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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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)
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.