[Ptlnd]

"LED bulbs with very long lives" would be pretty useless. What they don't tell you about LEDs is that their efficiency goes down the drain over time, they become so dark as to become unusable. I have a few 3 to 5 years old bulbs, which I still haven't discarded but kept in the closest as a "emergency bulb if one of the bulbs I use break", I replaced them despite them being still fully operational because they became too dark. Way too dark. This is an issue with LCD TV and monitors too. After a while their LED backlights become really dark. Push your new monitor at max brightness and compare the old with its max brightness and even if they were rated at equal nits the newer one is much brighter.

All those bulbs I have are the namebrand that do reliably work for years, but I would not want to use them for years. I feel like I might just buy the cheapest bulbs the next time, and not care if they die after 6 months. 6 months might be the maximum amount of time they can give you their brightest.

[jfk13]

But if they -- at least "quality" brand LEDs -- don't have really long (useful) lives, the cost premium over other types of light bulbs looks much less justifiable.

(For reference, according to http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/support/support/faqs/li..., "The normal convention is to measure the life from when the output has reduced by 30%, i.e. when there is 70% light output remaining.")