Faulty LED bulbs is a big topic. They don't seem to last anywhere near what's being claimed. So there's a lot of videos about autopsying bulbs and repairing them and what have you.
@copernicofelinis a coworker referred me to technology connections, i never thought I'd be so interested in such videos, however like you said, I watch them over and over
@@copernicofelinis dont forget the three videos about the dishwashers (they are kinda the same tho). i watched all of them and i dont even have i dishwasher lol
He should try some of those LED's Big Clive was looking at from Kuwait. The LED's in those are run at a much lower power than rated. I would say as they run cooler they would be lasting longer.
One thing about the incandescent bulb in your one lamp, that bulb has survived for so many years because it's been turned on and left on. The biggest thing that will kill that type of bulb is power cycling. It stresses the filament every time you cycle it on and off, so if it's turned on and off enough times it WILL die. Though if it's left in a place like what you were showing where it was able to be left on and never change its state of being on or off then the stresses on it are limited.
@@cassianomartin2699 As do LEDs that are dimmable. We have a chandelier in our dining room. We changed all the bulbs to cute LEDs that have a "candle" look to them. I installed a dimmer because we don't like super bright. Plus, I'm well aware that running any LED at high brightness (meaning high current) will shorten their lives. Just ask anybody with a back lit HD TV who runs it at very high brightness. Anyway, these have been running without issue for over 10 years now. LOL And they are on during the day, from probably 6 am to 10 pm, but on the lowest setting on the dimmer. LEDs "CAN" last a long time, but like said in the video, often, the circuitry, not so much. But even then, running via a dimmer, thereby not over driving the circuitry helps.
True. Tungsten has a positive temperature coefficient, so the resistance is lower when cold. When switched on, if the AC cycle is near or at the peak voltage, 325 Volts here in the UK, then because the filament is cold, and has a lower resistance, the peak current blows the filament and makes that characteristic ''chink'' sound when it does. As an electronics geek, I like to call incandescent lamps, directly heated monodes. 😊
The incandescent floods in my kitchen are original from when the house was built in 1994. They are 130v bulbs instead of the more common 120v, and they have always been on a dimmer switch where the light has to be dimmed up to full power. When tungsten filaments are never stressed, they last forever.
Why do they fail (prematurely compared to expectations) ? It’s simple. Most LED bulbs are severely price constrained. By using fewer LEDs it’s cheaper to make but to get a competitive light output those LEDs needs to be driven to the edge of their existence. So they get hot, and either burn themselves out or the heat kills adjacent components. The thing is, we cannot realistically complain about planned obsolescence while at the same time demanding ever cheaper consumer electronics. Good quality LED bulbs do exist but they typically cost around 5 times more than the cheapest ones. And the good ones do last long. Incandescent bulbs went through a similar phase, for a while one could buy incredibly cheap horrendously badly made bulbs that would sometimes break on the trip home. But when well made, they too can last decades. I have some incandescent lightbulbs still in use since the late 80’s. Also, fight me on this but nothing beats the colour rendering of a good incandescent lightbulb. The 200W versions I have are pretty decent at being subtle space heaters too. (And especially effective at melting modern plastic light fixtures 😅) The best hack* for cheap LED bulbs is to trim the current sensing resistors to run the bulb at a lower wattage / current. Aim for around 10mA per LED and they should live a long happy life. *Credit to BigClive for this one. See his channel for more details / how to.
There's no need to fight you on the color rendering index. Incandescent is obviously best (100 CRI and good R9) because it's just a black body radiator. LED's however can be good. You just need to pay for it. There are many options with 90+ CRI or 95+ CRI or even 98+ CRI. The CRI rating however is problematic. The CRI rating only looks at the R1 through R8 colors which are pale colors. Previously mentioned R9 is a deeper red. And if a light has a poor R9 color rendition, skin colors for example look ghastly. The extended CRI looks at R9-R14 colors as well but CRI Ra value is based on R1-R8 performance. There is IES TM-30-18 as well and CQS etc. but this needs wider industry support/push and we'd need consumers and professionals to ask for better lighting. It's just unfortunate that the vast majority of people don't care so we get sub par products.
LEDs, even cheap ones, don't usually fail on their own. In most cases the issue with this type of lamps is a small (or non-existent) heatsink or a cheap power supply. Just look at third lamp - it has everything it needs, and it serves for years. the other ones may serve a year or two before dropping brightness and eventually failing. LEDs are also better because you can purchase ones with high CRI and almost any color temperature you want, even the one of incandescent lightbulbs. But why would you.
10mA per LED is pretty low. Even ancient LEDS could tolerate more current than that. I would think double that is still within the realm of reason. A modern blue LED is more along the lines of 30 mA rated. It'll light up at 10 mA but it's not going to be particularly bright. Another thing you can do is vent the bulbs. If you can reduce the heat you will increase the life. Every 10 degrees doubles the life. Heat is that significant a factor. They should stop trying to make light bulbs like light bulbs. Come up with a design that manages the heat better. Clearly manufacturers don't care and are just interested in selling product. They should make lamps with built in PSUs. Maybe the Edison screw base isn't the way to fly today? The packaging is all wrong. Stuffing LEDs into a housing designed for incandescent filament is just dumb.
@@1pcfred Well, that depends on the LED. I guess better suggestion would be to look at the current they're running the LED's at and then perhaps halving that or something. In a previous comment I hinted at the LED I/Vf curve. As the current increases, the forward voltage increases as well. LED power does not increase linearly. Similarly, as you increase the LED current, the light output does not increase linearly. Just as a simple example, manufacturer might run 50% more current through the LED's, only to gain let's say 25% more light output. But the power consumed will increase by more than 50%! So, if you reduce the current, the drive circuit will have much easier time as the power load decreases more than the current or the light output does and the LED's as well will be much happier. Obviously the 2835 or whatever size LED's are used in bulbs have smaller differences than the above rather extreme examples but the principle applies. Just for reference, I looked up LM281B LED specifications and it's rated for 150mA at 57-61lm. So you'd need about 13-14 of these for an 800lm bulb. Looking at the Vf curve, and guesstimating, at 150mA the forward voltage is roughly 3.15V. Halving the current to 75mA, the forward voltage drops to, let's say 2.95V. While the luminous flux drops from 100% to, I don't know, let's say 58%. Current drops from 100% to 50%, power drops to 47% and luminous flux drops to 58%. See what I mean? But this is just going from the rated current (150mA) downwards. The max current on that specific LED is just 160mA. There are other LED's which have a much wider range between the rated current and the max current. If you do the same calculation for an LED that's driven hard vs driven at the rated current, the difference is only going to increase.
@@soundspark Isn't every experience at Orange Store bad? I've also had universally bad experiences at Blue Store. They both buy the cheapest possible Chinese trash and fill their entire store with it and make every customer walk two miles to find the tiniest component.
RU-vid is definitely listening to me, I was talking about these failing LEDs last night at like 11 PM, and then this shows up first thing in the morning
It's worse. Once you use youtube and google heavily for years, they can simulate what you're thinking. Basically mind reading at this point. You do have to give them fresh data every day for it to happen though.
@@ElectricityTaster It just proves that humans can be predictable. After all, our brains are just advanced computers, so if an AI can be developed that can predict what code will do, it should predict what we will do.... ish... more or less....
I've found that newer LED bulb designs produce a lot less heat, and so far seem to be lasting longer. It's also worth noting it depends on what fixture you put it in. As some fixtures can dissipate the heat well, and some (nipple/boob cheap lamp fixtures) have poor to no heat venting. For incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs this was fine and did not accelerate their death (except for some CFLs), but boy does it ever accelerate the death of LED bulbs! (if they get hot enough). So kinda wish you had covered the fixtures each were used in more closely, as this detail I'd say is very important.
This is exactly the problem. Incandescent bulbs, CFLs and LEDs all have different constraints for long life, but end users rarely care or even know about them. For CFLs, short on/off cycles are a death sentence. For LEDs it is poor heat dissipation more than anything else.
I've noticed after they banned incandescent bulbs the quality of LED bulbs went down the crapper. Too bad they're way more expensive than incandescents.
It would have been nice if LED bulbs had readily replaceable, standardized parts, so that if an individual LED bit the dust it could be replaced, but they'd cost even more if so. The incandescent bulb industry at least had a pact about the quality of their bulbs, which reduced competition but did increase predictability to the customer. The customer could intuit how many bulbs to buy and keep on hand.
5,000°K means psychopath? Nuh uh. My parents with their half bridge regulated incandescent lookielike LED bulbs, _there's_ your psycho test. 25 Hz flicker, you suddenly lose all your persistence of vision and everything goes very filmic
Or MUCH cheaper ideas: 1) Just make the case unscrew and give you the ability to extract, test, repair and reinsert What's in there. Could be a good small business job creation thing 2) Put an LED driver in the ceiling rose, create an ISO LED light fitting socket standard and now you can replace/repair either the driver or the lamps. Also, with all that space you can install some meaty big-iron components in said driver.
@@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648 We actually had this for years in new builds in the UK and across the EU, they were special pendants containing god's own ballast and the socket was the standard 4pin push fit for driverless fluorescent tubes you use in the bathroom (those square tubes) Sadly it went straight back to ES and bayonets when that standard went obsolete
We've had bans since 2012 - so far, there hasn't been much of a change except for the very first ones back in the early 2010s. Those came back under warranty all the time at the store where i worked. Cheap new leds are practically as cheap as incandescents. Some last way longer, some just as long. It's just sad that it's a race to the bottom of production quality. No matter what you buy, the boards appear to be designed to run incredibly hot. I just replaced an Osram e14 dimmable spotlight. Autopsy'd it. Driver board was heavily discolored from running way too hot. That stupid thing was expensive. Luckily it's company money and not mine, but it still annoys me. The board is as cheap as you can get. The housing was really nice, made from thick glass, but that's likely exactly what killed the driver. If there is multiple millimeters of glass around a circuit board, it gets no cooling at all. The most modern LED bulbs are - like the old incandescents - gas filled to use convection to move heat from the hot parts to the outer shell.
I’ve lived in this house now 20 years. The incandescent bulbs in my kitchen and two bathrooms at least that old, never changed. Same for the halogens in dining and living room.
@@Lagittaja and why do they seek to reduce component costs? Profitability. I'm not saying profitability is bad. I'm not saying the LED bulbs are bad. However, I do believe that significant improvements in reliability can be made for a small increase in cost. These devices, like pretty much everything else, seems to be designed to last just beyond the point at which it significantly frustrates buyers.
3:54 that is a MELF resistor, one of the earlier SMD technologies, but still used because they can handle a lot more electrical stress than a similarly rated flat SMD package
MELF stands for "Metal Electrode Leadless Face" but I think it actually stands for "Most End up Lying on the Floor" (because they're round they love to roll off of whatever surface you have them on).
Nearly all of them fail due to temperature cycling of solder joints. LED bulbs are tested by running them at a constant temperature at elevated stresses being ON continuously. A typical cheap-o indoor rated LED bulb lasts me about 3-5 years being constantly on in my outdoor light fixtures, which is longer than they last being used indoors where they switch on/off many times per day.
its not the soldering joints. all kinds of other heat cycled electronics handles heat cycles pretty well. and ive never seen any electronics fail in industry due to failed soldering joints yet. even though theres more extreme heat cycles there. its the fact that theyre ran at higher temps then they should. look up dubai lamps. a long with bad power supplies. the whole light industry is planned obsolence on steroids. always have been. its not even a conspiracy. it has been documented for about 100 years now
I don’t think I’ve ever had an LED bulb that lasts more than a couple years under normal usage conditions. It’s all an eco scam. If they last 13 years, they should be warrantied for that long.
I have a number of bulbs from ~10+ years ago that still hold up but pretty much everything I've had in recent years die fast. Most of the Feit Electric bulbs are a total scam IMO... especially small ones like those with the skinny base used in fan fixtures (candle... something style). My 'conspiracy' theory is that early on more manufacturers realized if they died too fast people wouldn't want to transition but once they took over the market they hatched their evil plan.
some do- you get a bunch of the same ones and a couple will last for a long ass time. I doubt the average of all of them comes out to the lifetime they claim, though.
This is so interesting to me because, in 14 years of buying LED bulbs, I have never had a single LED bulb fail. I also never bought the ecosmart lowest-cost store-brand bulbs, just cree and phillips.
@@tyttuut The problem is it's not always as if you bought the cheapest YOLO brand on Amazon. In the big box stores even what would be considered the cheaper option still often costs a pretty good chunk of change all things considered. I've even had GE bulbs die oddly quick recently while others go on for years. The industry is just a bit of a crap shoot when it comes to QC and not everyone wants to throw a $20+ bulb in their $10 lamp.
That shaky panichands pause and then double hand flip 11:29 after the explosive disassembly -- SO RELATABLE LOL. Because you KNOW there's that little window where you could be slashed to the bone and not feel anything...
If you want some decent quality LEDs at reasonable prices I recommend taking a look at sylvania bulbs. I don't trust most no-name brands for home lighting. I have had some bad experience with Feit bulbs and I have a disdain for Philips as they took away the ability to have smart bulbs work locally and not have to create an account or send data to the cloud.
I've had good luck with the "house" brands at certain dedicated online bulb stores - so far they've lasted infinitely longer (in that NONE have failed yet) than anything from the box stores or the online scammy river store.. Compared to the ones from the box stores, some of which failed within 5 hours of use
At least we're saving the environment by using a negligibly smaller amount of electricity. Please ignore all of the plastic and circuitry headed to the landfill.
@@ralphnapierii1184Agreed. The power consumption of LEDS per lumen is a fraction of incandescents and other technologies. Plus LEDs have far less hazardous materials than the mercury of f-lamps, cfls and other arc lamps.
Better millions of consumers foot the bill for all the stuff going to the landfill than the power company spend money upgrading the grid. The company CEO has gold bars to buy for his swimming pool, you know...
@@gorak9000 How do corporations selling junk which ends up as junk negate the need for using less fossil fuel based power sources (because that is what we are trying to use less of, not power per se, nukes beat all) as well as updating the ancient grid?
a much much smaller amount of electricity and less in the landfill. Less heat to make the AC run in hot places (but less in cold places). Probably more total $ for most homeowners but less for a lot of commercial and public uses. It's better. It's not perfect but who said it was?
My biggest complaint about these LED bulbs is that they cram so many components into a completely un-repairable sealed package. If I could actually fix just the parts that burned out it would be a way better deal. But by the time I open them enough to find the failed part it's destroyed. A room-wide or house-wide efficient AC to DC converter and then just DC LED fixtures would be a much more tenable solution, but people don't want to deal with that.
Makes me upset that my local Lowes and Walmart won't stock incandescent bulbs unless it a oven or microwave bulb. We're all forced to buy garbage marked as a good products.
But even the worst quality led bulb is better than the best quality incandescent bulb. Like, by far. Wastes 10x more power for the same lumens. LEDs cost about the same and generate basically no heat. Also, no incandescent bulb ever, lasted more than 2 years, unless it was one of those super dim ones like 20w or less. Source: Me, I am from the 20th century. Back in the day replacing light bulbs was a monthly task around the house. Especially super bright ones like 200w bulbs didn't last at all.
@Wes12940 i have repurposed these types of led boards, found a few that fall in line with my cordless tool batteries along with buck converters, and made outdoor security lighting.
@@ukaszsmoa8416 Running LEDs off house current just doesn't work well. There's no way around the voltage difference. LEDs really don't like high voltage AC. The parts capable of doing the conversion don't like living next to LEDs. That goes for good, bad and indifferent qualities.
It's not always the LED's that fail. You could make the product modular so that the capacitors are replaceable as well as the LED's. Ideally more consumers would be confident in using a soldering iron and buying replacement parts from a shop on the high street. We do at least have separate drivers which can be replaced, but the difference between constant current and constant voltage is likely to remain esoteric for ever.
And lack of any venting! I've not seen a single "bulb" with any way for the heated air inside to escape! If there was some venting, that could help. But moreso, a big problem is the crappy circuit designs. Obviously, we know where most of these are made. Sadly, they are made on the cheap, so the circuitry is also designed to "just make the LEDs light up". There is not interest in designing high efficiency circuits that will run cooler. Part of that too is just adding more LEDs to help dissipate heat.
@@integerofdoom69 Oh I know! Thus my comment about venting. However, venting isn't enough. Better, more efficient circuitry needs to be used. All these LED lights run way too hot because the circuits are poorly designed and not good at dissipating heat.
@@integerofdoom69 Agreed. And it's only getting worse. Not just lights, but all products. It's so difficult to find well made products these days. And if we can, it's way over priced.
That looks like it could be a zinc casting rather than aluminum. Yeah, zinc alloys are much less efficient for heatsink material, but they mold into complex shapes really well and cost way less than the same casting in aluminum. It was soft enough to gouge deeply from your screwdriver tip, but all that leverage didn't stove in the metal surrounding it at all (like the same thickness aluminum probably would). I've seen it before in other LED lights: the zinc is much better than no metal heat sink, and explain better why that bulb was oddly heavy. A large, thin sheet of aluminum like you found in that other bulb is arguably worse, made so thin to save money the heat travels poorly to its outer edges.
Specifically eco smart, been tearing them down for years now when they die and every iteration I notice they use less and less materials and push they led’s harder and they usually fail in less than two years by either flickering for no reason at random or just flat out not turning on
“Like feeding a toddler spaghetti by candlelight” sounds like the analogy. “How’s the car repair going?” “Like feeding a toddler spaghetti by candlelight.”
I've got some ancient Philips 20W-equivalent bulbs from right at the start of the LED wave. Giant things, heatsink is 2/3rds of the body, yellow cap. Found image results that look like it by the name "Philips Master LED". Well over 12 years old now, they're still kicking. From the heat they put out, I don't think they use the shoddy capacitive dropper circuits that most modern LED bulbs use. If I recall correctly they were something like ~$30 CAD a piece at the time.
I have old ecosmart LED bulbs in the hallway that have been working for over a decade. A couple of the bulbs have 1 of 5 LEDs burnt out, but they're still plenty bright. Meanwhile, one of my newer ecosmart bulbs died in just a few years. A capacitor blew its load, there was electrolyte all over inside of the bulb. At least it didn't fail catastrophically, unlike the ancient CFL in my garage, in which the electronics melted its casing. That bulb was probably 20-25 years old, and it had U-tubes instead of the spiral tubes found in later CFLs. It produced very pink light when it worked!
The whole concept of LED lighting for home use is flawed. Every frackin' bulb has to have electronics inside since all they'te thinking about is backward compatibility. When halogen lighting became popular, the conversion to low voltage was done outside the lamp, like it should. Replacing a popped bulb only meant replacing the actual lamp. Way cheaper and 100 times more environment friendly. I scavenge the local street lighting company once a week and even the retrofits for street lighting have this "all in one" approach. Many broken lamps just have the electronics fail prematurely because of getting too hot, bad components and moisture getting in. Newly built houses shoud have a separate circuit for low voltage lighting so all the lamp needs to contain are LED's and resistors.
If you start requiring a low voltage circuit in houses, you can expect that the power supplies that get installed will be very unreliable. Landlord's specials. And replacing those every 2 or 3 years, can be just as expensive as swapping out a 2 euro LED bulb, because the power supply will be a "Special Appliance" that is sold at a premium, or is located in such a place that your average homeowner gets unsure about replacing it themselves. Your idea can absolutely work, though with switching regulators in the LED bulbs instead of resistors. Switching regulators can deal with some voltage drop over the wiring ensuring that the brightness of all LED lamps will be equal, and they will run a whole lot cooler than a resistor driven LED bulb, therefore increasing life span of the LED phosphors. Cost wise it does not matter. Those driver chips and some associated components get you to maybe 45 cents in total, wholesale. I do not exactly know if you save a lot on heat production by running a switcher on low voltage rather than high voltage. But at least you can get rid of the bridge rectifier and filter capacitor, both of which are not uncommon to fail. I think one of the biggest benefits is that you can make the lamp housing out of metal, and use it as a big heat sink, safely. Theoretically you can do it too on mains voltage, but you need an isolation layer that thermally conducts. But in the end, what counts is production cost, and even in the above scenario, corporations only strive for biggest profits with the lowest quality level the market still tolerates. They are not making those lamps for the good of the people, but only for the good of the shareholders.
Easy to say why they don’t last as long, it’s down to the driver they use and electronics in general don’t like to be turned on and off constantly, home stereo also have the same issues after so many on off cycles, ironically incandescent lights last pretty long if you just leave it on!
I'm wondering if it was actually more eco friendly all things considered to just use traditional incandescent ones rather than the new fancy LED bulbs despite the bigger power consumption, since they seem to fail just as frequently - at least in light fixtures that were designed for bulbs in the first place. BTW. since there are incandescent bulbs, are there outcandescent ones too?
Was really waiting and hoping you were going to drop the hint about the 2 resistors trick used to set the regulation supplied by the regulator ic to the led's, and by removing one of them usually drops the supply to the leds and drastically extends the lamps life at only moderate loss in light output. Its the little extra useful tech tips thrown in with the great presentation style you have that would probably draw an even wider audience.
I’m used to a long explanation to answer question I wouldn’t know how to ask. Colour me tickled that someone actually answered a question I have silently asked myself 1000 times! Thanks for this. Subscribing!!
My experience is very different. I have installed GU10 base LED spotlights in my apartment. 16 years ago! The ones in the bathroom in particular are used very often, sometimes briefly, sometimes for a long time, and they all still work. In the hallway of our house, on the other hand, we can replace the E27 lamps every few months because they start to flicker. Despite the well-known manufacturer. But they are only three minutes active every time.
I've had some bulbs go out when one of the diodes goes bad and i would just bridge the connection where the diode was with solder. Decreasing the number of leds would make the remaining leds work harder and they would start all dying after a couple months.
Finally the video I was looking for! Whenever I get a dead led bulb I always try to power the leds just for fun. No wonder mine never lit with the diode check function of my multimeter. I had no idea they needed around 15 volts.
I also purchased a bunch of the EcoSmart bulbs a few years back, because I assumed they'd be easy to return to HD if I had issues. The warranty docs clearly state that you can do returns at HD, as one would expect being a house brand. Well, when I had some fail right at 4.5 years (5 year warranty), I took them back to HD. I even had the original box. I had to argue with customer service for quite some time - they claimed I needed to deal with EcoSmart directly. After showing them the warranty doc, they still had issues with the fact that that exact model wasn't offered anymore. I said I could find the exact equivalent model on the shelf, even if the model was different. To get rid of me, they finally offered to discount a pack of the new model of the same bulb by the amount I paid 5 years ago. Of course, the price had gone up about 50% since then ($12 -> $18). I figured that was the best I was gonna do, so I gave them the $6 difference for 2 new bulbs. I won't be buying any more of the HD brand, since they don't stand by their warranty any better than a random China brand on Amazon would. Probably made in the same factory anyway, so FAOPBE brand here I come!
I do lighting at a university. We have led lights that have lasted years and done that last months. Sometimes it's the fixture trapping heat and sometimes it's improper grounding, but mostly it's just the cheap junk that was never meant to last. Florescents are the same way. I regularly pull out old GE tubes that are decades old, Phillips bulbs that are a dozen years old and Sylvania bulbs that last a few months (and about one in each box of 30 is defective out of the box)
There's an element of survivorship bias here. Both incandescent and LED bulbs have significantly varying lifetimes because the manufacturing process isn't that consistent. But what happens is as you burn out the shorter lived ones, eventually they all get replaced with longer-lived ones, until you have mostly longer lived bulbs left. When you're in the process of transitioning from incandescent to LED, it may _seem_ like LED bulbs are less reliable, because you are comparing the random sampling of the LED ones you just bought with the incandescent ones that have been installed and working for years. The bathtub curve tells us that short-lived units tend to skew _very_ short-lived, so if something lasts for a year it's very likely it will last for two years. But also I wouldn't be surprised if LED bulbs are actually less reliable especially if you're buying cheap ones.
No one is really comparing it to incandescent life - we all know incandescents don't last that long and some of the comments he made were just off-hand to be funny. What we are comparing is the manufacturer's claim and the general promise of extreme lifetime, yet almost every LED bulb falls far short of that.
I have light fixtures in the house. They are sealed domes and they kill LEDs and incandescent bulbs. If you have a dimmer, using that will extend their life but I just drilled some holse in the plastic light defuser so it can cool more effectively and put 1 bulb instead of 2 in each. That was about 10 years ago, and haven't had a failure yet. All the exposed LEDs like in my fan and chandelier have never failed. I had an outdoor one fail but, pretty sure humidity killed that.
Voltage isn't the whole problem. Voltage is just part of the problem. The differential between the input voltage and what the LED requires is part of the problem too. Your basic lighting LED today has a forward voltage of 3.4 VDC There's a big gap between that and typical AC voltage. 120 and 240 are just RMS voltages too. The LED would be subjected to peak voltage. You can string a lot of LEDs together in series to match the voltage. That's increasing complexity. If one LED burns out you're in the dark.
check the "not intended for enclosed luminaires" fine print - they will overheat in your glass post enclosure. Add ventilation and your results will improve, or use bulbs rated for the purpose.
the only LED light that still works since forever is in my old Ikea 12v night stand light. It gets used every day for 4-8 hours. It used to use 12v halogen bulbs which burned out frequently.
It might have something to do with me buying LED bulbs as they first came out but with 2 bulbs as exceptions I have not had to replace bulbs in my house for over 10 years. One lamp has been constantly on since 2011 with the exception of power outages. The 2 that I have had to replace were "fancy" LED bulbs that were made to look like a mirrored incandescent bulb from the 50's.
I'll tell you why LED bulbs fail. Because they are driven too far past their limit and things fail. Planned obsolescence. Get you to buy more of them. The early ones work fine. I have some in a ceiling fan in my kitchen that have lasted for years and never failed. I bought those because the fan used those weirdo bulbs but I found an LED version that fit.
I found the Failure on my LED Lamps was caused by the poor contact at the base. If you compare the end contact on the Incandescent to the LED, you’ll notice the LED is flatter. I turned the breaker off and used thin needle nose pliers to pull the tab slightly up so it makes good contact.
One thing i know is for certain in my use case, LEDs absolutely have yet to completely replace HID lighting as far as efficiency and reliability are concerned. The available LED drivers are themselves not very efficient and only save on average about 15 percent of the normal consumption. They usually prematurely fail as well. Plenty of HID fixtures still operating after 50+ years in service.
Many years ago, home depot use to sell Cree LED Bulbs with lofty claims of longevity. I would save my receipts for the challenge, and everytime they burn out, I would bring it back for warranty claim. Ha!
Cree is a legit brand. Today with rampant counterfeiting there's no way you can know what you're really getting unless you pull it off an assembly line yourself. I wouldn't put it past the Home Depot to be selling "Cree" bulbs made somewhere other than Cree in China. Home Depot is not on Cree's list of authorized distributors.
that resistor 3:45 is called a melf ,it was surfacemount v1.0 (1990,s ) still see that package for 1n4148 signal diodes and zenners occasionally, not sure why anyone thought soldering a tube to a flat surface was a good idea ! they phased out fast except the 1n4148,s
There has always been unwritten agreements between light bulb companies to engineer limited lifetime in their lamps. There was one time period in the eighties, when the European continent switched from 220V to 240V, that everyone's bulbs failed in some months of time. As a reaction to the millions of complaints some companies produced "perfect" lamps for some time. Myself still have lamps from such a lot, in use for about 40 years already, none of them failed up till now! A Philips engineer involved in the production from that time explained me: For lamps with built in mirrors, the filament was intentional mounted a millimeter or so out of the center of the mirror. In that way the condensation of the tungsten on the filament dit not happen evenly and would make it burn through after some time. The lot of "perfect" lamps had the filament well centered and seem to live at least half a human lifetime.
In our previous house, we replaced all the old incandescent lights with LEDs. Not one failed over the 10 years we lived there. When we moved into this house, we again replaced all the old incandescents with LEDs. About 3/4 of them failed within 6 months. Utter garbage. And, there's no alternative. All that exists is garbage.
all that exists at the homeless despot, blowes, fall mart, and scamazon blows - there are better bulbs out there, they're just not the ones sold to joe consumer. I've had good luck with even the inexpensive "house brand" of bulbs from dedicated online bulb retailers - they actually cost less than the junk in the store, and they give you a CRI number(>90, >93, or >95) that I measured and verified is accurate. Most junk in the stores doesn't even quote a CRI spec
Try a Sylvania brand bulb. They are pricier, but they do seem to be worth it so far. They're an old brand, but unfortunately that doesn't mean a lot today; so many old, great brands have been inshitafied. So far, it seems that Sylvania has bucked that trend.
What kills me is how the LEDs themselves on all of these still work, it's just the circuitry that fails. Imagine how many perfectly functional leds we've thrown out because they just aren't getting power...
I'm actually very surprised that in this video there were no popped LEDs - usually they run the LEDs way too hard, and the led chips themselves, or the bond wires fail even before the garbage class driver circuitry does
I have had *and have* incandescent bulbs that last decades. At least 4 for some of my older lamps. I tried fluorescent bulbs when they came out a decade or two ago. I bought a Chinese made box of them at Best Buy on sale one day. Installed one by one I watched them stop working over the course of a year. I just swapped them out from the box at first. Then the show stopper. I walked into a room and turned on the overhead light and was met with immediate sputtering, and most worrying, actual smoke and small red sparks falling, coming from the base of the bulb. That ended the life span of fluorescent bulbs from Chine in my house. About a year ago, due primarily to my running out of stored incandescent bulbs I began to use LED bulbs. I have yet to have one last 6 months. I have one in a hall that works sometimes. Luckily it isn't the only light in that hallway. Apparently whenever an alien spacecraft enters or departs our atmosphere it turns on or off. There is no discernible regular interval between turning on and off. Sometimes it turns off for a half hour, sometimes for just 4 or 6 minutes, sometimes for 2 or 3 hours. It is the only LED on that circuit so whatever is happening is either internal to the bulb, or some kind of interference caused by alien space ships crossing the Van Allen Radiation belt or Chinese experimental firing of their Ion cannon. Luckily at an auction I was able to pick up some more incandescent bulbs. My intention is to wait another decade (or two) before again trying LED technology as a cure for darkness. It is pretty obvious here that at the current stage of development any talk about LED lights saving the consumer money is just scammer talk (aka BS) once the cost replacing failed LED light bulbs is factored in. Maybe in a decade there will be reliability improvements, but as a consumer, I will wait and see.
When LED bulbc came to market for the first time (in 2009), they used to have SMPS power supply. I still have them working after 15 years. These days, LED is built with linear regulator which wastes more energy than the LED itself and this wates energy appears as heat. This heat kills parts (starting with electrolytic capacitor).
Thanks, I didn't even know I could buy an aftermarket round goofy looking light for my ceiling fan! That'll save me some money and maybe I can upgrade it.
I suspect that the only real way forward is a standardized DC plug system for low voltage lighting. USB-C may be the closest that we have currently that you could power lighting from, but it’s not supported for outdoor applications or in new construction. I doubt there’s even electrical codes for it yet! But centralizing the electronics for producing smooth low voltage DC power and then commoditizing outlets with protective features would mean lighting manufacturers could just focus on housing and optics. Anyway, maybe someone out there can get into that.
I started making the switch about 7 years ago, because the compact fluorescents I had or inherited from previous owners both 1) sucked as lights when they did work and 2) failed, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes a slow awkward death. So far I've yet to have a single LED bulb or fixture fail. I don't buy store brands or Amazon no-name junk usually. Philips or GE, $2-2.50 per bulb depending on sales. For screw in bulbs (vs LED fixtures), I tend to avoid the classic white bottom/diffuser cone SMD type, as to me it's a signal of cheap quality. Can't tolerate the 60hz flicker on the cheaper ones anyway. From what I understand, the glass bulbs with 'filament' type LEDs either run at higher voltage or require fewer components to drive, which is why they can hide all the circuitry in the screw base. As you say, less to fail. SMD LEDs don't seem like they were made to be built into a bulb, and I feel like their track record attests to that.
The MaxLite bulbs I have failed after 1-2 years due to the connection at the base, or rather the lack of. No solder connection, just the wire tension pressing against the base. I could get a flickering bulb to work again by smacking it but it would only last another month or two. Then back to flickering, and ultimately disposal. But I had bought a bunch when they were less than a $0.50 at the local Habitat for Humanity.
When you see on the packaging of an led bulb that it will last '10-years' that means if it's used like maybe 4-hrs a day - read the FINE PRINT. The reason that most led type light bulbs used in the home fail is because the electronics inside cannot handle the heat generated for very long when they convert the 120v AC (American) to the 12v DC that the led needs to operate on (120v - 12v = 108 extra volts that need to go somewhere, so it's changed into heat). If the bulb is enclosed within a fixture then it will burn-out much faster than if it is left in the open where air currents can help dissipate the heat faster. That is why most led bulbs are not 'rated' for enclosed fixtures. I have a porch light (carriage style) that is glass on all four sides and closed on top, leaving only the bottom open. I removed one of the glass panels (on the house side so it's not obvious) so that cooler air can circulate around the bulb, and led bulb that typically only lasted less than a year have now been working great for almost 4-years. Same with my fully enclosed ceiling light fixtures. Once I replaced the glass diffuser with one that allowed air to circulate around the bulb, they have been lasting for years instead of just months. I don't expect to get '10-years' out of them as the package states, but even half of that would be fine with me.
my leds have been burning for almost 20 years now, but they are old potted, with thermal compound and heavy with alot of metal, the new ones have no boards just a dropper resistor and cap, and thin heat sink, so they're designed to fail from overheating for the most part or bad dirty electricity
I have a great test location, a restaurant that is open 7 days and about 12 hours per day. The R30's I put in the recessed fixtures have been there for 7 years, about 50 of them, so far, only 2 have failed. They have a few fixtures that use standard bulbs, and I have tried many brands of bulbs, all of those have failed between 1 month and 1 year.
1st LED bulb I bought was a utilitech. Guaranteed for 2 years, they said it'd last for 10. the chip cratered after 2 years and a month, obliterating the chip's part number. i chucked out the ckt board and wired the LED pack/plate to the power supply off of a broken inkjet printer, with a ballast resistor in between. now it's a desk lamp.
This video came up in my suggestions, I like the silly humour here which was enough to make me hit the subscribble button. I've not come across an incandescent lamp that has lasted as long as your one in your lamp post outside. I know they can last years though. I remember when I was growing up depending on the room and how much the light was used, they'd last a year on average, sometimes less. Then again we did buy the cheapest of the cheap which didn;t help lol. I agree that LED bulbs just don;t last anywhere near what most manufacturers claim.
Ive had mine for years, none of mine have failed. I had 2 bulbs in the windows of my art gallery on 24/7 for 3 years, when I sold th ebuildng I brought them home.
At least here in 230 land my LEDs either failed very quickly or last a very long time. Maybe 2-3% fail in the first few months to weeks the rest does fine. Most of them are 8-10 years old. Some CFL have the same age but I don't like how they shift colour
Big clive has a good video on Dubai (UAE) bulbs. UAE went the way of legislation (limit the "planned obsolescence") and what do you know business can make something that is not crap. They make them everywhere else to be overdriven so they burn out. Factor in the energy to manufacture an i doubt the LEDs outside of UAE are actually more energy efficient.... greed.... yuck
I bought a box of four Philips LED bulbs about 15 years ago. I dropped one but the others are still working. I still have two CFL bulbs that work in the laundry room that are 20 years old. The CFL doesn't work to good in the colder months. If you are buying bults that cost more than $2, at most $3 a bulb you are getting ripped off. EDIT: I forgot to say why they fail. Its Heat.
I must've been lucky because rarely I've had led bulbs fail on me. I always buy ok-quality led bulbs, not too expensive, and for the first time ever after 4 years I replaced the led bulbs not because they burned out but because the new ones were way more efficient, with more lumens per watt. Samsung diodes, assembled in Bulgaria. V-TAC is the brand, if you are in Europe. I don't know if they are available elsewhere. But I've had terrible experiences with desk LED lamps, with the spring arm, or fixed. When one of the led fails you have to throw away the entire lamp. They are aggressively glued sealed and it's the dumbest design ever. I tried taking one apart to attempt a fix but I ended up breaking the acrylic plastic. I guess it would be acceptable to throw away a piece of furniture after 10 years of use, but these lamps lasted less than 6 months.
Honestly i started weighing led bulbs, one bulb was 30g lighter and the heavier bulb lasted around 3 years while the lighter one lasted barely a year and all the weight was the heatsink of course (i opened up both)
