There's a lot wrong with LEDs in general and retrofit (E27 bulbs) in particular. In no particular order<p>- LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly<p>- Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly<p>- Poor CRI and SSRI<p>- Flickering<p>- Dim-to-warm is uncommon<p>- Poorly designed power supplies that age and fail quickly<p>- The same light <i>quality</i> 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.<p>- It is quite difficult to even buy high quality LEDs as a mere mortal<p>- Retrofits generally work poorly on principle<p>- LEDs mix exceptionally poorly, making things even more expensive
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
>If you’re lucky, the LED will have a CRI of 90 or higher<p>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 4.99€. 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.
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.<p>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
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09H3VFG8B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09H3VFG8B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...</a>
Is it just me or is there something off about this article? It reads quite incoherent.<p>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.
This article and comment section is bizarre to me. It's like travelling back in time to the 2000s.<p>We've <i>only</i> 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.
Non-dimmable bulbs are the author's problem.<p>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.)<p>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.
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.
<a href="https://www.stouchlighting.com/blog/light-comparison-led-lighting-vs-incandescent-lighting#:~:text=New%20LEDs%20can%20last%2050%2C000,other%20commercially%20available%20lighting%20technology" rel="nofollow">https://www.stouchlighting.com/blog/light-comparison-led-lig...</a>.<p>"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)."<p>I've never seen more than 15000 hours from an LED bulb at best.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb</a><p>"The chart below lists values of luminous efficacy and efficiency for some general service, 120-volt, 1000-hour lifespan incandescent bulb"<p>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.<p>It's almost like there's a conspiracy to convince consumers incandescent lighting didn't last long which is odd given the following:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light#:~:text=The%20Centennial%20Light%20is%20the,the%20Livermore%2DPleasanton%20Fire%20Department" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light#:~:text=The%2...</a>.<p>"The Centennial Light is the world's longest-lasting light bulb, burning since 1901, and almost never turned off."
Hi US people, european here.<p>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.<p>I can say that we still have lights, the debate mostly vanished and no, it's not blue everywhere.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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 Václav Klaus urged people to stockpile enough incandescent bulbs to last their lifetime.[137]"<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_li...</a><p>From my understanding, the ban will start somewhere around Q4 this year. Still, you'll always be able to buy them for "decoration purposes".
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>But I really can't think of more than 1 or 2 failures over more than enough years.<p>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!)<p>If I cared much about the flicker, I'd get a <a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/test-equipment?sort=latest" rel="nofollow">https://www.crowdsupply.com/test-equipment?sort=latest</a> OpticSpy or Labrador, or something cheaper, and just go into a store with a light display and check each one.<p>- - -<p>> Apple’s software will convert the image according to what it has machine-learned that white ought to be<p>My old lexam camera apparently has machine learning built in too?<p>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.
There is a problem with LED lamps: they need their own power supply to convert AC to DC. This is where a <i>lot</i> 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.
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.<p>Personally I prefer the phillips warm glow dimmable bulbs
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.
> <i>"'Hungarian-made GE Básica bulbs ... with a bold stamp on the side reading, NOT FOR SALE FOR USE IN THE UNITED STATES."</i><p>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!<p>Don't miss them, personally. LED lighting is excellent <i>if</i> you buy good quality ones. And I certainly don't miss having to periodically go around the house changing blown bulbs!
I have begun to use grow lights everywhere as regular lights.<p>They emit a pleasant looking spectrum, have good heat sinks for longevity, have high-quality ballasts, built-in dimmers and do not flicker.<p>They also blow out any alternative out of the water when it comes to pure brightness for precision work (soldering, painting minis, etc.)<p>They are also fairly cheap (can find some lights as low as 50c/watt on sale)<p>Oh and lastly - I can always just move them and use them to grow any kind of plants (wink wink, nudge)
Here’s an additional piece of nuance that these conversations always overlook: how much waste heat is actually waste heat? Where I am in Quebec, we have hydroelectric electricity in spades and since it is so cheap many homes have electric baseboard heating. Couple that with the fact that in Quebec we run our heaters for 7 months of the year, and that means that 60% of the time your waste heat is not entirely wasted. Assuming at least 75% of the infrared radiation from the bulb remains within your home, then on average year-round 45% of the thermal energy is not wasted and your 90% efficiency improvement of LEDs suddenly only looks like a 50% improvement.
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.
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.
> 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.”<p>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."<p>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.
I'm still waiting for the FCC or ITU to define a band for electrodeless plasma lamps.<p>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.<p>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 <i>should</i> be continuous.<p>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.<p>But it <i>is</i> physically possible for us to enjoy an efficient light source that looks nice. There are just a few kinks to work out.
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.<p>savingourstars.org
My benchmark for light quality is "can I tell the difference between the two sides of<p><a href="https://www.redrivercatalog.com/browse/60lb-polar-matte.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.redrivercatalog.com/browse/60lb-polar-matte.html</a><p>?" 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<p><a href="https://www.solux.net/cgi-bin/tlistore/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.solux.net/cgi-bin/tlistore/index.html</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Technology Connection had a video about how hard it is to find LEDs which have a more classically warm appearance these days: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvVnOxb1AI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvVnOxb1AI</a>
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 :)
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.<p>I wonder how much of this color quality complaint is due to familiarity and comfort with what you grew up with?<p>At the same time, I find fluorescent lighting unbearable over long time periods, so I completely appreciate that these differences can be important.
I came across this article on HN recently:<p><a href="https://www.sevarg.net/2023/02/11/how-your-leds-are-killing-you/" rel="nofollow">https://www.sevarg.net/2023/02/11/how-your-leds-are-killing-...</a>
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34902429" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34902429</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.
```<p>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.<p>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.
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?
While my led bulbs last much longer Incandescent, and end probably save money and energy, they consistently fail very long before their stated lifetime.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/articles/flicker-understanding-new-ieee-recommended-practice" rel="nofollow">https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/articles/flicker-understandi...</a>
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.
Just some notes on LEDs for anyone having problems with dimmer switches:-<p>- 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<p>- Make sure your bulbs are dimmable<p>- The LED and dimmer switch need to either both be leading edge, or both be trailing edge (but almost all are trailing edge now)<p>- 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<p>- 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
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.
My biggest gripe about LEDs is the trend towards fixtures that use them as non-replaceable bulbs. The claim is that they will last X number of decades so there will be no need to change the bulb. This is bullshit, in my experience.<p>I bought two light fixtures like this that claimed to last "up to 40 years". Almost all have weasel words like "up to". Both were dead within a year. Instead a quick operstion to swap out the bulb I had to find whole new units and re-hardwire them in.<p>More recently I needed a new garage light and Home Depot didn't cary a single option with replaceable bulbs. Not one.
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.<p>This is as vapid and facile an argument as petrol heads complaining that electric cars don't sound right.
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.
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).<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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%.<p>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.
Ok but in the UK (and Europe im guessing) we had the ban on the old bulbs ages ago and yeah it was weird at first and the early LED bulbs were awful blueish white. But the bulbs are the correct color, the packaging has what tint the bulb is. Some people have smart bulbs that can change color completely and dim from apps and voice assistants.<p>The idea that the old bulbs shouldn’t be banned is ridiculous. You only have to look at other countries than the US to see yes it can be done and yes the world doesn’t end.
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.
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.<p>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
I was just staying in a hotel where it was obvious that the hallway lighting was all LED.<p>It had that harsh, strange white hue to it and I found it incredibly distracting and unattractive.<p>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 <i>those</i> bulbs. It felt strange to walk down that hallway, just something "off" about it.
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.<p>Logically, I'm thinking that the pure LED components are a much smaller part of the price, and that maybe there is less skimping?
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"
I think the bulb versions of LEDs really do suck.<p>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.<p>I had them all over my house.<p>But then when I did my remodel, I put in can lights. LEDs.<p>And the can LEDs are really great.<p>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.<p>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.<p>But hey, that'll be my next house. (=<p>I think it's becoming more of an easy option for most contractors to set up.<p><a href="https://justgetflux.com/lighting/" rel="nofollow">https://justgetflux.com/lighting/</a>
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.<p>I understand that moving DC long distances can be problematic. But is 100-300 feet too long? Am I completely off on this?<p>This feels like a legacy inefficiency issue.
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.<p>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!<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>If you want to try, then search Google for "tunable-white lighting".
I'm still looking for an ideal LED bulb for use everywhere. I've mostly settled on Hyperikon. My desired specs:<p><pre><code> * 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)
</code></pre>
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. :/
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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 <i>as hell</i> - 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.<p>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.
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.
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.
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.<p>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.
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 5-10€ 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.
What are folks doing that are killing all these LED lights, causing flicker, etc.? We've got a mix of LED fixtures and Edison based replacements and don't have anything worth complaining about.<p>I think in the seven years we've owned this house I've replaced two of them that got cooked in the weird enclosed recessed light in the living room. I did have a (commercial, hardwired) strip light fail in the basement shop, and disassembled it to find a cold solder joint on the bulk filter capacitor -- easy fix for me, probably not for most homeowners.<p>We don't have any dimmer switches, I suspect that may have something to do with it.
Incandescent generate heat, they're great if you need heat and one tone of light and that's it.<p>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. (-:
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.<p>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.<p>There needs to be a way to read reviews of these, AND people need to be willing to spend more money on quality.
I'm not really into the details like this post was, I liked the cfl bulbs bright white. I've been trying to find bulbs like that color in the led space. My go to is the home Depot branded led that have the coils in them, and I try to do bright white. They cost more then what the cfl bulbs did which sucks. The led lights also seem to not last as long, but I do think it's been getting better. I do have two wifi wiz bulbs and they have not died, been with them for 3 years. I say bring back the spiral bulbs and let the consumers choose.
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.
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.
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.
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.<p>And a black box controller that matches output to exterior conditions automatically. No app, just a black box with a wired light sensor.<p>You can rip my halogen reading lamps cold dead hands.
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.<p>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.<p>Be interesting to know more about the context is the authors experience doesn't seem to be the same for everyone
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).<p>Most of it felt like what things would be like if you had frequent brownouts or just a bad electrical setup.<p>[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.
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.
If your power is coming from renewables anyway, you're probably far more eco-friendly using incandescent bulbs.<p>Someone tell me why I'm wrong, but I feel like a coil of wire in a milk bottle with all the air sucked out that you could make in a blacksmith's forge is going to be cleaner overall than 100g of plastic, fibreglass, epoxy, copper, gallium arsenide, phosphor, and a billion-dollar factory to build it in.
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?
LTF Sunlight 2 are the best light quality LEDs I've personally seen. The warm dim is incredibly clear amber
<a href="https://ltftechnology.com" rel="nofollow">https://ltftechnology.com</a><p>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<p>RAB now makes a decent warm-dim, comparable to the Phillips warm-dim.
I don't finish reading the article because it seems the author is very unlucky with LEDs, but LEDs really <i>that</i> bad?<p>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?
> The two in my youngest son’s bedroom went near dark not long after I installed them.<p>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.
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.<p><a href="https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-led-light-bulbs.html" rel="nofollow">https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-led-light-bulbs.ht...</a>
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.<p>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.
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.<p>Keep in mind that after sunset in nature there is only moon light that has blue spectrum. Fire, as light source is about 1700K.
We can only imagine what the lightbulb world would look like if the Phoebus cartel didn't hamstring R&D.<p>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.
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel</a>
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.
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.
I don't know why anybody's surprised by white LEDs not aging gracefully. They're generally made by using a combination of a blue LED and a yellow phosphor. The thing about phosphors is they don't age well - they get dimmer with age. So your white LED will gradually get bluer.
I hear all these horror stories but I have bought about 10 Hue bulbs in as many years and I still use each one. Also, im extremely sensitive to flickering and temp and I notice nothing at all.<p>Im sure if I spent 10 dollars per instead of 30-40 I could find bad ones, but I didn’t and I haven’t.
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.
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.
That article really needs the date at the top. I found in the bottom, published March 27, 2023. The EU banned incandescent bulbs back in 2009. I thought he was writing about first generation LEDs, until I could confirm the date.
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.
I know everybody here is a democrat (or a pseudo democrat) so I’ll ask here, when are you people gonna stop finding new regulations to get police to implement?<p>Like, it really just seems like you people don’t have anything else to do besides mind other peoples business.
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.<p>That being said, I am not a fan of the white LED streetlights. Streetlight LED's should be orange.
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.<p>The same thing happened to lighting.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
Of course. It's the market and negative selection. The companies that accidentally made long-lasting LED bulbs all went bankrupt.<p>Governments (or other non-profit organizations) should create light bulbs, for the people, and not for the stockholders.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).<p>Also a PhDs website: www.FlickerSense.org
> will soon be, thanks to a federal ban, the only kind you can buy<p>I don't take issue with LED bulbs, but I would rather have a choice nonetheless.
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.
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.
I can go to Home Depot and still buy a box of 16 standard incandescent bulbs. I just got another box a few weeks ago. Is this unusual or something? I’ve seen no signs of a ban.
Thy these folks before making up your mind about LED lights:<p><a href="https://www.waveformlighting.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.waveformlighting.com/</a><p>No flickering, high CRI.
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?
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.
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, <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/articles/flicker-understanding-new-ieee-recommended-practice" rel="nofollow">https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/articles/flicker-understandi...</a>
Any recommendations for decent:<p>1) smart LED bulbs? (I have CREE, which keep disconnecting.)<p>2) bright as the Sun LED bulbs? (My office is very dark and I'd like something close to 10k LUX.)
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.
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?
I think the problem is ultimately that LED retrofit bulbs are a fundamentally terrible idea.
They offer terrible thermal performance, require the power supply to be in a tiny case together with the hot LEDs, don't make good use of the directional nature of LEDs, and perhaps worst of all they compress most of the technical complexity of lighting into a tiny and super cost sensitive commodity item that is then put into some cheap fixture.
Lighting is a complex thing and LEDs in properly designed lights can be fantastic but we need to get to a point where there are good offerings of purpose made lamps that integrate LEDs in a sensible fashion rather than crappy retrofits that are barely good enough because they use an amazing technology and then squander it's potential entirely.
and no having the LEDs be integrated doesn't necessarily mean they are not replaceable. COB LEDs come in standardized sizes that have solder free sockets so you could totally make a lamp where the light source could be replaced when it dies or, much more likely, be upgraded when an even nicer one comes around.
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.