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Comment by veltas

3 days ago

I don't understand how they're safer, because locally they've installed a few and they're already dying, and dying by strobing on and off at about 1Hz, which makes it quite hard to drive through. They're so bright that this failure mode is like a disco strobe light.

This failure is so severe that regardless of how it might be elsewhere, to me it seems like the people who decided to use these LED lights and continue to advocate for them really don't care about people.

16 comments

veltas

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jjtheblunt  3 days ago

anedcote but i've been using leds for 8 years+ now and there's big variance in such behavior between manufacturers.

  • throwaway290  3 days ago

    Three led lights in my flat went within 3 months after I moved in. But some time ago I had an incandescent bulb that lived for years.

    With bulb it depends on how/how often you power cycle. A good way to extend its life is to not power cycle it and to underpower it. Dimming a bulb also saves electricity and easier on the eyes.

    With LED it is up to manufacturer. People say LEDs are cheaper but those leds are exactly the ones you have to keep buying. And good LED prices can go pretty high compared to bulbs.

    • mensetmanusman  2 days ago

      We essentially have a lifetime supply of LEDs because we label each one with the date and refund from Amazon when they don’t last the full warranty, which none of them do.

      People assumed that LEDs would last forever because the crystals essentially do, but the encasement and all of the heat issues you have to deal with for the electronics makes that pointless.

      1 reply →

magicalhippo  2 days ago

The problem is almost never the LEDs themselves, but the power supply.

Sure, the actual LEDs might have a 50000 hour lifetime, but the crappy power supply they got from the lowest bidder and packaged with woefully inadequate thermal dissipation dies after a tiny fraction of that.

  • lexszero_  2 days ago

    And part of the reason for that is compatibility with existing light fixtures using legacy sockets designed 150 years ago at the dawn of electrification for incandescent bulbs, where the part dissipating the most heat was the light emitting element itself, and not whatever lays between it and the mains power source. If the customer doesn't want to pay for a slightly more expensive LED lightbulb, they sure as hell won't pay for a whole new fixture specifically designed around LED technology that will last forever.

    This is anecdata, but I haven't replaced a single LED bulb since I bought the current set ~7 years ago, and it's nothing fancy, just basic IKEA stuff.