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New LED lights reliability
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thexeno:
Hi all,

I think this is a hot topic to many.

In the last 2 years I updated some lamps in my home. I went through a pretty expensive Philips and Osram E27 LED lamps. This because with the old CCFL, whether branded or chinese, mainly the latter, they get burned after a way shorter lifespan than the conventional halogen or incandescent. The problem is now well known and was related to the number of turn on/off  cycles, air flowing and so on, achieving a long life (if the lamp was reliable) when turned on/off only one time per day in average, in a aired environment. Ok, they tried, it was a transitioning technology.

So I was quite happy about LEDs, as they are supposed to withstand more cycles. Problem is that, with the proper branded lamps, in a batch of 6 between 2 Philips and 4 Osram, only the Philips and 2 Osram survived, and the Osram were in a place in which they were not used often. The ones that died, were stopped working after 1 month, in the living room, where the switch cycles were not frequent, in a open lamp holder. Opening the lamp, I saw the LED die burned with a black spot.
Then I bought a lower brand, made in china but from a proper supplier (Beghelli) with simpler converter,  which did not uses a full AC/DC, but a rectified method, therefore the LEDs were flickering a bit. The lamps are there for 2 years now, and they were 50% cheaper.

Now I need to update some spot light, with G5.3 lights, and the last bought was Philips which I was happy with. I wanted to order on Amazon again, but the price seems higher and I started to look for reviews of alternatives. Osram and Philips got fairly negative ones, while Amazon's chinese brands were pretty good evaulated. Now I believe them.

So my question is, if I want to be safe, should I continue to waste my money in LED lamps from proper manufacturers and being safe, or there are alternatives which are reliable brands? I don't like to buy from anonymous brands though, like all the chinese alternative on Amazon.

I wonder if those big companies are aware on the lack of reliability of their stuff.

Thanks for your opinions!
Zero999:
Everyone seems to have differing experiences with LED lamps. I replaced all the lamps in my parent's house with LEDs, some cheap no brand and some more expensive branded ones around 5 years ago and not had any problems. The only issue I've had is with some very cheap LED lamps, used in a bedside lamp which blew fairly quickly.

In my house, I have a mixture of LED and CFL. The latter came with the house. I don't bother replacing CFL lamps with LED,  unless the lamp has failed, as it results in minimal energy savings.
IDEngineer:
I entirely skipped the whole nonsensical CCFL fad and waited for LED's to mature. A couple of years ago we remodeled the house and in the process switched 99% of the bulbs to LED's. Since that time we've lost just one to failure, which is better than incandescents ever performed.

Many of the replaced bulbs were high intensity GU10 50W halogens, used for general lighting in the kitchen and living room and in the lights in ceiling fans. Those 50W add up fast... 6-8 of them on a strip is a 300-400 watt fixture! When we'd have power outages we'd avoid using them because they represented a decent percentage of our 7KW generator's output.

That's been the single best improvement from the LED's: If the power is out and we're on generator, we don't have to be selective about the electrical appliances/lights we use. All sources of heat are natural gas, not electricity ("If you want heat, burn something!"), so we only need power to run blowers and induction air fans to heat the entire house. When we had incandescents and (especially) halogens, we had to be selective.

BTW, those GU10 LED bulbs are amazing. Every bit as intense as halogens, and the pure white 5000K color temperature is an awesome bonus. Regular old Edison base "40-75W equivalent" bulbs aren't that technologically impressive, but packing 50W equivalent optical output into the GU10's small form factor is really impressive. Cheap too... we get boxes of 6-10 from Amazon or eBay for far less than the local big box stores want.
DaJMasta:
I've switched over a bunch for some years, and my experience so far is that they're around the reliability of decent fluorescents - though I suspect that with time they'll prove to be better, it's just a small sample size.


Had a 100W equivalent bulb fail just a couple weeks ago, so I opened it up.  Phillips brand, looked OK on the LED board side and the power supply bit in the stem would have been gnarly to get out, so I pulled the board and couldn't power it up on an external supply.  Turned out one LED on the board had failed open, and even though there were 20 or so, since they were all wired in series for better efficiency in the voltage downconversion.... they all went out.
timelessbeing:
Yup my LED bulbs fail too. They can't make them too reliable or manufacturers would lose too much money. They need to ride the "green" hype all the way to the bank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
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