[freediddy]

I've never had LED lights last anywhere near the purported 5-7 year timeframe. The worst ones are the small decorative ones with the tinier screw part that my house seems to have an inordinate number of. Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. I like LED lights immensely but the idea they last even 2 years is a lie in my opinion.

[Hilliard_Ohiooo]

I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad. Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

A 100 out of 100 success rate after 8 years.

[steveBK123]

I think a lot has to do with both luck and power quality as well.

When I got a new apartment ~10 years ago I filled it with LED bulbs. Mostly Philips hue, but also some generic stuff on Lutron controls. Had 0 failures for 7-8 years.

One summer we had weeks of power issues on my block. Transformer blew out 2-3 times and we had no power/low voltage/no power/restoration state multiple times. At this point 5-10% of my hue bulbs were fried. Pretty randomly since a bunch were in the same fixture and only a few of them died.

Its possible the hues died more than the generics since they are constantly "on" rather than behind a switch, so they experienced all of those voltage states directly.

[_puk]

A recent rewire saw the electrician fit LED bulbs throughout the house. Modern fire safe housings etc, plenty of ventilation.

These were not cheap off the shelf bulbs from the local store.

3 in the kitchen went after less than a year.

I contacted the manufacturer directly. Turns out they had a "bad batch". How many bulbs did I fit?

About 50..

A box of 48 bulbs turned up 2 days later.

Not a single other bulb has gone 4 years later.

Not sure what the lesson there is. You win some you lose some? It's not always down to cheap bulbs?

[cucumber3732842]

>3 in the kitchen went after less than a year.

Cheap/poor quality LEDs (the only kind I buy) hate high temps. Like really, really really hate it.

I've killed more bulbs near the shower than all other rooms on that floor combined. Meanwhile in the garage/basement the only tube LEDs that I've replaced this decade are the ones in the hot unventilated area away from the door or near hot work.

[krackers]

They have become cheaper and cut costs over time. LED bulbs bought around the l-prize time when the technology was new are heavy, you can feel their metal heatsink. New LEDs from the same reputable brand are comparatively cheap.

[lelandbatey]

Yep, I have a 15 year old LED lightbulb that's a "60 watt equivalent" and it works great. It was one of the first LED bulbs I bought, and I only bought one because I remember it costing individually about $25, maybe more. It's got a very heavy metal heatsink where nowadays you have just a plastic "neck" of the bulb. It chugs along wonderfully (though the color is noticable a little bit greener than later cheaper bulbs that have better color accuracy).

[GeorgeTirebiter]

me too. Those things were built to last - and they do.

[toast0]

> Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

All of my led bulbs that failed were either cheap poor quality bulbs or expensive poor quality bulbs.

I have a hard time determining the quality of a bulb without running it for 2 years, and then it's a little late.

And then you have the mix and match problem. The same model number from the same manufacturer purchased at the same retailer gets different internals. So if you've got a room with 6 can lights, when one stops working properly, you have to search your inventory to see if you can replace just one, or if you have to replace all six. As long as the color is roughly the same, I don't mind a difference between rooms, but it's unacceptable when one lamp comes on instantly and the other five take a moment, or when they don't dim together, etc. I never had this problem with incandescents, as long as you bought the same color type and wattage, you could mix and match across brands. I did have one fixture that had tight tolerances for the fashion shaped large sphere bulbs it wanted, but that was fixable with a copper shim that cost one cent (and some paint on rubber insulation around the edge)

[piva00]

Same for me, have Philips Hue bulbs for the past 10 years, some 50 of them and only had one failure unrelated to the LEDs themselves.

[freediddy]

No, I started with Philips Hues but then gave up and migrated to Cree light bulbs with Lutron Casetas because the Hues kept dying. These are over 2 different houses as well. I wonder what is going on if it's just me

[shawn_w]

The old Cree bulbs that Home Depot used to carry have been great for me. I need to find a new supplier though because the brands they have now are junk that last a year or two if I'm lucky.

[Krutonium]

Yeah that is very weird. Personally I even have some LED lights that are going on 15 years old, spent a bit more than I'd like on them at the time, but they were on sale!

[sam1714]

Had a ton of issues with the original Cree bulbs. They underglued the glass bulb and it came off with thermal cycling. They also put the LEDs on a metal core PCB they bent into ~10-gon tower. On the bends, the traces apparently would crack which led to overheating and a burn spot.

Cree is now no more; the bulbs are just a brand for FEIT who imports the same unreliable Chinese white-label bulbs.

[freediddy]

Which brand do you suggest?

[sam1714]

Philips Hue. I've had issues with color ones, the White + Ambience ones are fine. (Makes sense as they omit the color section)

Hue is basically the only bulbs not being sourced from the same couple of white label manufacturers. Philips/Signify's rapidly shrinking line of dumb bulbs are being sourced from there too.

Never buy filament style bulbs. They are universally unreliable because of poor thermals with the emitters.

[t0mas88]

Same here, around 40 Philips Hue lights, 8 years old. All but one are still working fine. In the broken one the electronics went bad after about 4 years, the light was still working but would occasionally turn off or change color for no reason. Got a new one for free.

[InsideOutSanta]

Yeah, same. I have probably around 60 Philips Hue bulbs or lamps, I bought the first one over a decade ago, and so far, one lamp has failed (a Signe that has started flickering).

[longitudinal93]

Can second this. Did my whole house in Hue and have only had one failure (early on) in 5 years.

[gucci-on-fleek]

> I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad.

I had a bulb go bad once (out of almost 50 bulbs), but I called their support number and they shipped me a new one for free without any hassle.

[pkphilip]

The bulbs from about 7 to 10 years ago were far more long lasting than the new ones

[toasty228]

2 of the 4 philips hue I bought in 2019 died a few years back, a bulb and a led stripe, I'm not buying expensive ones next time

[8note]

same on phillips hue but maybe 3 out of 10 have died.

they might not have great QA

[Twirrim]

I bought a whole bunch of GE LED bulbs figuring big name, probably more reliable. Nope. Diabolically bad. Never again.

[NathanielK]

Me too. They were a lovely colour temp and high CRI, really well diffused too. But wow, they died so fast in almost any fixture.

[hagbard_c]

> Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

If only that were true. Osram is a well-renowned brand so you'd think their - rather pricey - 'high-wattage' (10W) bulbs meant for outside lights here on the farm would last longer than about a year, all in different armatures, all with plenty of cooling (they're mainly used in autumn/winter/spring when it tends to be rather chilly here in Sweden). You'd think cheap bulbs go bad quickly but the cheap 'Biltema' brand bulbs I bought for some rooms just keep on going without marked loss of output.

All in all the average life time of a LED bulb seems to be around 2-3 years before it either has dimmed so much that it is no longer usable or it has failed outright. There are exceptions like the mentioned cheap bulbs which are still going strong after about 9 years of close to daily use or those Osram bulbs which fail in about a year or less or the (not mentioned) 'fluorescent tube replacement fixtures' which last less than a year before one of the 4 LED segment strips fails due to a failed LED. I repair these by replacing the failed chip, they work for a few months and then the things fail again.

I've used 'efficient' lighting since I bought my first house starting with jam-jar like Philips SL 'bulbs' (compact fluorescent tubes with all the related gizmos packaged in a single replaceable unit) for which I made fixtures out of birch plywood wood, 90° PVC drain pipe bends and E27 sockets because those things were heavy at about 500 grams. None of those SL bulbs had failed when I moved out 6 years later, I still have some somewhere in storage. Later I moved to the lighter PLC version which also tended to last a long time, some of them are still in use here. Then came LED bulbs which were supposed to last for tens of thousands of hours... and I suddenly started to have to think about replacing failed bulbs again.

[PinkSheep]

> Osram

Pay attention to the European efficiency rating for LEDs. Anything above B is practically "Dubai LED" class. The common Osram isn't doing good in this category, their LEDs I have seen in retail are rated like E-F.

To reiterate: the article fell short on the point of LED efficiency. LEDs are semiconductors, do you know when the CPU is at peak efficiency? Before it hits the exponential voltage/frequency curve. Low voltage -> cooler LEDs -> more efficient light conversion -> easier to cool -> tens of thousands hours of practical lifespan.

What does it cost? Like less than a dollar in BOM. What does it cost us? Billions in replaced LEDs worldwide and megatonnes of electric waste, because it is not made to last for "objective reasons": lower price tag in storeshelves aka capitalism and oblivious consumers.

[wvh]

We need a powerful non-profit / semi-governmental organisation that regularly tests all these things and tells it like it is. Something like Stiftung Warentest in Germany.

People can make up their own mind about going for cheaper electronics or aiming for longevity, but at least we would have a clearer picture of who is contributing to that pile of electric waste and we could make more informed decisions.

[hagbard_c]

These are 'A++' marked LED bulbs according to the old energy label standard which would be between C and D in the new label standard. They're supposed to last for '15 years' according to EC 1194/2012 [1] (2.7 hours/day, 15000 hours) and survive 100000 power-on/off cycles. In reality they last for about 1500-2000 hours in well-cooled fixtures.

The lamps I'm referring to have 4 wide (4mm) LED filaments in a normal-sized glass bulb. On the packaging they're marked 'Ledvance' [2]/made in China, i.e. they carry the Osram brand under licence.

In other words LED lamps can be made to last a long time but many are not, brand names and brand pricing notwithstanding. The form factor - E27 socket with glass bulb, fluorescent tube replacement, large heat sink mounted LED strip - does not play as much of a role as you'd think given that the lights with the 'best' cooling (LED strip mounted on a large heat sink) shows the highest failure rate while the 'traditional incandescent lamp' form factor with the electronics in the E27 base shows both the lowest as well as the second-highest failure rate here. It probably comes down to component quality, something which again does not seem to be related to brand name.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...

[2] https://www.ledvance.com/00_Free_To_Use/asset-8344755_THE_AS...

[themaninthedark]

There are some who took this view when LEDs were first mandated. Light bulbs were dirt cheap, yes they use more electricity but their waste stream is glass with a bit of metal.

Now we pay more for something that lasts a bit longer with more waste.

It's not "capitalism" if the government mandates a product.

What you are seeing is the typical enshitification that occurs when a product becomes mass produced and low cost to the customers becomes the primary driver.

[craftkiller]

I have never had an LED light bulb fail. I'm still using the same 6-pack I bought over a decade ago, bringing them with me from apartment to apartment. I only have 5 remaining because the glue that holds the glass bulb onto the base eventually failed on one and I couldn't be bothered to figure out what the correct adhesive would be for lightbulbs.

[somat]

Fair enough but they don't get hot, nearly any glue would work, Being plastic, I would use CA(superglue).

After failure I like to do a postmortem teardown, it has never been the LED proper, usually it is the capacitor in a capacitance power supply, otherwise the controller IC.

[craftkiller]

Good to know, because another one of the bulbs visibly looks on the verge of separation. Thanks!

[IrishTechie]

I moved into a house with an obscene number of GU10 LED downlighters. The bulbs were all mid market (I think) brands like Energizer etc. I’d guess they’re coming up to 7-8 years old and I have now had to replace most of them, probably 30-40 bulbs from a couple of manufacturers that all just started to fail over about 12 months.

I also have quite a few Philips Hue bulbs, I’ve had 1 fail out of 20-30 and I think that was not the LED itself but some control board. Some are going on 10 years old.

[addaon]

Every Philips L-Prize bulb I bought in 2012 is still working. Some have been on about 30% of the time since purchase. A few have been dropped multiple meters onto concrete; oops. Well made LED bulbs last. Cost-optimized ones may not.

[sam1714]

My OG gray Philips lasted more than a decade constantly on. It was still working at the end but I noticed the yellow remote phosphor plastic panels were disintegrating with a web of cracks. Underneath, the plastic surrounding the LEDs had turned brown: the polymers had photodegraded.

[freediddy]

I had a bunch of Philips Hue LED light bulbs until they started dying within a couple of years or less and the replacement costs were ridiculous. That's when I switched to Lutron Casetas.

[addaon]

I run about 50 Philips Hue lights and I’ve replaced 3 in six years, so definitely not as reliable as the L-Prize lights, but not awful. The L-Prize bulbs are built like tanks… when you drop one you check the floor for damage before the bulb.

[Shadowmist]

Exact same numbers for me! 3 bulbs stopped shutting off completely. When I would turn them off they would stay around 5% brightness.

[wjnc]

In the category of private victories without any economic use (any hobby costs you something): I store boxes for LED lights with receipts. Write on the box where you put the light and chug it in the garage. I have not failed to get a new one for free at our local home depot equivalent after 3 to 4 years. It doesn’t help the store that the boxes used to state how many years they would last.

I agree that even Osram doesn’t meet the hours or years, Philips doesn’t by a long way.

[tialaramex]

Because LED lighting is electronics it hates heat, unlike an incandescent lamp. So the most common cause of shorter lifetimes is that the LED can't discard enough heat to the environment and begins to overheat. Small (or absent) heatsinks, installation which (perhaps for aesthetic reasons) puts the lighting where warm air can't escape and of course just putting the lighting directly in concentrated sunlight will make this worse.

I have a room which is lit for like 10-20 hours per day and so it clocks up hours very quickly and my LED lamps are guaranteed for 2 years so I figured surely the guarantee would trigger but nope, I began keeping receipts and turns out that I only need to replace one every 3-5 years it must just feel frequent because it's annoying, I just dug out the most recent receipt and it's from 2021. I will continue keeping the receipts to feel better about the annoyance.

[blincoln]

> Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once.

Have you checked the wiring? I may be stating the obvious, but in household electrical wiring every fixture or receptacle is connected to its circuit in parallel.

I can't think of a way for one bulb on a correctly-wired circuit to fail in a way that causes other bulbs to dim, unless the failed bulb is essentially shorting out the circuit but not causing the breaker to trip for some reason.

If you know why it's behaving that way, I'd love to know too. I've never seen anything like that.

[ValentineC]

Randomly, my Philips Hue E27 bulbs last far longer than any of the China Zigbee clones I've bought, but like all mass produced goods, there are outliers that fail.

The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few months, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail ever, so Philips seems to be doing something right.

[Hilliard_Ohiooo]

I agree, my Philips hue bulbs have been going strong for about 7 to 8 years now I'm not a single issue. I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs.

[Marsymars]

It's a bit tricky to determine what exactly is "cheap" though. I've got various Philips Hue bulbs/strips with no failures at 20k+ hours. OTOH I've got a few Philips Ultra Definition bulbs over my kitchen island which seem to fail at an average of 10k or so hours.

None of the other bulbs in my house are really on long enough to say much about failures... like I've got dozens of recessed LEDs without any failures over 5 years, but I doubt any of them are over 1-2k hours.

[basisword]

>> I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs.

What is a 'cheap' bulb though? We paid a few bucks for a bulb for generations. Suddenly we're paying 10x that for a Phillips Hue and anything lesser is 'cheap'.

[xnx]

Enclosed fixtures can kill some LED bulbs quickly if they can't dissipate heat.

[pmontra]

Yes, cooling is important. I don't have a passion for lamps so after 5 years in a new house most of my LED bulbs are still hanging from the ceiling and walls, I can't remember any failure.

I had an IKEA lamp with a pretty tight fitting for the bulb and it killed LEDs after a few months. I reverted putting a fluorescent bulb inside it. No failure.

[foobarchu]

I would say most LED bulbs. You need ones specifically rated for enclosures, which are way less common, and most people have the wrong idea of what counts as enclosed (the glass hood around your kitchen chandelier bulbs is an enclosure, as are ceiling cans)

[jerlam]

I was killing a lot of LEDs in recessed cans. I replaced them with integrated retrofits, which aren't designed around a bulb shape that fries its own electronics, and aren't made as cheaply as possible.

Here's a nice dim-to-warm recessed: https://www.homedepot.com/p/HALO-RL56-Series-5-6-in-Recessed...

[mort96]

Do you keep your light on constantly?

I used to have a lamp that I kept replacing bulbs for "all the time". I didn't understand why since the light bulbs claimed to last for years and years. One day I read the light bulb package more closely, and it said something along the lines of, "7 years life span at 2 hours per day" in small text (the numbers may be wrong, going by memory). Doing the math, the number of active hours claimed on the box turned out to be roughly true. I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.

[fn-mote]

> I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.

It's perfectly logical that lifetime should be measured in hours of service, not days of existence. People don't know how to translate 7500 hours of service into a real duration, though. Hence the years.

[mort96]

I would expect 7500 to translate into 0.85 years though, not 7.

[roomey]

I had that dimming issue in my house... And got the gas boiler serviced cause it had a problem with the ignitor, and all the dimming stopped.

Now the house is ancient, so I'm guessing there was some sort of short happening that was causing this.

[rob74]

Hm... race to the bottom? We bought our current apartment (built in the 1980s) 12 years ago, and I have switched to LED lighting everywhere from the beginning. Main learning: old relays and/or dimmers seem to generate voltage spikes that are fine for old lightbulbs, but kill LED lamps in a matter of months, so that it looks like the lamps themselves might be the cause. After I replaced those, no more problems - most of the LED lamps from the beginning (except for those connected to old relays and dimmers) are still with us! I also tend towards brand name LED lights (Philips & co), which might be a bit more expensive, but have (I hope) better quality checks.

[ido]

The following anecdote doesn’t contradict what you wrote but maybe you’ll find it interesting- I worked for a daughter company of Phillips in the 00s (as an embedded programmer). I was working on mp3 players and set-top boxes but my boss has been with Phillips for decades at the time. He told me how the CD players (the ones you’d connect to speakers at home, not the portable ones) had a variety of brands, from budget to premium. But the only differences were in the external materials & the quality of the disc tray - as those are differences people notice. But everything else (and thus the audio quality) was identical.

[usefulcat]

I had an LED porch light that lasted ~10 years. The fixture had light and motion sensors, so it wasn't on during the day or all night, and often it was not running at full brightness, but still it was on a lot. I was surprised it lasted that long, especially since it was outdoors.

I switched to all LED lighting many years ago. I've had a few that lasted less than a year, but by and large I'd say that nearly all the lights I've had have lasted at least on the order of years.

[aetherspawn]

Yeah my parents had the type with the external driver box from Bunnings, and they died every 6 months or so. Those were DIY with a little pigtail plug.

They were awful. I genuinely believed that LED lights were crap.

In our new house the sparky put in a proper Chinese brand from the commercial sparky store I guess, no external box, dimmable, 4 adjustable hues with a toggle switch. They were like $10 each. Been 7 years no failures.

We have some really expensive ATOM ones above the shower (IP68) and outside around the perimeter. Those were around $75 each, but are the same age as well, no issues.

[Peanuts99]

You might have poor quality incoming AC. Capacitors in the power supplies will be under more stress if you regularly have over/under voltages or small spikes and surges.

[duskdozer]

I guess if people are nerding out on lights in this subthread, maybe someone can recommend me a type or source for low-K (say, 2200K or something thereabout) bulbs with good CRI (yes, I know, but I can still notice a big difference at 2700. I don't know how low it will matter to me, but I want to see)

[anonymous_user9]

I've been using one of these 1700K bulbs [1] for a few years, and it produces a pleasant light. They also have a 2400K model [2].

[1] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-...

[2] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/lux24-circadian-...

[maccard]

I've lived in my current home for 5 years with LED lighting, and we have hardly changed any lightbulbs in the house. I've got no idea how old those bulbs are. I lived in my previous place for 7 years and changed a handful of bulbs.

Can't say my experience matches at all!

[tzs]

In mid 2016 I replaced around 25-30 incandescent bulbs (7 x 100 W, a couple or so 40 W, and the rest 60 W) with Walmart Great Value non-dimmable LEDs. Basically every incandescent bulb I could find around the house that was not on a dimmer and was A19 shape with an E26 base (except I forgot the attic and crawlspace).

There was some sort of deal between Walmart and Puget Sound Energy that applied an instant rebate automatically so that they simply rang up on checkout for $0.17.

They are all still working fine.

[pier25]

Some of the first LED bulbs we bought are still running after more than 10 years. I don't remember the brand but they were expensive at the time.

[herbst]

I bought a bunch of bulps when I moved to my house about 7 years ago. Some are on like 90% of the time since.

I haven't had a single one go bad so far.

Cheap WiZ bulps

[nxpnsv]

My n=1 study: I built my living room lights about 8 years ago and have had to swap 1/20 lamps since. Perhaps try a better manufacturer?

[semerda]

Ditto. They barely last 12 mos. This goes for both types: LED Light Chips (Strips) and LED String Lights from various manufacturers.

[cameronh90]

I’ve never had a Hue bulb fail in about a decade of using them in every fitting.

[watwut]

That is weird. Mine are basically infinite.

[phendrenad2]

Counterpoint: I've never had an LED bulb go bad. Ever. I think it's highly dependent on the brand.

[convolvatron]

I've run 30w led modules for 10+ years by - using real power conversion components, making sure they have sufficient cooling and running them at 75% of their rated current. they still seem plenty bright.

[basisword]

This sounds like you have electrical issues. I've lived in a couple of apartments before where bulbs would go all the time. Outside of that I've been using the same Phillips Hue bulbs for going on 8 years without any issue.

[benj111]

I owned my last house for 12 years, I replaced 1 bulb?

Half the bulbs were carried over from a previous house, so some are ~14 years old. Admittedly these were early ones, so the original batch had metal bodies etc. the replacement was a Phillips one. This is in the UK though, with pendant fittings, so less heat issues.

[lovich]

We have several hundred smart led lights from I want to say Lutron? In my home going on year 6 soon and we’ve had to replace only 3-4 so far. 3 of those replacements were on the same circuit as well so I question if the circuit isn’t at fault.

Plural of anecdote isn’t data and all that but I think the several hundred quantity adds some weight. Also about 90 of those are in outdoor lamps so there’s a good amount dealing with weather and we’ve not had to replace any of those yet.

[quickthrowman]

If you are installing LED lamps into enclosed fixtures you need to use LED lamps rated for enclosed fixtures or they will die an early death. A globe around a lamp with an open bottom and a recessed can are both enclosed, even though you can see the lamp. Heat rises.

Similarly, you can’t install recessed cans into a ceiling that is insulated without them being IC rated or they will die an early death.

Spend a few dollars more per lamps for quality ones. Philips makes decent LED lamps, I’m fond of their 2200-2700K dimmable lamps that lower the color temp as they dim. Philips makes an E12 base BA11 shape (candelabra) lamp that should fit your needs.

I buy Keystone lamps LED T8 lamps almost exclusively, but those are pretty uncommon in homes.

Commercial LED fixtures are rated for 50,000 hours typically but they have a separate LED driver and massive heatsinks to provide that sort of lifespan.