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by Proofread0592 304 days ago
The most insulting thing about LED lightbulbs that the author touches on is the claim that "they last at least 10 years", when in practice about 50% of them in my experience go bad within 2 years. Granted I should probably buy better quality bulbs, but given my experience, I am hesitant to drop more money on a potential failure.
2 comments

To offer a counterpoint, I switched over to GE and Sylvania LED bulbs a little over a decade ago, and only one has burnt out (the most heavily used one, unsurprisingly). Almost all of my lamps and light fixtures are open, though, and the few closed ones do not get a ton of use -- I've heard that heat build-up in enclosed fixtures can do a number on LED bulbs.
It's the power converters that break down from what I've heard, not the LED themselves. So light bulb companies can make the 230V -> 1.5V conversion brittle and have you rebuy lights over and over "as designed".
I've seen a lot of other sorts of failures. On the LED bulbs where individual filaments are visible, sometimes a single filament fails, or flips on and off.

I had one LED bulb that just burned, which was interesting.