How come LED Light Bulbs only last for about 2-3 Years?
I’ve bought and replaced a lot of light bulbs, and I noticed that all of them said “up to 20,000 hours” which would be about 5 years given 12 hours of daily use (which we definitely don’t).
Generally because you’re buying cheaper ones that aren’t built as well. Heat destroys LEDs and the cheap bulbs generally use fewer individual LEDs running at higher power to produce a given output in lumens. More expensive bulbs use more LEDs at lower power to achieve the same light output so that they’re not constantly being overdriven and last much longer.
I have dozens of Philips Hue bulbs 6-10 years old and I honestly don’t think one of them has died. I’m sure they have lost some luminance over time, but they still get the job done no problem. I rarely run them at 100% anyway.
But yeah I have also had some cheaper LED bulbs die within a few years.
Just fyi for anyone who would care about this: while hue bulbs are built well they are moving towards a model that requires you to put them on “the cloud”, even though they were sold for years and years without that requirement. The update will be mandatory whether you want it or not as part of Philips security being integrated into the app. It’s unclear what will happen if you don’t create an account and sign in at that point
So if you’re like me and put all your iot shit on an isolated vlan without internet access they may not be the best option for you. Or if you just don’t want to support a company that wildly changes the tos years after purchasing their (expensive) product. I don’t want my home shit on the internet, I don’t trust Philips to put enough cash or effort into securing their servers, etc.
The bulbs do work with zigbee though and that seems to be a viable alternative to using their hub/app although I haven’t tested it fully. This also means if you’re using them via HomeKit you’ll need some kind of bridge like home assistant
I had one flicker after 8 years and the company replaced it for free. The rest of my 10 year old bulbs are still working fine. I wish they would die though to give me an excuse to replace them with the better color versions. Many of mine are still the old ones with green that can only go to 🍋🟩 lime.
You sound like you know what you’re talking about… and I just bought a 24 pack of the below linked item to replace the ones that burn out in my house. Could you point me in the direction of non-dimmable long lasting/better quality lights of the below?
https://www.sunco.com/products/led-recessed-lighting-kit-6-inch-baffle-damp
I bought three of the gen 1 Philips Hue when they first came out and all three died within two years. I hope they’re better now, but I’ll never buy Philips Hue again.
And in case you ask, they weren’t enclosed, they were in IKEA floor lamps. They were at 100% all the time, but I feel like if they can’t survive that, they shouldn’t be able to do it.
Phillips warm glow are my favorites after watching technology connections. They last, and they look just like incandescent bulbs as you dim them.
The bulbs themselves are amazing. There are good ones in cars and computers, the flash of phones etc.
The failure point is typically the electronic components that run or regulate it. And of course most companies want to sell more bulbs so they conveniently skimp on that stuff. So maybe the answer is a more expensive bulb that hopefully will last long enough to justify the extra cost?
What would you recommend that actually last long enough to justify the extra cost?
If you can get a hold of Dubai Led bulbs, they are supposed to last extremely long
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-lights-you-cant-buy/
If you’re technically inclined, Big Clive has a tutorial for ‘fixing’ most bulbs not to overdrive the LEDs by removing or changing a single resistor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HTa2jVi_rc
Are you sure you have the same set up for voltage and resistance? If you don’t you’ll pass more current and burn out faster. Similar to a laptop marketing saying 14hrs, but that’s only if you leave it on low power, airplane mode, and don’t do anything useful. I’m curious to see if someone comments the real answer.
What would you recommend?
Philips.
