once the downsides of the new version become clear, you are
| left with obvious and uncounted inflation. It's a mixture of
| shrink-flation and planned obsolescence.
|
| Examples such as: 100% juice, window blinds, light-bulbs,
| furniture, vegetables (tomatoes, corn, etc), produce
| (specifically meat), buildings/building materials.
|
| Until one day you notice you are living in a fake house and
| eating fake food. And some guy who works for the fed says you
| have it better than ever because you have a microwave.
|
| Late stage capitalism started in the 80s.
| hinkley wrote:
| I can sell a million devices that cost me $4 apiece, or I can
| sell 1.5 million devices that cost me $3 apiece. That only
| stops if I have a competitor selling $4.60 bulbs that take away
| all of my customers.
|
| As long as we're all shoveling shit, nobody gets a whiff of
| fresh air.
| notatoad wrote:
| just because somebody decides to geek out about LED bulbs,
| does't mean all those stats that are theoretically measurable
| actually make a difference.
|
| the 4-for-$10 A19 LED bulbs from amazon or ikea are flicker
| free to my eyes. i've bought some fancy bulbs with big metal
| heatsink bases, supposed "high CRI" ratings, equivalently high
| price tags. to my eyes, i can't see the difference. the super-
| cheap bulbs from one of those amazon marketplace sellers with a
| randomly generated name are flickery, but just going up to
| anything other than the absolute bare minimum of quality is
| good enough. "what the peasants get to use" is because that's
| actually probably good enough for what us peasants need. if you
| want to geek out about super high-end LEDs, you're not going to
| find that in consumer-grade products and that's probably fine.
| _rs wrote:
| > are flicker free to my eyes
|
| Very rarely will bulbs visibly flicker in my experience. What
| happens instead is after several hours I'll start to get
| headaches and feel fatigue without knowing exactly where it's
| coming from. Since I replaced my Hue bulbs (which flicker,
| and I proved it by just using my smartphone camera even) I've
| felt so much better at home
| elcritch wrote:
| I second the A19 and other bulbs from Ikea. I live right
| next to an Ikea and it turns out their bulbs are pretty
| good. Even the housing feels better than Phillips or
| others.
|
| I used to have an expensive Phillips light alarm and it
| flickered like no other. Especially if you lower the
| dimming you'll tend to see more flickering or just notice
| an "ick" feeling with crappier bulbs.
| notatoad wrote:
| >which flicker, and I proved it by just using my smartphone
| camera even
|
| all bulbs have some flicker, and the fact that it resonates
| with your phone screen's refresh rate or your camera
| sensor's sample rate doesn't really mean anything.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35372444 - it's fine, but
| I'm trying to prune things so the thread isn't so top heavy.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| The problem is, as always, the MBAs.
| dyno12345 wrote:
| it doesn't take a degree to figure out when consumers are
| only comparing prices when shopping
| rusk wrote:
| It's not MBAs place to set public policy though is it? If
| it's the MBA's fault at all it's because they're doing their
| job which is optimising the product to the market. If the
| markets not optimising the right things then that's a failure
| in the market. Maybe the market is being manipulated somehow
| has it was for the old incandescent bulbs - but that's not
| necessarily the fault of the management tier ... some
| economise regulate for consumer value ... some for profit
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| The problem is that people have a limited amount of caring
| and markets are really good at taking advantage of consumer
| ignorance. If you care about color rendering but don't know
| what color rendering is, you can't shop for it (and if you
| do know what it is you can't shop for it if it's not on the
| spec sheet).
| mcronce wrote:
| > if you do know what it is you can't shop for it if it's
| not on the spec sheet
|
| This drives me _absolutely insane_. When we were shopping
| for a TV for the living room a few years ago I wanted a
| 120Hz display. Finding one was a pain in the ass because
| all anybody wanted to list in marketing material was the
| backlight strobe rate; you had to dig and dig to find the
| panel rate.
|
| No, I don't care that you can flash the backlight at a
| thousand Hz, I want an actual panel that's well
| synchronized with 24FPS content, and I don't want to
| spend hours of research to figure out which displays have
| one.
| rusk wrote:
| Sounds like issues that could be solved by some market
| regulation - rules about labelling - etc etc but to many
| that would be tantamount communism
| raintrees wrote:
| Instead of force, maybe voluntary? Publish/promote a set
| of standard measurements for consumers, then let
| consumers drive the manufacturers. "The Market" will
| follow the consumer if the consumer is strongly inclined
| about its desires - I think we have seen this play out in
| other consumer electronics niches...
|
| When I was a teen, I wanted an alligator on my shirt, and
| not too long after I started seeing simulacra shirts...
| Enough of a demand for more than one entity to mimic
| it...
| kansface wrote:
| Yeah, I'm back to wanting a curated shopping experience.
| I don't want the cheapest thing. I don't want multiple
| options- thats worse than nothing. I don't want to worry
| about counterfeits or knockoffs. I don't want to do
| research, consult the relevant /r and then look through
| comment history to see who is paid to say what. I want a
| store to have an opinion and stock high quality stuff. I
| would happily pay a premium to offload decision making.
| roughly wrote:
| It remains the case that you don't discard your identity as
| a person or personal responsibility when taking a job
| somewhere, and the purpose of an MBA for the last 40 years
| has been to produce crappier products for less money while
| charging consumers the same amount. It's not the MBAs place
| to set public policy, but it's also broadly an admission of
| some kind of serious cultural failure to say we need public
| policy to prevent a large group of people from stripping
| everything they get their hands on down to the studs for
| short-term gain, and it doesn't say great things about that
| group of people, either.
| [deleted]
| greggsy wrote:
| I have an MBA. It's not mine or any of my peer's jobs to
| provide crap products to ends users - thats up to
| shareholders to decide.
| Phlarp wrote:
| Pass that buck on down the line.
| SargeDebian wrote:
| How does that work? The head of engineering gets a unit
| cost reduction target and then they call some shareholders
| to come review some proposals for which option works best?
| Do they show up with a printed certificate showing they own
| at least one share?
| kube-system wrote:
| Public companies are required to hold annual meetings
| with shareholders where they vote for board members and
| bring up proposals. Shareholders may choose to vote for
| board member with views about managing the business that
| they agree with.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040315/what-can-
| sha...
| transcriptase wrote:
| It's your job to decide whether to make the world slightly
| worse and make an extra dollar, or maintain/improve quality
| while finding efficiencies elsewhere.
|
| The second option may be more difficult but let's not
| pretend there aren't companies that choose it and succeed.
| greggsy wrote:
| That's a very ignorant perspective.
|
| For me, it's rarely about efficiency, and almost always
| about improving outcomes for workers and users.
|
| Micromanaging efficacy to maximise profit is an
| economists job.
|
| If the general public wants a cheap, bad product, they
| can do so, but they rarely have the inside knowledge to
| discern quality. Marketing is responsible for telling
| miseducating them.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| So what would you say you _do_ here?
| Havoc wrote:
| Painfully broad generalisation
| verisimi wrote:
| They are poor by design! You want repeat customers of course!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's a variant of the Market for Lemons problem:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons>
|
| Discussed numerous times on HN:
| <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=market%20for%20lemons>
|
| To get a market for lemons, the following characteristics are
| required:
|
| - Nonuniform products or services with widely-varying quality.
|
| - Expensive quality assessment.
|
| - Poor information on relative quality, whether by distortions
| by sellers or lack of sophistication of buyers, or both.
|
| You find this all over the place, with one notable example
| being tech recruiting (which appears multiple times in the
| HN/Algolia search above).
|
| This is also a characteristic which leads to _worsening_
| product quality as _formerly niche_ markets expand. Bicycles,
| audio equipment, and electronics are classic instances of
| these. A larger market is inherently less sophisticated, and
| more easily distracted by spurious or irrelevant
| characteristics of products.
|
| Another tendency is for cargo-culting and fads to develop. That
| is, as products or services become more complex, a follow-the-
| herd mentality appears, where (apparently successful)
| influencers drive follow-on behaviour. Often, of course, the
| influencers and early-adopters themselves have a poor
| understanding or capability of distinguishing between high- and
| low-quality offerings. Given random selection, some will emerge
| as either successful or lucky over others.
|
| There are some mitigations. In the case of used-car markets,
| for example, the emergence of vehicle history services (e.g.,
| CarFax), reduces informational asymmetries. In the case of
| appliances, certification services (e.g., Underwriters
| Laboratories) and review organisations (e.g., Consumer Reports)
| aided greatly, as did uniform trade practices such as implied
| warrantee of fitness and generous return policies (both of
| which reduce buyers' risk).
|
| As for your assessment of AI's future market, that seems highly
| probable to me, and would greatly dampen actual positive
| prospects within the field.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| You can go buy high CRI, high quality bulbs right now. Nothing
| is stopping you.
|
| Here is one common vendor:
| https://store.waveformlighting.com/collections/a19-bulbs/
|
| The issue isn't that MBAs have cost reduced bulbs for no
| reason. The issue is that 95% of consumers will only choose the
| cheap bulbs, period. As a result, that's what gets produced at
| scale.
|
| > We know how to mass-produce quality LEDs to the point entire
| TVs are made of the things.
|
| They're not the same thing. Displays are optimized for specific
| R, G, and B color points. White LEDs are optimized for full,
| smooth spectrums.
| samsolomon wrote:
| Just chiming in to say that I'm a big fan of Waveform bulbs.
| That's what I've been buying for the last two years.
| nathan_jr wrote:
| Any ideas why waveform doesn't offer recessed lighting
| products? Is that a particular form factor that is difficult
| to support high quality output?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| One thing the NYMag article says is that CRI is not a very
| good measure of light quality. I'd love to read more about
| that on a technical level.
|
| _edit_ I learned a bit from a marketing blog article; CRI
| measures reflection of 8 spot colors but it leaves out some
| important parts of the spectrum, particularly deep red.
| https://www.waveformlighting.com/tech/what-is-cri-color-
| rend...
| TD-Linux wrote:
| Waveform Lighting bulbs have a great CRI and no camera
| visible flicker, but even they are overdriven/undercooled.
| I've already had one fail because of the PFC chip (I did an
| autopsy). They also don't have enough bulk capacitance to not
| flicker when other nasty loads are on the line.
|
| I did find these tables from Budget Light Forums handy for
| shopping, however the fact that you have to use these I think
| only reinforces the point of the article:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12jj1A6PNjHmWbFNu0FSi.
| ..
|
| https://optimizeyourbiology.com/light-bulb-database
| djmips wrote:
| > You can go buy high CRI, high quality bulbs right now.
| Nothing is stopping you.
|
| $200 Canadian (including shipping) for 6 bulbs is stopping
| me. $33 / bulb with no guarantee how long they will last.
| browningstreet wrote:
| As consumers are we really supposed to do a ton of research
| on _light bulbs_ and accept that we can 't run down to Home
| Depot and get some new bulbs when they go out in our house?
| egeozcan wrote:
| If you speak German there's always Stiftung Warentest:
| https://www.test.de/Lampen-im-Test-4436814-0/
|
| I pay them and they do the research. A very logical
| business model.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Which? magazine is an equivalent in Britain.
|
| https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/light-bulbs/article/how-
| to-b...
|
| (Both will be irrelevant for Americans, I have never
| noticed a multi-voltage bulb.)
| jsmith99 wrote:
| Which are great but they don't actually have any light
| bulb reviews, just advice.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| [dead]
| AceyMan wrote:
| THD by me doesn't even stock the CREE bulbs anymore, just
| the crappy FEIT generics.
|
| I had to drive all over town to find a specialty lighting
| store with some 'real' Sylvania brand. (But then found the
| supermarket across the street has Philips on the shelf.
| Oof.)
| dahfizz wrote:
| No, the lightbulbs at home depot are inexpensive and they
| work fine. On the other hand, if you care about CRI, then
| you can also google for high-quality bulbs with a good CRI.
| I don't really see a problem here?
| deelowe wrote:
| Not in my experience. It's always a crapshoot.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| The problem is that previously the low-effort default
| option was great, and now the low-effort default option
| is bad and to get the equivalent of the previous great
| default you must now spend a bunch of extra time and
| money. "Caring about CRI" is basically just caring about
| the human visual system working correctly, that shouldn't
| be some weird niche.
|
| Besides, I don't control the lighting decisions of every
| place I go that's not my own home. And many people might
| be impacted in tiny ways without even noticing (cf. the
| old research about fluorescent lighting in
| schools/offices impacting mood or concentration or
| whatever).
| mturmon wrote:
| > previously the low-effort default option was great
|
| You mean incandescents? I disagree, their efficiency is
| terrible ("space heaters that happen to glow"). And their
| lifespan was artificially limited.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Fair enough. But at least the light was good.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| The problem is I used to be able to spend a couple
| dollars on lightbulbs that consistently looked great and
| didn't require a ton of research or money. I've bought
| hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of high-end LED
| lightbulbs since moving into my new place last year, and
| the lighting here still looks like crap. Even with budget
| it's hard to get something that looks good. Finding
| something that dims without flickering, the issue with
| dimming not actually warming like mentioned in the
| article, trying to match color temperatures to actually
| look good, so many issues. I've tried to splurge and get
| good lights and good dimmers but I'm still not happy with
| how it's turned out. And if you go in any home or
| restaurant where they haven't dedicated substantial time
| and money into good lighting, things are downright
| painful these days. I desperately miss incandescent
| bulbs. I've been told by several people that I seem oddly
| sensitive to this, but it's a huge deal as far as I'm
| concerned.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Check out WAC lighting. You'll pay for the quality, but
| it's there. Work with a local lighting store to guarantee
| results. There are other high-end brands too, but WAC are
| very popular and what many high-end hotels and
| restaurants use.
| uxp100 wrote:
| I bought Feit lightbulbs at a big box home store (not the
| cheapest option). Half of the 6 I bought failed in 6
| months. The rest seem to be going strong at least...
| zaroth wrote:
| If you want nice things that engineers spent thousands of
| hours researching, designing, and tuning, you can do the
| research to find those brands and pay extra for them.
|
| Most people don't want to pay the premium and don't value
| the benefits that come with that premium.
| kleer001 wrote:
| Reddit's /r/buyitforlife 's 1.4 million subscribers and
| probably 10x as many people that visit without joining
| reddit and the subsequent similar population of people
| scraping that data and consuming the scraped data... I
| think they would disagree with you.
|
| That said, even if that's generously 100 million people
| that's a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the
| population of consumers that couldn't care less.
| trgn wrote:
| > Most people don't want to pay the premium and don't
| value the benefits that come with that premium.
|
| This is also called boiling the frog. People actually do
| care, but in the scheme of things, they'll accept it.
|
| The default lightbulb in the store 20 years ago had a
| tender warm light. The default lightbulb in the store
| today has garish light, or doesn't dim, or has that ugly
| plastic half cover. A real decline in quality of life.
| but sure, we can be dismissive about it, of course you
| can spend hours on the internet figuring it out (ignoring
| the fact that it took no effort whatsoever to get nice
| lighting before).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > you can do the research to find those brands and pay
| extra for them
|
| This is such a lie - no, you can't do the research. There
| are no reseatch papers conparing consumer products
|
| Doing the research means buying everything avaliable on
| the market and testing it yourself.
|
| Googling is not research, its choosing which SEO'd
| fraudulent article will lie to you today.
|
| Quality is going to shit, because there is no way to twll
| apart which item is qualify. The market is failing.
| zaroth wrote:
| I mean... just here in this comment section are
| suggestions for suppliers of premium LEDs that I would
| trust based on the karma rating of the people who posted
| the links.
|
| Googling for "premium LED high ratings 95 cri" or
| searching on Amazon definitely isn't going to work,
| because they will just send you to the highest bidder, or
| the most proficient scammer.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The comment section is great , but if I need to find out
| quality of a random consumer product, what is the chance
| I will find it in this comment section? like 1%?
| zaroth wrote:
| You go where the people who might know better talk about
| these things!
|
| AV forums for picking a TV or projector, cooking forums
| for picking a knife set, and HN, you know, for picking
| the contrast level of your <body> text.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| For most of my purchases, I cannot find any trustworthy
| content at all. This experience is shared by 90% of
| people I talk to
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| You could ask that question about every consumer product
| since the 90s.
| piuantiderp wrote:
| This is the tragedy of modern times in the West. Hard to
| get _anything_ quality without tons of research. Not even
| about the money, there 's just too much noise
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Yeah, just paying PS2000 fot an item does not mean you
| got anything quality - 90% chance you got scammed
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Yes, exactly. It's one thing to need to be an expert to
| find a diamond in the rough. It's another to not be able
| to guarantee you'll get a premium product by going to a
| reputable retailer and picking out an expensive whatever.
| That's the really frustrating part.
|
| I think the issue is that there are no more reputable
| retailers. Just amazon, which more than half the time
| isn't even amazon.
| gwright wrote:
| > This is the tragedy of modern times in the West.
|
| What does "in the West" mean here? Is the situation
| better outside "the West"? Is this really a modern
| "tragedy"? Caveat Emptor is not a new saying.
| michael1999 wrote:
| That's not entirely true. I guarantee that someone at Philips
| is tuning their drivers not just on manufacturing cost, but
| also to "optimize" lifetime. That you can pay a premium for
| less "optimized" drivers is as much about market segmentation
| as it is about BOM costs.
|
| As evidence, notice that Philips refuses to sell the Dubai
| lamp outside Dubai. They are designed for truly long
| lifetimes, and nobody at Philips want's that.
| michael1999 wrote:
| In SaaS this is considered normal. At least 15% of systems
| cost is the complexity of having different tiers of
| service, and selectively turning them on and off, and
| making sure the system is still coherent when intentionally
| crippled. These are real engineering expenses to make the
| product deliberately less functional.
|
| What fraction of Microsoft Windows engineering goes into
| the complexity of picking and combining the feature sets of
| Windows Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional,
| Enterprise, and Ultimate? It isn't 0.
|
| Engineering that is negative for user-value is routine in
| big business. It's a big part of what MBAs are for. It is
| such a counter-intuitive thing to do that it requires
| special training.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! Just ordered a light bulb from them to
| check them out against the standard crap I have around my
| house. Curious to see the results.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| The "VIVID" line by SORAA are also high-quality high-CRI LEDs
| with good cooling solutions, and they're available in things
| like MR16 GU10 for desk lamps with the "weird" bulbs with two
| little prongs. I got a cheap GU10 desk clamp lamp on Amazon
| and spent twice as much as the lamp itself (which came with a
| functional bulb) on the nicer bulb. The exact model was
| SM16GA-09-60D-930-03 if anyone is curious -- fabulous super-
| bright desk lamp that is very flood-y and covers a large area
| with a very small lamp head.
|
| But yeah, explaining to normal folks that they need $30-$60
| lightbulbs for every fixture in their home is basically a
| non-starter, but for me, I use this lamp every day and it
| should last a decade or more, so the value prop isn't bad,
| especially compared to spending $500 or so on something like
| a Humanscale "nice" desk lamp, which technically has much
| worse CRI and much lower output.
|
| We recently built our home and went with WAC recessed
| lighting in all the main areas, which was about a $15k
| premium over just using what the contractor wanted to use,
| involved a lighting design company (that was also purchased
| the fixtures from), and took a dozen+ hours of our time and
| input, but I think it was worth it in the grand scheme of how
| much we spent. I personally can't stand hanging out at
| peoples houses where they have mismatched lights or just very
| poor lighting; it kills any interior design niceties and
| makes you really realize how much lighting affects the
| general feeling of indoor spaces.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The issue is that 95% of consumers will only choose the
| cheap bulbs, period.
|
| Because the big box stores (Walmart, Home Depot or whatever)
| don't carry expensive stuff with Cree LEDs and solid cooling
| designs. They carry whatever shit they can get their hands on
| for as cheap as possible.
|
| And most consumers don't know better, the 1% of consumers
| that _does_ know orders from Amazon and prays for not getting
| ripped off by counterfeiters.
| oezi wrote:
| The primary issue is that the 'good' bulbs cost 4x but are
| only 30%-50% better.
|
| It is a clear ripoff.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| As a side point, the bulbs from the link you shared might be
| of good quality but very, very low power by my standards. In
| order to work comfortably I need "200W replacements", not
| 40W-60W. This has enormous influence on my mood in winter
| months, probably people in warmer climates care less.
| vitaflo wrote:
| They also sell 100w equivalents (1600 lumens) in an A12
| form factor, FWIW.
| beebeepka wrote:
| > White LEDs are optimized for full, smooth spectrums.
|
| I thought full spectrum LEDs are future tech because I
| haven't seen one.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| I really wish i could find a brand that would reliably tick
| all the boxes:
|
| - Does not overdrive the LEDs and Does not run power supply
| components at the limit of what they can. (Thus good
| longevity)
|
| - Has a current based driver, so that slight voltage shifts
| from an appliance kicking on don't result in an obvious
| brightness shift.
|
| - Suitable for use in recessed lighting or enclosed fixtures.
| (For better or worse, can lights and enclosed fixtures are
| still relatively common.)
|
| - Makes bulbs in most common shapes like A19, chandelier, and
| PAR/BR shapes (for recessed lighting fixtures)
|
| - Dimmable (And yes, I am quite well aware that being in
| conjunction with a current source driver is more complicated,
| but it is still possible). I'm not even particularly big on
| dimming, but I am big on smart switches, and many of those
| include dimming capabilities, and I don't want to worry about
| which bulbs I put where.
|
| - Good color rendering index (and other similar features)
|
| Even the linked companies products don't meet the full list.
| Their only dimmable A-series bulbs are the filament bulbs,
| which are not suitable for all use cases. Similarly, non of
| the non-filament bulbs in the A series shapes are marked as
| suitable for use in an enclosure.
| cesaref wrote:
| Not sure where you are located, but if you have ceiling
| halogens to replace, there are two options - to use a low
| voltage bulb + separate PSU or the 'all in one' bulbs. Here
| in the UK they are designated GU10 for mains voltage and
| MR16 for 12v. If you go with 12v bulbs, you can invest in a
| decent power supply for them, and hence also avoid the poor
| quality bulb problem.
|
| It's possible to get power supplies to support multiple
| bulbs daisy chained, so you can invest in one decent power
| supply.
|
| For general bulbs (e.g. chandelier tulip bulbs) i've found
| it to be really hard to find stuff that works reliably.
| 'Normal' round bulbs seem to be more reliable for some
| reason.
| smolder wrote:
| The only bulbs I've found that work in tight enclosures
| without overheating and failing are a design that's
| probably 90% aluminum heatsink by weight and over 50% by
| volume, with a relatively small dome diffuser on top. I
| couldn't find a US distributor, so bought a box direct from
| the manufacturer on Alibaba. They were $20+ per bulb even
| from the factory, so not cheap. Beyond the crazy cooling,
| they have a thermal shutoff feature to prevent failure if
| they get too hot. Generally it's better to find an
| appropriately breathable fixture for LED bulbs, or even
| better, ditch retrofit bulbs and get something with a
| separate DC power supply.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| I think ikea has some nice bulbs. Almost no flicker on slo
| mo camera. Their rechargeable batteries however are bad
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Their bulbs and batteries work great here.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| 99% of white LEDs on the market arhave anything but full,
| smooth spectrums. Most of my lighting is from waveform
| lighting but you have to pay the premium for full spectrum,
| plus you have to shell out for expensive dimmers if you don't
| want flickering.
| cratermoon wrote:
| You _can_ , but as GP comment said, "Good indoor lighting is
| now something only people with plenty of disposable income
| can afford." When you're poor, are you going to cough up $18
| for a single bulb, or get a 16-pack for $24 at Home Depot?
| $288 vs $24.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| So "is now something" implies that incandescent was
| affordable.
|
| 16 incandescent bulbs, averaging 3 hours per day, would
| cost about 50 cents per day. $150-$250 per year in most of
| the country.
|
| So getting the really premium LEDs is still cheaper than
| lighting used to be. Even better if you use the good bulbs
| for room lighting and the cheap bulbs for closets and
| outdoors and such.
| jghn wrote:
| The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I _know_
| that brand X is producing quality bulbs that 'll last a long
| time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift
| through marketing to get to actual quality?
|
| And then how do I know that they stick with the high quality
| approach? What happens when a brand decides to rest on the
| laurels of their brand name and start slipping in lower
| quality parts?
| xxs wrote:
| Weight them and buy the heaviest one, for E27 likely you
| don't wish to go over 8-10W of total power (this can be
| measured easily as well).
|
| A scale that can measure grams is like $10.
| ccvannorman wrote:
| > as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing
| quality bulbs that'll last a long time?
|
| Like any informed consumer you must read every retail-based
| HN comment thread ;-]
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Philips is generally a safe bet, and G.E. + Osram are as
| well. The generic crap at Home Depot and Amazon and
| Walmart that costs 1/4 as much will probably perform
| awful, but could be a hidden gem. Some dead giveaways are
| total lack of heatsinks and low price, but higher price
| does not necessarily equal good quality.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| I was going to dismiss your comment as being naive. Because
| every generation before us had to deal with the problem of
| "how do I know that I'm getting quality item X from
| supplier Y?" See the clay tablet complaining about the
| quality of a bronze shipment. The answer really is "you
| have to test it" and frankly return policies at stores
| generally support purchase, test, and decide to keep or
| return. An option that many of our ancestors did not have,
| and yes not everyone can do this.
|
| On the other hand, Daniel Kahneman was awarded a Nobel
| prize in 2002 for researching with Amos Tversky on how we
| make decisions, and how having more options makes our
| eventual decision less fulfilling as we suspect that we
| probably did not make the optimal decision. However, done
| is better than perfect. At least that's what some people
| say.
|
| Given that we have multiple technology purchases to make,
| all of which will involve "research" and making decisions
| it is very frustrating, to me, that we do not have more
| reliable trustworthy guidance. There are competent review
| organizations and websites but they more frequently tend to
| be owned by product manufacturers and funded by
| advertisers. We know that marketing tries to create desire
| in our primitive consumer brains.
|
| And as individuals with deep and long experience in at
| least one or more areas, we have our own biases that help
| us make decisions. And if we think carefully about how we
| gained this expertise, we should conclude that a lot of
| wasted time and mistakes were involved.
|
| And we know that becoming an expert in lighting, spectral,
| power consumption, lifetime, CRI, etc could take a long
| time and there would be more to learn as the engineers
| create new solutions (blue LED plus yellow phosphor, or RGB
| LEDs, COB or something else...).
|
| So to answer your question. You won't know that brand X
| produces quality bulbs that last a long time until you
| purchase and test them. Assume that they won't last a long
| time, don't buy the most expensive option, there will be
| improvements in LEDs and bulbs that will make your next
| purchase even better.
|
| To sift past the marketing to get actual quality, well we
| do have some well known brands that distribute through well
| known stores. Buying from Alibaba or the dollar store is
| not going to result in the best outcome, but it might. Put
| those options aside as an experiment rather a "must make me
| happy now" experience.
|
| How do you know that a product won't slip in quality over
| time? Well you won't know until you make that purchase.
| This happens all of the time with everything from salt
| ("Himalayan" salt with rocks, sea salt with microplastics,
| honey adulterated with sugar, olive oil with other oils)...
|
| We live in a very interesting time, we no longer have to
| "follow the herd" or "hunt for the roots" in new locations.
| We're mostly protected from weather, earthquakes, famine,
| etc (exception occur). Our health generally good. There is
| however dog poop on the sidewalk and pot holes in the
| roads.
|
| So when the grocery store moves your familiar product to
| another aisle, or changes their product line up, or
| increases the price, these are all opportunities to step
| out of "cruise control" and experience the uncertainty that
| comes with a constantly changing world.
|
| "Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking
| for, go live with a car battery." - Erma Bombeck
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Because every generation before us had to deal with the
| problem of "how do I know that I'm getting quality item X
| from supplier Y?"
|
| Up to 70 years ago, item X had an extremely low
| complexity, and up to some 30 years ago, supplier Y had
| reliably constant quality between its products.
|
| No previous generation had to deal with the problem we
| currently have.
| chongli wrote:
| _The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know
| that brand X is producing quality bulbs that 'll last a
| long time?_
|
| The issue is that LED bulbs aren't simple devices like
| incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs have an electronic power
| supply inside which drives the LEDs at a constant current.
|
| Power supply design is a major subfield of electronics
| engineering and there are all kinds of tradeoffs you can
| make to optimize for different goals. Consumer electronics
| almost always optimizes for cost, to the detriment of all
| else.
|
| It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs
| that will practically outlive their owners [1]. The problem
| is that it requires putting more LEDs in the bulb and
| driving them at lower current. This makes the bulb cost
| more and the only benefit is longer life. For a
| manufacturer, there are nothing but downsides to this
| approach.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4
| fexl wrote:
| I've noticed that LED bulb packages say they'll last
| several years, but so many of them die after just a year
| or so. I should start tracking this precisely, but I've
| just gotten the sense that they often die prematurely.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| You have 2 year warranty. Return it. My dad did it so
| often that they refuse to sell him a new one in that
| shop. What an irony.
| alexsereno wrote:
| Why? That strikes me as odd, since the manufacturer is
| the one who eats that warranty cost.
| amalcon wrote:
| Assuming that the retailer can actually get a refund or
| replacement from the manufacturer (for some products,
| only the consumer can actually do that), usually they
| just replace the item or the wholesale price. They don't
| replace the retailer's gross margin. Thus the retailer
| ends up eating the cost of things like stocking and
| actually processing the warranty. For e.g. a one-person
| operation, that means extra work for zero profit.
|
| It's usually not that much, but I can see why they might
| eventually be upset about it.
| [deleted]
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| >It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED
| bulbs that will practically outlive their owners
|
| It is also possible (and not very difficult) to design
| incandescent bulbs that will outlive their owners. In
| fact, the first mass produced light bulbs generally
| lasted 2,500+ hours. In the 1920s, the major bulb
| manufacturers formed the 'Pheobus Cartel' in Geneva and
| secretly colluded to limit the lifespan of bulbs to 1,000
| hours to boost sales [1]. Another example of planned
| obsolescence harming consumers and the environment.
|
| [1]https://interestingengineering.com/science/everlasting
| -light...
| bagels wrote:
| 2500 hours is 100 days. I hope I live longer than 100
| more days :(
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| Please consider reading the linked article. The longest
| continuously active incandescent bulb in the world was
| switched on in 1901.
| shagie wrote:
| This goes into the "actual conspiracy - not a theory"
| category.
|
| Veritasium - This is why we can't have nice things -
| https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE
|
| The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy
|
| > On 23 December 1924, a group of leading international
| businessmen gathered in Geneva for a meeting that would
| alter the world for decades to come. Present were top
| representatives from all the major lightbulb
| manufacturers, including Germany's Osram, the
| Netherlands' Philips, France's Compagnie des Lampes, and
| the United States' General Electric. As revelers hung
| Christmas lights elsewhere in the city, the group founded
| the Phoebus cartel, a supervisory body that would carve
| up the worldwide incandescent lightbulb market, with each
| national and regional zone assigned its own manufacturers
| and production quotas. It was the first cartel in history
| to enjoy a truly global reach.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Devil's advocate: Incandescent lifetime is inversely
| related to efficiency, thus Phoebus cartel prevented
| spread of long-life but inefficient bulbs.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| An also should add that color temperature on incandescent
| lamps play a role on its lifespan, want long lasting
| lamps? Lower the current (or increase the resistance).
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Ah yes, people, famous for living less than _checks
| notes_ 2,500 hours.
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| Please consider reading the linked article first. The
| longest continuously active incandescent bulb in the
| world was switched on in 1901.
| mariodiana wrote:
| Perhaps the planned obsolescence helped the consumer,
| because perhaps there would have been no willing
| producers if producing the lightbulbs at a price the
| users were willing to pay for wasn't going to turn out to
| be profitable, with respect to setting up production in
| the first place and then producing until the investment
| was paid back.
|
| When we're talking market price, we have to acknowledge
| that it is a _meeting_ of the price needed to bring a
| product to market _and_ the price the consumer is willing
| to pay. We can 't assume that the price of the longer
| lasting bulb would have been attractive to consumers,
| when compared to the price of the shorter-lived bulb,
| _even if they had all the information available._
|
| It's perfectly valid for a person to decide they'll spend
| more over the long run, rather than ponying up a larger
| sum now. And it's perfectly valid for producers to take
| the chance of deciding this for the consumer. As Henry
| Ford noted, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they
| would have said faster horses."
|
| Was anybody stopping anyone from offering the consumer a
| higher-priced and longer-lasting bulb?
| xxs wrote:
| incandescent light bulbs efficiency increases with their
| temperature/current. At low enough current they will last
| long enough but waste a lot energy as well.
|
| You can dim them, and provide a slow start to prevent the
| inrush current (which is like 10times more than nominal
| with tungsten resistance increasing due so high 2500K
| temps).
| 6510 wrote:
| put them in series
| [deleted]
| Maursault wrote:
| Thankfully, LED lighting will probably be gone within 20
| years, while incandescent will be coming back more
| efficient than LED could dream. Already bumping up
| against theoretical maximum efficiency, LED lighting
| can't get any more efficient, and the better LED is at
| color rendition, the less efficient it is. But there are
| vast amounts of improvement available for incandescent
| lighting, and a group at MIT has already created
| incandescent light that is twice as efficient as LED.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.mit.edu/2016/nanophotonic-incandescent-
| light-bu...
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Exciting, but that article is from 2016 and here we are
| in 2023 with no commercial availability. https://www.redd
| it.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/j6hwn... asked
| what happened with no real updates.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| It seems like this could be done differently, and perhaps
| more cost-effectively. Can't give cites right now, but
| here's a path I'd explore if I were in the field.
|
| I'd pattern the inner surface of the glass envelope with
| a cube texture - think of taking a cube and pressing a
| corner normally into a clay surface, then removing the
| cube. This pattern is a so-called corner reflector, and
| returns incident light to its source. Figure the cube
| indentations at about 0.5mm deep, close packed. I'd
| deposit a dielectric film reflector stack tuned to
| reflect most infrared radiation onto this surface.
|
| This combination would transmit visible light, but would
| reflect IR directly back to the filament, reducing the
| amount of electrical power needed to maintain filament
| temperature. Glass textural molding and dielectric film
| deposition are mature technologies. I think this could
| readily triple incandescent lamp power efficiency, maybe
| even better.
| lightedman wrote:
| That incandescent cant reach the theoretical 40%, at the
| color temp/physical temp needed, the tungsten filament
| would melt.
| jghn wrote:
| Yes, but this is exactly what I'm asking. How do I find
| the ones designed in a buy it for life way? Or at least
| ones designed to last longer than the crap on the Home
| Depot shelves.
| vl wrote:
| You can't buy a bulb that is rated to last a lifetime,
| but you can buy ones rated to last for 10+ years if used
| 8 hours a day (i.e. 35,000 life hours).
|
| I retrofitted entire house - 200+ bulbs and fixture
| retrofits more that 5 years ago. I had one or failures
| since. I bought highest CRI bulbs, i.e. most expensive,
| and they work well. (Also, do not use bulbs for
| downlights - get entire "led can light fixture retrofit")
|
| I used 1000bulbs.com because I can filter/read specs
| there, but you can get specs for any high-tier vendor and
| buy elsewhere.
| jghn wrote:
| > 35,000 life hours
|
| How trustworthy is that state though? I have always
| assumed 0% trustworthy. Is that incorrect?
| vl wrote:
| I don't think it's untrustworthy in a sense you are
| deliberately lied to. I think more likely problem is that
| there is quality control issues and entire batch of
| particular bulb is compromised, like can happen with
| anything else - hard drives, RAM, pencils.
|
| In general it's quite reasonable. Cheaper bulbs failed on
| me, more expensive ones work just fine for many years.
|
| One thing is I wonder about if phosphorus (or whatever
| chemical they use) is burning out over the years. I.d. do
| I get worse light quality as these bulbs age?
| chongli wrote:
| If you don't trust the manufacturers, you'll have to find
| an expert to trust, or tear down the bulbs and examine
| them yourself. The best way to know for sure is to
| measure the current being driven through the LEDs and
| compare it to their maximum rated current. The ones that
| don't last long are usually being run at their maximum
| current, producing a lot of excess heat which shortens
| their lives dramatically.
| e28eta wrote:
| > The issue is that LED bulbs aren't simple devices like
| incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs have an electronic power
| supply inside which drives the LEDs at a constant
| current.
|
| Not all of them! I was very surprised to open up my
| generic outdoor patio LED bulbs and find two strips of
| LED filament wired directly to power.
|
| AFAICT it's just enough LEDs in serial for 120VAC at 60
| Hz to be "good enough" that they survive for "long
| enough".
| com2kid wrote:
| Take a time machine back to 2001, any LEDs you bought
| back then will likely last over 60 years.
|
| Of course they won't be as efficient, and output very
| little light, but they will last forever. (also, no
| white, but hey, win some lose some!)
| sp332 wrote:
| Subscribe to Consumer Reports.
| https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/lightbulbs/
| There are lots of categories of products that have the same
| problem. This covers a bunch of them.
| Tarball10 wrote:
| California's JA8 certification requires LED bulbs to meet
| specific criteria related to efficiency, lifespan, and
| light quality.
|
| - Efficiency >= 45 lumens per watt
|
| - CRI >= 90
|
| - R9 Color Rendering value >= 50
|
| - Rated life >= 15000 hours
|
| - Minimum dimming level <= 10%
|
| - Flicker <= 30%
|
| Theoretically if a bulb is listed as JA8 compliant (and the
| certification isn't fake) you know it at least meets these
| thresholds.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| What does it mean to specify flicker in percents?
| Tarball10 wrote:
| > Light source in combination with specified control
| shall provide "reduced flicker operation" when tested at
| full light output as specified in JA10, where reduced
| flicker operation is defined as having percent amplitude
| modulation (percent flicker) less than 30 percent at
| frequencies less than 200Hz.
|
| https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-
| ace-2...
| com2kid wrote:
| > - Rated life >= 15000 hours
|
| And what do you do when the lightbulb burns out after
| only 3 years? The product has long since changed SKU, the
| manufacturer gets to claim they fixed any deficiencies
| (and it'll take years to find out if they are telling the
| truth), and you long since lost any proof of purchase.
| Tarball10 wrote:
| Yeah there's not much you could personally do, other than
| maybe report it to the California Energy Commission.
| Bulbs need to be lab tested and the results submitted to
| the CEC, but I'm not sure how the lifespan testing is
| actually done, how accurate it is, or how easily it could
| be manipulated.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| > CRI >= 90
|
| This one was a little tricky for me when I was buying
| bulbs last year. I prefer warm-colored bulbs, and I was
| kind of confused why Amazon kept on saying it was
| refusing to ship bulbs to me. It took me a while before I
| realized it was because I'm in CA and the CRI was too
| low, and Amazon didn't have a way to just filter by CRI.
| Eventually my wife just ended up finding some warm-ish
| LED bulbs at a local store.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| It's crazy to me that in 2023, Amazon still refuses to
| offer meaningful product filtering. The miscategorization
| of items has been written about many times, and the best
| explanation for why they're not fixing it is basically
| "people like digging through piles of trash to find the
| good stuff". It's an infuriating experience and these
| days I typically use Google to search Amazon because
| their basic search will many times fail to show the
| product when I search for the exact product name or model
| designation, even when they do in fact carry it. On
| Google it'll be the first result. Google obviously can't
| filter Amazon products by category, let alone other
| parameters, but it's just so frustrating vs using other
| sites like McMaster-Carr, DigiKey, etc.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know
| that brand X is producing quality ${PRODUCT} that'll last a
| long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does
| one sift through marketing to get to actual quality?
|
| That's the million-dollar question of the '10s and '20s
| (and likely beyond), and is far bigger than just bulbs.
|
| The only solution that I can think of that _could_ work is
| a distributed rating system with a built-in web of trust.
| It theoretically shouldn 't be that difficult for people to
| adopt, if only they got collectively fed up with the
| universe of crap we have now, and someone provided a nice
| app and protocol to federate information with.
|
| (direct regulation of quality, vendor-controlled ratings,
| and browsing Reddit/HN comment threads are all fatally
| flawed non-solutions)
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I spent probably $150-$200 for 7 packages of "high CRI"
| "long lasting" phillips brand LED bulbs last year, for a
| total of 28 bulbs.
|
| 6 of them have failed in less than 9 months, either
| flickering so badly it could cause an epileptic seizure or
| just straight up dying on me.
|
| It's maddening.
| smolder wrote:
| Look at the fixtures you're putting them in and consider
| if they're getting adequate cooling. If your average
| "long lasting" (they all claim this, but not at what
| temperature...) LED bulb is uncomfortably hot to touch,
| it's on the fast track to failure.
| sp332 wrote:
| Mine are hanging in thin air over my bathroom mirror. The
| GE Reveal bulbs say they're good for bathrooms, but I
| suspect they don't like the humidity. I have four at a
| time in the fixture and six of them have died in the last
| two years. Once this box is empty I'll get something
| else.
| vxNsr wrote:
| If you still have the receipt you can file a warranty
| claim.
| smolder wrote:
| Ah, probably not a heat problem, then.
| sp332 wrote:
| Oh, it's a good point to look out for. I'm just really
| annoyed at these.
| jimbobjim wrote:
| The Phillips bulbs I bought have a ridiculously high
| failure rate. About half have failed within 6 months.
| Much worse than the supermarket own brands, or cheaper
| ones from Amazon.
| cesaref wrote:
| Meanwhile I replaced around 40 halogen bulbs with Philips
| branded bulbs around 5 years ago, and have not had a
| single failure.
|
| It's possible the quality has changed, but i'm also
| wondering whether the mains voltage might be a factor -
| there is quite a wide range of possible voltages allowed
| whilst still being in-spec, so maybe i'm lucky at my
| properties and mains voltage is on the low end of the
| standard and maybe you're running hot. It's all most
| frustrating!
|
| BTW, I went with Philips on the basis that there was a
| good chance that if I did need to replace a few after a
| year or two due to failures i'd be likely to be able to
| source the same bulb, as it's really annoying if you find
| one bulb a different colour than the others...
| olyjohn wrote:
| The Philips Hue bulbs somehow never burn out. I have
| about 30 of them in my house, and the oldest ones (5+
| years old now) are working as well as the new ones that I
| have bought recently. They are the only "smart" thing
| that I have in my house, because they're the only thing
| I've ever hooked up that worked with 100% reliability.
| They don't require an internet connection, etc. I never
| have connection problems, never have to reboot the hub,
| the switches work for me 100% of the time.
| 8note wrote:
| I've got a couple burnouts on Phillips hue bulbs
| cataphract wrote:
| Same. I have half a dozen hue bulbs from 2016 and none
| hav failed. The ones I have from Innr have not failed
| either. 4 of them are outdoors.
|
| With Philips spinning off the lights division, I don't
| know the current quality.
|
| On the other hand, I've had others (non smart ones)
| starting to flicker or otherwise just dying after as
| little as one year.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| The best i have found are unbelievable from Ikea, the've
| been in daily use for almost 2 years already.
| louky wrote:
| Best case there is to never buy again, name and shame the
| specific model places like this discussion, and use the
| warranty!
|
| PITA I know.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| If the warranty expires, buy the same ones from
| $BIG_BOX_STORE and return the broken ones. The companies
| send them back to the mfgs for credit. They'll get the
| hint eventually.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If the bulb lasts past the warranty and then dies, you
| recommend that we defraud the manufacturer of the bulb?
| eth0up wrote:
| I had similar issues with Phillips. I bought six over a
| year for the relatively excellent quality of the light,
| but they'd start flickering after a month or two. I had
| first suspected an electrical problem, but then tried
| them at entirely different locations in entirely
| different sockets and found the same. Haven't considered
| buying Phillips since and won't, ever. Nice light, shit
| construction.
| Self-Perfection wrote:
| One guy bought over 4 thousands LED lamps over years,
| meticulously measured their actual specs and made a huge
| online catalog https://lamptest.ru/
|
| I follow his project a bit and it looks like consumers are
| really at loss. Generally there is no reliable way to
| choose a good led lamp without consulting such catalog.
| Lamps packaging often lies about actual specs, lamps with
| the same packaging but manufactured in different years
| might have different quality etc
| leobg wrote:
| Great site. I wish he had an English translation. But I
| forgive him. This is what the Internet should be!
| Individual people who do one thing really well. So happy
| to see that this still exists online.
| klabb3 wrote:
| I wish it had a Swedish translation. I do NOT forgive
| him.
| [deleted]
| thuttinger wrote:
| There is one guy that does the same for batteries,
| chargers, power supplies and more: https://lygte-info.dk/
| leobg wrote:
| Thank you. Had been looking for something like this!
| Batteries are one of these items where you really don't
| know what you're getting.
| walterbell wrote:
| Could we improve discovery of these indie sites via HN or
| elsewhere?
|
| A standard tag for Algolia/web search could work, if any
| spam comments with the same tag were flagged.
| leobg wrote:
| That would be the benevolent Engelbart version of AI,
| wouldn't it?
|
| Instead of dumb capitalism, clickbait and silly content
| marketing driving human activity, to have an AI that
| saves us from wasting our time figuring out the answer to
| questions that have been answered long before. And then,
| instead, points us to those questions that have not yet
| been asked, much less answered. What experiments have not
| yet been done.
|
| After all, no GPT-4, no matter how many billions of
| parameters, could tell you what the best battery is in
| the world if it wasn't for that one human dude in his
| garage in Denmark, or Latvia, or wherever, who actually
| tested them all.
| walterbell wrote:
| Absolutely. There have been some attempts to reboot
| webrings for indie site discovery. With AI harvesting and
| monetizing indie sites, there is some risk of future
| content being gated by pay/auth/bot walls. Another
| approach could be private overlay P2P VPNs where
| participants are invited/vetted by the social contract of
| a small community.
|
| (random indie site: wet/dry shop vacuums,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32411206)
| zajio1am wrote:
| > The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know
| that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long
| time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one
| sift through marketing to get to actual quality?
|
| There is simple heuristic - all LED bulbs are bad. They
| generally have insufficient heatsink and unreplaceable PSU
| immediately next to LEDs.
|
| Better are LED tubes (with T12 interface, as a replacement
| for fluorescent tubes), they have much more area for
| cooling and for PSU, and sometimes have replaceable PSU.
| Similarly lighting units with integrated LEDs.
| gcr wrote:
| Technology Connections has a great video about exactly
| this! https://youtu.be/fsIFxyOLJXM?t=843
|
| At the end of the day, the author recommends giving
| filament-style LED bulbs a try, where the emitter is
| built onto a thin filament away from the circuit housing
| so it's far away from the heat.
| jchw wrote:
| Some bulbs will give you information on their CRI which
| ideally should be required to be labeled on the bulbs
| packaging the way calorie information is required on food
| packaging (but I don't think it is.) That will tell you
| roughly how good the quality of the light is by proxy of
| the spectrum of light it covers. On the other hand, there
| is no equivalent afaik for knowing how well the power
| supply is designed or how hard the LEDs are driven. I guess
| for that, the consumer can turn to the trusted source for
| this kind of information, bigclivedotcom. (Sarcasm; but
| seriously, this is a problem.)
| mjx0 wrote:
| bigclivedotcom, aka the Consumer Reports of electronics
| that catch on fire and/or perform miracles.
| terr-dav wrote:
| An important point in the article is that CRI for LED
| bulbs does not meaningfully map to the light quality.
| >Oh, but: Experts agree that the color-rendering index
| doesn't really index how colors are rendered. Some bulbs
| with a 90 CRI make things look wan; some with an 80 are
| passable. There are better, more useful metrics, but you
| can't have them. Nobody puts them on the packaging. One
| lighting professional -- an LED advocate, no less -- told
| me he sometimes calls up the manufacturer and asks to
| talk to an engineer to get the real specs.
| jchw wrote:
| Yes that's a good point, there's definitely more to it
| than _just_ CRI. That said, a bulb with very poor CRI
| definitely sucks, so it 's not entirely useless. This
| seems like one of those things that will suck until it
| doesn't.
| mech987987 wrote:
| CRI has to do the hard job of describing a spectrum using
| a single number. It's like looking at the entire menu of
| a restaurant and having to say how healthy the food there
| is. (heck, there's probably way better metaphors).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's interesting how the led datasheets have all the
| useful information (spectrum, CRI, angular spread). But
| once manufacturers put them on a bulb, they will refuse
| to tell even what leds they used.
|
| At this point I believe companies are willfully refusing
| to inform their customers.
| rkeene2 wrote:
| That could be because putting it on the box creates a
| liability that the LEDs are meeting those specifications
| -- just because the source LEDs claim to meet those
| specifications doesn't mean that the enclosure being sold
| using them as a component will actually produce that.
| Additionally, any change to LED suppliers/etc now means
| that the box also has to be changed.
|
| In other words, what they are selling isn't the same as
| the thing in the box nor the aggregate of all the
| components (since they interact with one another).
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Can't wait to become a mini-expert in fucking LED
| lightbulbs just to have decent lighting in my house. I
| hate that the vast information of the internet has
| basically required us mere mortals to try and become
| experts in literally anything and everything just to be
| able to buy something that isn't awful. Computer? Better
| keep up to date on all of the CPU, GPU, etc. info. That
| doesn't even include the insanity of monitors. Cars?
| Better spend multiple weekends doing research before
| spending more weekends being ready to walk away from any
| dealership just to play the stupid negotiation game.
|
| I feel like I can't just have a casual fun hobby anymore.
| You have to have all of the knowledge about the entire
| space just to be able to decide if something may or may
| not be garage.
| kube-system wrote:
| > I hate that the vast information of the internet has
| basically required us mere mortals to try and become
| experts in literally anything and everything just to be
| able to buy something that isn't awful.
|
| Awful junk existed before the internet. It's just that
| people didn't have much of a way to know any better, nor
| did they have many options to choose from. People relied
| on word of mouth, marketing material, or the shop
| keeper's advice to decide what to buy... that is, if the
| store even had multiple options.
|
| There's not more crap today, there's more perspective.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > I hate that the vast information of the internet has
| basically required us mere mortals to try and become
| experts in literally anything and everything just to be
| able to buy something that isn't awful.
|
| This has always been the case. The difference now is that
| with the internet it's within reach.
|
| You don't have to dig through your social network to find
| someone working for the lighting division of GE. You
| don't have to visit your local library to check out books
| on how lightbulbs work in order to figure out which makes
| one better than another. You just need to hop on Google
| or ask New Bing.
|
| --
|
| Think all incandescent bulbs were the same? Think again.
| Manufacturing conditions and filament thickness are two
| of the several factors involved in how long that
| lightbulb will last and how bright it will get. Cheap,
| shitty lightbulbs from discount stores were a thing.
|
| Oh, and one more thing! You're pretty much stuck with one
| color temperature.
|
| --
|
| There are plenty of examples throughout the 20th century
| of poorly-made, barely-working tech being sold as
| acceptable. The plethora of non-electric "vacuum
| cleaners" sold around the turn of the century are one
| notable early example. The lightbulbs which came after
| the agreements made by the Phoebus Cartel are another.
|
| 1978! Home video! Do you go with VHS from JVC, Betamax
| from Sony, SelectaVision from RCA, or DiscoVision from
| MCA?
|
| For an entertaining diversion, imagine you're living in
| 1973 and it's time to purchase a new car. Is that
| Plymouth really going to hold up against your new
| concerns about gas mileage? How do you know? Do you have
| any mechanic friends? Do you know anything about how cars
| work? Does the local library have any books to help?
|
| Random final tidbit: The "older"=="better" myth is the
| result of the fact that we're not exposed to the junk of
| yesteryear; only the good stuff. The junk was thrown away
| years and years ago.
| panarky wrote:
| Want to have a decent quality of life at the end of your
| career? Better spend a large portion of your youth
| becoming an expert in finance and monetary policy, and
| hope you don't make a fatal mistake like buying long-term
| government debt right before inflation starts to run.
| sydd wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. For the sake of simplicity find
| some good brands and stick to them. Where I live its
| simple, get all your bulbs at IKEA. Most of them are 90
| CRI and other parameters are good too. There are better
| ones on the market, but I dont want to go on a product
| hunt if my supplier is out
| acomjean wrote:
| That's the current problem is knowing when a "Brand" which
| was a marker for quality cashes in.
|
| Consumer Reports tests a lot of consumer goods and used to
| be my go to for testing. They don't take ad revenue so that
| helps. Though you have to be a member to see their reviews.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/what-we-
| do/inde...
|
| They used to be the go to for car reliability info (when
| your car was rated high you sold more, according to my dad
| who was in the car business)
| plemer wrote:
| Why "used to"? Did something go wrong? Is there something
| better now?
| acomjean wrote:
| I guess because I haven't bought anything in a while so
| for me it was a "used to", not any perceived change. So
| poor wording on my part.
|
| I can't edit my post. Trusted reviews are hard to find, I
| would still trust Consumer Reports over random Amazon
| reviews.
| jahewson wrote:
| > The issue is that 95% of consumers will only choose the
| cheap bulbs, period.
|
| The hardware stores near me, both big and small, stock only a
| single brand of bulb, as if they have some kind of exclusive
| deal.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| This is why i do most of my shopping online. its not about
| price or laziness, but about selection. retail stores
| usually only stock the worst brands of anything.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Here is one common vendor:
|
| $18 USD for a single 10 Watt bulb? I don't care how expensive
| electricity is, the $2 incandescent bulb is a better value.
| ChadMoran wrote:
| I've been looking for solid high CRI LED bulbs, thank you.
|
| Lately I've been using the GE Reveal/Relax. They were better
| than the contractor grade bulbs that came with the house but
| still just... wasn't there.
|
| If you know any other manufacturers like this I'd greatly
| appreciate it if you could provide their links.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| Budgetlightforum.com is the best source for flashlights and
| bulbs. Everyone there knows the metrics of what makes good
| light.
|
| GE Filled With Sun, Philips Ultra HD (available on Amazon,
| but from Canada), and some other Chinese brands are
| currently top of the chart for CRI 95+, RA 90+ bulbs
| m463 wrote:
| Budgetlightforum.com
|
| This is a rabbit hole of lighting tech.
|
| I read the site and ... Now all my flashlights MUST run
| open source firmware.
|
| Buy a flashlight with the Anduril UI and you will
| understand. (search on amazon)
|
| With my flashlights:
|
| - press and hold the power button to ramp up brightness
| from zero
|
| - press and hold again to ram down brightness
|
| - click twice to get the maximum brightness from the
| light (mostly)
|
| there are lots of other modes available, designed to be
| harder to stumble into, plus customizations you can add.
|
| Also, the good flashlights have an always-on dim green
| LED that lets you find the flashlight during a power
| outage.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| I use GE Sun Filled bulbs at my desk. They're nice! I
| really wish I could easily get the Lumitronix or LEDvance
| models.
|
| http://www.seoulsemicon.com/en/technology/sunlike/casestu
| dy/
| [deleted]
| causality0 wrote:
| Is there anything decent in the middle? Somewhere between one
| dollar bulbs and eighteen dollar bulbs?
| pkulak wrote:
| I've been happy with my Cree leds. I can't seem to find
| them online, only Home Depot.
| nevir wrote:
| Home Depot has an exclusively agreement with em
| jghn wrote:
| I used to buy Cree bulbs. But they they sold the brand and
| were changed to be the same mass market schlock as the
| other bulbs, except with a name brand that implies quality.
| vl wrote:
| I use https://www.1000bulbs.com/ because they have godzillion
| bulbs in stock and it's possible to filter by CRI and color
| temperature. I just get highest CRI in required color temp,
| and it's good. More expensive, but well worth it.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| As far as I can see this doesn't even show you the CRI just
| that its 90+ with limited reviews.
| vl wrote:
| Yeah, there is unfortunate need to click on each bulb and
| read through specs.
|
| Some of the bulbs have exact CRI listed, and some have
| "90+". I only buy the first kind.
| 7speter wrote:
| 95% of consumers are squeezed financially and can't afford
| the nice bulbs.
| kansface wrote:
| I believe I tried to buy from them when I lived in SF, but
| their bulbs were at that time (and possibly still today)
| illegal in the state of California! I don't remember which
| regulation it was, possibly one around efficiency or maybe
| they needed to undergo some test. I think they even had a lab
| somewhere on the peninsula, too... I was so angry at the
| state of California for forcing me to have shit quality
| lights that I gave thought to becoming an illegal bulb
| runner.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| And it's fascinating that with LEDs you can ask for a
| specific wavelength of light ... and get it!
| Thrymr wrote:
| I think you're confusing LEDs with lasers.
| susanasj wrote:
| "cost optimization and general apathy towards the customer."
| that's just this stage of capitalism unfortunately. Take an
| airplane trip and you will experience similar effects.
| taneq wrote:
| Cost optimization IS the limits of the technology. All the nice
| things you mention are the result of large amounts of work by
| exceptional people. This costs money. Most of them require
| higher-spec components, or more design time, or more
| complicated fabrication and assembly. These things also cost
| money.
|
| Nobody's denying you nice things at low prices just out of
| spite. Nice things just cost more. To put a positive spin on
| it, our innate sense of 'nice' is a well tuned heuristic for
| good engineering (and/or whatever the Joneses can't afford).
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Are there companies out there creating premium LED bulbs
| without these problems?
| drorco wrote:
| I'm no expert with LEDs' technical bits, but I purchased
| LIFX bulbs which were pretty expensive and they've lasted
| for almost a decade now.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I've had the opposite experience. I find that LIFX bulbs
| fail far too often considering the price tag, however
| I've yet to find anything else that can match up to them
| when they work. So I just keep buying them.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Forget about premium, what the hell are impoverished people
| supposed to do?
| zaroth wrote:
| Save on their electric bill with cheap LEDs that get the
| job done, while worrying about more important things than
| if the bulb flickers sometimes when you dim it?
| throwuwu wrote:
| Your answer is missing some steps involving money
| zaroth wrote:
| I suppose it depends on the extend of the impoverished-
| ness.
|
| The homeless certainly aren't worried about lightbulbs
| but the 65% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck
| probably appreciate the savings.
| bradstewart wrote:
| Yes. Philips has and Waveform have pretty decent midrange
| bulbs. Ketra has really, really high quality stuff.
| mturmon wrote:
| I fully agree, and would add that imposition of these
| artificial limits seems to be a fundamental side-effect of
| capitalism.
|
| "Good old-fashioned" incandescents were also subject to a
| multi-decade scam to limit their lifetime:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
|
| It's manifesting slightly differently this time around, but
| it's the same principle.
| eschneider wrote:
| This seems like an excellent business opportunity.
| Majromax wrote:
| > This seems like an excellent business opportunity.
|
| Consumer education is rarely an excellent business
| opportunity.
|
| Consumers are very good at comparing prices, and
| "incandescent watt equivalent" labels provide an
| understandable comparator for light output. Beyond that, the
| statistics become much less meaningful.
|
| Consumers typically don't read colour temperature ratings (in
| black-body Kelvin), but instead follow "warm white / soft
| white / cool white" descriptors. Even still, it's common to
| see homes with temperature-mismatched lighting.
|
| CRI is a step worse. It is a higher-is-better indicator, but
| there's no intuitive connection for a consumer. Is a CRI of
| 80 bad? Is 95 better enough to be worth double the price?
| Worse yet, CRI is a summary statistic that can gloss over
| less-measured color reproduction difficulties, and _worst_
| yet not all bulbs even publish CRI numbers on the box. My
| local hardware store is happy to sell you its store-brand
| generics, none of which have CRI numbers.
|
| Flicker is another step into the unknown. No bulbs that I'm
| aware of publish flicker numbers, even the otherwise
| respected names like Philips. If you consider this a
| 'business opportunity', you're left with an unverifiable
| claim that your bulbs are uniquely better than the
| competition.
|
| Sadly, for now good LED lighting really is the domain of the
| expensive professional or the hobbyist who spends their spare
| time tracking down reviews or building custom lighting rigs.
| eschneider wrote:
| I expect the 'premium' light bulb market is similar to the
| mechanical keyboard market. Good products and good prices
| will find a small but dedicated market and build a good
| rep.
|
| Do it right, and eventually your best customers will tell
| their friends to 'just buy brand "X"' and you can expand
| from there.
|
| Is this a good plan to take over the bulb market? No. But a
| good product could be a nice, sustainable business.
| scottyah wrote:
| If you have two products where one lists a metric proudly
| and the other doesn't, I think most consumers would choose
| the one with the metric.
| Majromax wrote:
| Only if consumers understand the metric. Otherwise, one
| product's metric is another product's meaningless
| buzzword.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| What numbers do you expect to see for flicker?
| Majromax wrote:
| Ideally? Something like RMS and peak-to-peak amplitudes
| below 120Hz and below 1kHz, when fed with good AC power.
| The former would be potentially noticeable in peripheral
| vision or with eye movement, and the latter could affect
| filming, particularly with a rolling shutter.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, thanks. Those are indeed very good numbers to have.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| > Even still, it's common to see homes with temperature-
| mismatched lighting.
|
| Maybe I'm hypersensitive to it, but I don't understand how
| it's viewed as okay. I walked through a house on a home
| show and despite being listed for 800k+ (in Iowa), they had
| a couple mismatches.
| eschneider wrote:
| It's like a lot of things. Most people don't care, but
| some people who care, care A LOT.
| lukas099 wrote:
| If you don't have a home heat pump, isn't incandescent actually
| more efficient than LED in winter? Assuming you turn lights off
| when you leave rooms, all generated heat will be concentrated in
| the room you are actually in.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > The two in my youngest son's bedroom went near dark not long
| after I installed them.
|
| That's a warranty case; if people send them back to the producer
| often enough, they have to up their quality. If enough people
| also make sure to complain, consumer protection organizations may
| start a class action lawsuit and/or get the federal whatsits to
| demand better quality.
| jryb wrote:
| I don't understand any of this at all. I got the cheap 2700K LED
| bulbs from a big box store (~$3 for a pack/bulb, I don't
| remember) and they are wonderful, they're just as good as they
| were when I got them, and the spectrum feels the same as an
| incandescent bulb. I literally put no thought into the purchasing
| process and it couldn't be more ideal.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Agree completely. I bought a bunch of LED bulbs maybe a decade
| ago to replace my incandescent ones. Lighting quality was
| immediately better, and I have never had to replace a single
| one. They have made multiple moves with me. Previously I was
| replacing bulbs maybe annually, or every 2 years.
|
| I genuinely have no idea what people in this thread are talking
| about.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| No less that half my led can lights are unusable - either they
| "burned out" (whatever that means for an led light, but they
| did), or they flicker too much or buzz too loudly. I gave up on
| replacing them and am just living with the ones that work. I
| don't know where to buy good ones - the led market 99% scammers.
| The crap at the big box hardware stores is not worth it. I've
| probably spent more money in one year on defective leds lights
| than I spent on incandescent bulbs in 40 years.
| elihu wrote:
| LEDs are sensitive to heat. It might be that recessed lighting
| is causing your bulbs to overheat and fail early because they
| don't have enough ventilation.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Maybe, but they are designed for this. I suppose given the
| quality of the product that isn't saying much.
| sarusso wrote:
| IKEA is acting as Apple in this space IMO. They hide all the
| details about their LED bulbs, but they are kind of the best you
| can find on the market if you search for more details about their
| tech, or at least AFAIK.
| larsrc wrote:
| I've started keeping the receipts and boxes and marking the bulbs
| so I can get my money back under warranty if (when) they die
| early. Make it not worth it for the companies to skimp on
| quality.
| stasmo wrote:
| I've never had a problem with my Phillips Hue bulbs and I've
| owned the same 4 bulbs for 5 years now. I've got them scheduled
| to start brightening at sunset, change to a warmer colour closer
| to bed time, then start dimming and warming up before bed time.
|
| If I want to feel more awake I ask Siri to change the colours of
| the bulbs to white. If I went to go to bed earlier I ask Siri for
| the colour tan and to dim the lights by 30%.
|
| At this point I can't imagine not having control over the colour
| or brightness of my lights. These things are essential for a good
| sleep.
| timw4mail wrote:
| There is a problem with LED lamps: they need their own power
| supply to convert AC to DC. This is where a _lot_ of the issues
| happen. Low quality filtering caps, or just circuit designs with
| a lot of ripple lead to pulsing. When the filtering cap fails,
| the bulb often does as well.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| For this reason I think that LED filament bulbs are the best
| choice now. The cheap ones can have flicker issues, though. But
| otherwise they're a nice step up from the last generation of
| LED bulbs.
| noduerme wrote:
| > There ought to be a term for what happens when the light gets
| weaker and everyone acts as if it's as strong as always.
|
| Cute.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Of course, the incandescent bulb spectrum is different from the
| sun's daylight spectrum. You can imagine people making similar
| arguments 100+ years ago as the incandescent bulb grew in use.
|
| I wonder how much of this color quality complaint is due to
| familiarity and comfort with what you grew up with?
|
| At the same time, I find fluorescent lighting unbearable over
| long time periods, so I completely appreciate that these
| differences can be important.
| tzs wrote:
| I'd guess that the arguments 100+ years ago over incandescent
| bulbs would have compared them to candles, fireplaces, torches,
| kerosene lamps, and whatever else people use when sunlight was
| not available since that would be what incandescent bulbs would
| be competing with.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Remember back when texting and calling cost decent money? People
| used to differentiate cell plans based on the amount you got. Now
| it's a free unlimited or practically unlimited inclusion in just
| about every mobile phone plan and people care about other things.
|
| The same thing happened to lighting.
|
| Back in "the day" nobody cared about light color or light
| temperature. You bought whatever was cost effective for the
| amount of light you needed. Nobody cared that sodium bulb
| lighting was orange and that arc lamps were bright white. They
| were the economically viable options for their use cases.
|
| Heck, nobody "liked" the florescent lights, especially the early
| ones but they did the right job at the right price so they got
| bought in droves.
|
| Now that we have LEDs for everything and the affording the amount
| of light being scattered is not the primary hurdle anymore so
| consumers suddenly care about using other performance metrics to
| differentiate products.
| hannob wrote:
| Hi US people, european here.
|
| The EU forbid terribly inefficient light around a decade ago.
| Yes, we had plenty of debates. Yes, people were concerned about
| all kinds of things. Most of them were entirely made up, some
| were exaggerated out of proportion.
|
| I can say that we still have lights, the debate mostly vanished
| and no, it's not blue everywhere.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Hello European, US guy here.
|
| > The EU forbid terribly inefficient light around a decade ago.
|
| So did we. Very few incandescent bulbs are on the market here
| since they were basically banned a decade ago. There are some
| niche options, you could still find expensive halogens, but
| that's it.
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| Hi, also European here. Everything the article complains about
| is true. The light from LEDs is significantly worse, even in
| Europe.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| US here. Light quality in my house went up noticeably when I
| switched to LEDs about a decade ago, probably due to having
| way more/better options for color temperature. Haven't had to
| replace a bulb since. I have zero clue what the author is
| talking about.
| flybrand wrote:
| The claims don't match reality; the issue with so many products.
| The failure mechanism always happens on the most difficult
| dimension to prove - here it is longevity.
| stevenkkim wrote:
| I came across this article on HN recently:
|
| https://www.sevarg.net/2023/02/11/how-your-leds-are-killing-...
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34902429
|
| After reading it, I realized that having overhead led lights in
| our home were possibly contributing to my worsening sleep and
| general tiredness over the past few years. Granted, we used 4100k
| lights which are much bluer than 2700k.
|
| We swapped all our leds back to incandescents and halogens (which
| were a bit tricky to find, but not impossible). Anecdotally, I've
| been sleeping so much better since, finally feeling well rested
| and far less stressed. I just feel a tremendous amount of relief
| after not sleeping well for years.
|
| Also, while we had leds, I had to replace a surprising number of
| them for burnout/failure, and also experienced flickering,
| dimming issues, buzzing and more.
| SamBam wrote:
| > Granted, we used 4100k lights which are much bluer than
| 2700k.
|
| You had this realization and yet still went the route of
| switching back to all incandescents?
|
| It's trivially-easy to find 2700K LED bulbs. The ones I have
| look just as good as the old incandescent. And despite the
| article making it sound like you need a PhD to sort it out, you
| don't: most medium-end 60W-equivalent, 2700K LED bulbs look
| good and are easily available in any hardware store.
| stevenkkim wrote:
| The article says that even 2700k leds have a blue light spike
| (albeit smaller than the 4100ks) since the led source is blue
| light.
|
| Also, maybe it just in my head, but I think the light from
| incandescents/halogens look nicer than leds... it feels more
| natural.
| gabereiser wrote:
| The light temperature plays a lot into it. It's why those
| industrial edison bulbs are so trendy and popular. The warmer
| the light, the cozier at night. Warm being color and not
| tempurature. 2700k being the ideal.
| stevenkkim wrote:
| Nice little rhyme, never heard that one.
|
| Yes, I think 2700k would have been better, we had originally
| picked 4100k because we prefered the look.
|
| But the article says that even 2700k leds have a blue light
| spike (albeit smaller than the 4100ks) since the led source
| is blue light.
| rssoconnor wrote:
| I've set up Kelvin[1] to lower the colour temperature of my LED
| bulbs in the evening, and reduce their brightness. In fact,
| they end up pretty deep red when doing middle of the night
| bathroom runs.
|
| [1]https://github.com/stefanwichmann/kelvin
| stevenkkim wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for sharing. I don't have any home
| automation stuff, but good to know this exists.
| mbtwl wrote:
| Can't relate at all. Maybe it's regional. In EU conventional
| light bulb have been phased out more than ten years ago. In the
| first few years there were some crappy LED bulbs until
| manufactures solved issues of basically completely new product. I
| don't remember any LED bulb I ever bought breaking until now. And
| ones I bought in last 5 years (when moving to a new place) also
| have nice warm colour and don't flicker. Good bulbs used to be
| around 5-10EUR per piece, now more due to inflation. But I don't
| mind since they last forever. And way more efficient, wonder how
| long it takes before cost is made up my savings in electricity
| bill.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I have heard that newer LED Bulbs now have some kind of built in
| obsolescence. This is from someone I know who is an engineer
| working for the US military.
|
| I told him I had bought some LEDs (started moving over 2 years
| ago) and that is when he mentioned that. I guess I will find out,
| so far so good.
|
| I did stock up on 100 watt incandescent years ago and have a many
| left just in case. I found LEDs cause me eye strain, but I
| experimented and found if I use a Lamp Shade with a slight yellow
| tinge, I can deal with them.
| Jiocus wrote:
| Traditional incandescent bulbs were not immune to planned
| obsolescence, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
|
| "The cartel lowered operational costs and worked to standardize
| the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1,000 hours (down from
| 2,500 hours).."
| anjel wrote:
| Planned obsolescence and fictitious durability scores are a
| class action lawsuit waiting to happen
| blakesterz wrote:
| I'm finding this true with the bulbs I've bought in the past 5
| or so years. The first one I bought about 15 years ago is still
| going, but most, if not all more recent LEDs have died. Even
| the ones in the basement that are mounted with no case to
| increase the heat around them.
|
| I read the "guarantee" when I buy new bulbs but who keeps
| receipts or track of light bulbs?
| smallerfish wrote:
| You can write the install date (and store name) on the bulb
| housing with a sharpie when you put it in the socket. It's
| not a receipt but it at least gives you a shot at getting a
| return when it fails early.
| OJFord wrote:
| You could also just write an arbitrary date and the name of
| the most convenient shop when it fails, so I really don't
| see what good that does, it's very far from a receipt.
| fest wrote:
| At the very least, it gives you an idea which receipt to
| look for in your box of receipts/warranties.
|
| And no, I am not happy about having to think about
| storing receipts for mundane things like light bulbs
| either, but it is the only thing that calms down my
| nerves when yet another bulb with 5 year warranty fails
| in a year.
| smallerfish wrote:
| If you run a store, and a customer comes in and says "I
| bought this item on $x date; I don't have the receipt but
| this is how I know", you have two choices:
|
| a) you can choose not to trust them
|
| b) you can choose to trust them
|
| For a $3 item, most retailers would pick #b every time.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I'm starting to suspect that it's not the LEDs themselves
| that are failing but the transformer packed inside the base.
| I haven't really dug in though.
|
| Are there any good brands of LED bulbs these days -- bulbs
| that are likely to work as long as is claimed on the box?
| I've already scratched GE and FEIT off the list.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not exactly "the transformer", but yeah. See the afore-
| mentioned videos by Big Clive on YouTube to find out how to
| hack your bulbs to make them last indefinitely (albeit at a
| reduced light output).
| projektfu wrote:
| I've read that it is the controller circuit which is
| cheaply made. The LED would continue to work fine if the
| current source hadn't failed. I had a lot of trouble with
| GU10 LED lamps, finding ones that last as long as a
| halogen.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| They are almost certainly referring to the use of 85degC
| capacitors. These are much cheaper and die quicker compared to
| their pricier counterparts.
|
| It's not so much "planned obsolescence" as it is "consumers
| shop on price primarily". And its even harder because there
| really isn't much benefit to putting specs on your bulbs
| because 99.9% of consumers won't understand them anyway.
|
| What should happen is a mandated "nutrition facts" that gets
| put on all bulbs so people can familiarize themselves with a
| standard fact sheet.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I think the european commission was considering something
| like this with right-to-repair laws? Having a "durability
| score" on the package, or something like that.
| Majromax wrote:
| > I have heard that newer LED Bulbs now have some kind of built
| in obsolescence. This is from someone I know who is an engineer
| working for the US military.
|
| BigClive covers this issue a fair amount on his Youtube
| teardown videos. It's not exactly built-in obsolescence, so
| much as being built to cost.
|
| The cheapest way to build an LED bulb is to minimize the number
| of components. Instead of spreading the light emission out over
| a couple of dozen LEDs, it's cheaper to use a handful of LEDs
| but really overdrive them with high currents.
|
| The result is a bulb that's cheap to make, but in ordinary use
| the chips and phosphors inside will run at high temperatures
| and degrade much more quickly. This effect will be even more
| pronounced with enclosed fixtures (like ceiling lights) that
| have little to no ventilation.
|
| Manufacturers could design their way out of this by increasing
| the component count (spreading the light generation over more
| LED chips at lower current), but that's an expense that doesn't
| translate well to a brand or marketing claim. As it stands,
| ordinary consumers are unlikely to try to exercise their
| warranty on a bulb that fails after 1,000 hours rather than a
| rated 3,000 or so; there's no reason to expect that "this bulb
| is more expensive but will last a really long time" would make
| it in the consumer-facing market.
| willidiots wrote:
| Glad to see someone referencing BigClive's teardowns and
| explanations.
|
| As for the business rationale, I think it's less about
| consumer demand and more about the recurring revenue for the
| light manufacturers. Products like this exist where mandated
| - see his video on the Dubai LEDs - but aren't made broadly
| available.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I think GP's explanation is compatible with "Products like
| this exist where mandated".
|
| Even if the producer expects absolutely zero return
| customers (and therefore no recurring revenue), having the
| more durable product be more expensive, and durability
| being hard to advertise, means there's a race to the bottom
| where the more durable product is competed out of
| existence.
|
| If _everybody_ is forced to make the durable product, the
| race to the bottom disappears.
|
| (Alternatively, having better packaging regulations that
| make it easier to identify long-lasting products would also
| help)
| nirvdrum wrote:
| I tried to make a warranty claim since I had a whole batch of
| bulbs die within a few months. GE required me to ship them
| the bulbs. I abandoned the claim, switched to another
| manufacturer, and don't put stock in those warranties at all
| anymore. I doubt they get very many claims and surely someone
| there is using that as proof of customer satisfaction.
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| > It's not exactly built-in obsolescence, so much as being
| built to cost.
|
| How do you know this? Seems completely implausible. Source
| please.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _in ordinary use the chips and phosphors inside will run at
| high temperatures and degrade much more quickly. This effect
| will be even more pronounced with enclosed fixtures (like
| ceiling lights) that have little to no ventilation._
|
| So, if I want bulbs that are less likely to fail, would it
| help to always buy enclosure-rated ones, even for
| applications where they're not going to be enclosed? It seems
| like that could be a way to get the safety margin that
| manufacturers aren't bothering with.
|
| > _unlikely to try to exercise their warranty_
|
| I'm in this exact situation now, and it's because of the
| hassle. You must take the bulbs back to the store. There are
| various issues like waiting in line, and I haven't done it. I
| bought name-brand bulbs thinking they'd be good, but now I'm
| unhappy because the guarantee process is such a bother.
|
| I wonder if a company could make a viable product by
| differentiating in this area. Make a truly no-cost, no-hassle
| return process. Allow me to print a pre-paid shipping label
| and just drop it in the mail. No in-person store visits,
| waiting on hold for customer support, etc. And really push
| this in marketing. Maybe even put some kind of hour meter on
| the bulbs as a visible sign that I am buying the one brand of
| LED bulb that takes reliability seriously. People might pay
| more just to be spared from the headache of LED bulbs that
| fail a lot.
| szoszon wrote:
| LED lights are unfortunately a big marketing scam. Remember when
| they promised that the will last up to 20 years? Well, when I
| renovated my house 5 years ago I installed LED lights over my
| kitchen island - they were so bright that you couldn't look
| directly at them and it was too hard to see somebody on the other
| side of the island.. This is no longer true - they are visibly
| dimmer. In a few more years they will probably have to be
| replaced.. The problem is that since they don't use bulbs, I will
| have to replace the whole fixture.. and the current lamps will
| end up in the trash. We're not going to save our environment this
| way.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I've trashed over 30 flush-mount LED lights in my house and its
| 2018 construction. It wouldn't be so offensive if we didn't buy
| into our own marketing bullshit so much. Pretending like 20
| years is a realistic timeframe for a semiconductor to survive
| in that kind of environment is fantasy, but then you go about
| constructing homes and businesses like it's true.
|
| This kind of scam is getting really old for me. LED lighting
| isn't the only one being pushed on us.
| davidy123 wrote:
| I think LED lights will lose some of their brightness in the
| short term, but maintain a useful plateau much longer. At
| least, that's how LED projectors work, vs lamp projectors,
| which steadily decline until they're unusable.
|
| However, I would always buy standard socket LEDs unless you're
| really committed to that lighting style.
| szoszon wrote:
| Try explaining to your wife that this ugly lamp that uses a
| regular bulb will be better for us in a long term :)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| OTOH, my original Cree retrofit can lights from about 2014 are
| still going strong. They seem to have the electronics separate
| from the LED itself which keeps the heat under control. I've
| definitely noticed that some less expensive designs don't
| bother with that, and it really lowers the longevity of the
| fixture.
| titzer wrote:
| Not mentioned in the article are the LED replacements for full-
| size fluorescent tubes (i.e. 48in tubes). I got a bunch for my
| basement. The LED tubes really are a million times better than
| the fluorescents. For one, they aren't enormous fragile glass
| tubes filled with toxic mercury vapor, and two, they give off
| good light (for a basement work area) with very little power.
| strictnein wrote:
| Interesting. I have some of those fluorescents in a storage
| room and I hadn't even thought about there being an LED
| replacement option. Thanks for posting that.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Can you place those bulbs in the regular fluorescent "socket"?
| I bought a house and have a few burned out fluorescent looking
| long bulbs and I don't want to replace them with toxic bulbs.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yes, but _check the bulb_. Some are compatible with the
| fluorescent ballast, but some expect you to use a fixture
| that has had the ballast removed. The trend is towards the
| latter, because they are more efficient.
| stasmo wrote:
| A CFL ballast can be modified with a bypass by snipping a
| couple of wires and tying them to other wires. It takes 10
| minutes and it's reversible. I did it myself after watching
| a YouTube video. The LED t8 replacement was cheaper and
| brighter and used less electricity.
| caboteria wrote:
| We've gone from incandescent bulbs that were shit because a
| cartel[1] said so, to LED bulbs that are shit because we demand
| that they be cheaper than they can reasonably be.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
| shanecleveland wrote:
| I replace the standard size LED bulbs more than any other bulb.
| Of all new bulbs in a new construction home from 2016, I do not
| have any original standard size LED bulbs (mix of open, enclosed
| and outdoor applications).
|
| I still have original incandescent bulbs, fluorescents and in-
| ceiling LED can bulbs in place. I'm not sure what makes the
| flood-style LED can bulbs so much better. I have not replaced a
| single one indoors. Same mfr. as the standard size LED bulbs
| (Fleir, sp?). I have not found a good brand of the standard size
| LED replacement bulbs.
| anoojb wrote:
| Same story. Wondering if there's a truly resilient Standard 60W
| LED bulb in the market at all, and if not why?
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I put LEDs in about 10 years ago and have never replaced one. I
| used to have a big drawer full of incandescent ones because
| they would fail pretty regularly
|
| I think there just might be more of a spectrum with LED bulbs,
| since they are more complicated than incandescent ones. The
| worst ones are much worse, but the best ones are far better.
| blyry wrote:
| Lightbulbs are infuriating now-a-days. I want poe-driven wired
| IoT bulbs (and downlights, and I suppose zigbee/zwave where poe
| can't be added in) that dim and color change on the white
| spectrum (no rgb silliness I will never need to make my
| lightbulbs green or purple or whatever), with no flicker and high
| CRI / full spectrum.
|
| And a black box controller that matches output to exterior
| conditions automatically. No app, just a black box with a wired
| light sensor.
|
| You can rip my halogen reading lamps cold dead hands.
| [deleted]
| thayne wrote:
| One thing that really, really annoys me, that isn't mentioned is
| that practically all LED bulbs have a warning (in fine print)
| that you shouldn't use them in enclosed spaces. If you do use
| them in enclosed spaces some components overheat, and it
| dramatically reduces the lifetime of the bulb. In my home, like
| many, probably most, home in the area, most of the light fixtures
| are enclosed. And finding bulbs designed to work in enclosed
| spaces is practically impossible.
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| I don't finish reading the article because it seems the author is
| very unlucky with LEDs, but LEDs really _that_ bad?
|
| You know that thing where you didn't notice anything wrong until
| someone mention it and suddenly you notice it too? It doesn't
| happen to me after reading the article. What should I pay
| attention to my LED bulbs so I can be on the same page with the
| author?
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