Originally published at: I joined the great LED Lightbulb debate on the Brian Lehrer Show | Boing Boing
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Apologies if this is covered, but for my money the “bulb” is the part of the equation that is faulty. In our apartment with shitty wiring on the light fixtures, LED bulbs still crap out way too soon, the bulb options are overpriced and hard to navigate and the builds are bulky and wasteful.
On the other hand, we got a relatively inexpensive 10 foot strip of LED lights that now runs around our bathroom ceiling and plugs into a regular outlet. no burnouts, great color quality and has three dimmer levels, and the light is nicely distributed.
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Years ago, in front of 500 people, I argued with “LED Nobelist” Shuji Nakamura about color rendering, and the melatonin-“damaging” effects of blue light. Perhaps I was prescient, but I was probably just a prick.
Like HMSGoose, I also deploy LED striplights … yellow-orange ones in hallways for evening/night illumination. I also deploy Feit Electric “orange LED filament” Edison bulbs.
For an old floor lamp that uses a 27W four-tube warm-white fluorescent “bulb”, I covered the front with orange plastic “theater gel”', large (“C size”?) plastic sheets intended for stage lighting. I also cut little disks of that orange gel and insert them inside the lens glass of white LED flashlights. I use those flashlights for midnight trips to the bathroom.
Someday, I hope there will be lighting systems adjustable for day-of-week and time and anticipated activity. I hope we can adjust them with time/color graphs and emotional adjectives, not clock numerals and colored buttons.
In the far future, the rooms will be pitch dark, and my glasses will illuminate my retinas with all the photons I really need.
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It looks like Cree(1st pick) has moved out of the “white” light bulb business, and into the “bluetooth, pick-a-color” light bulb business since that Wirecutter article. So, probably Feit(2nd pick) for my next round of bulb purchases.
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Has anyone here been able to try Dubai bulbs?
According to the video, they have longer life for the same output, by running more diodes at a lower current. Mandatory in Dubai, but not available elsewhere as their long life makes them unprofitable.
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Definitely agree that it color quality is important. Something that I feel that doesn’t get enough attention is bulb flicker. I love the color quality of the CREE bulbs, but I find that I notice a high frequency flicker. Especially when dimmed.
I just built an office and spent a couple of weeks trying to find a bulb that had good color quality and had no flicker, and ended up using bulbs from Waveform Lighting. They were a bit pricey, but I figure that the investment is worth it since I spend so much time in my office.
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This is more made-up techno-paranoia—like how 5G is made of mind control crystals and we never landed on the moon 
LED bulbs are fine. The bright “daylight” ones are better than anything we could get in the old days.
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Most of our bulbs are LED, we just replaced a couple bathroom fixtures with a 2 bulb and 4 bulb fixture. We used 100W LED bulbs made by Phillips, they claim to be using 13 watts.
I never realized this before because I’ve never been near the bulbs when they have been on for a while but, my gosh, they get hot.
Not the bulb but the base. It’s so hot you can’t even touch it. A quick google says that’s by design. I’m no scientist but seems to me heat is energy so how can these things be saving energy using that much heat.
I’m happy with the light quality, it’s just that heat that interests me.
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Well, they’re a lot less hot than an incandescent bulb of equivalent light output (which you can actually use to cook with).
In theory, a bulb pointing downwards should last longer than one mounted facing upwards, as the heat should rise away from the LEDs themselves, instead of cooking them from below…
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Welcome aboard!
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Agreed. I don’t understand the fuss. I get white LEDs from Lowe’s. They work fine. I.
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Have you ever been near a 100 W incandescent that had been on for a while? I certainly could not recommend touching it.
Yes, heat does mean that power is being lost/not turned into light. The LEDs themselves are not 100% efficient at converting electricity. (But they are surprisingly good.) Then there is the driver electronics, as an individual LED wants something like 3.5 V DC across it, and your wall plug is 110 V / 220 V AC. Converting that also has some losses. But, even these together are much less heating than an incandescent bulb. (In part because they emit as a black-body radiator, and the curve for that only has a small portion of the energy in the range that is “visible” to us.)
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I replaced all the bulbs in my house with LED some years ago, including the fluorescent ceiling strip light in the kitchen. Years ago the government encouraged everyone to fit low-energy bulbs, even giving them away free, and it was those I replaced first, because they were ghastly things! The light output was fairly low, and because they were essentially a coiled fluorescent tube, they flickered all the time, and especially when they were first turned on.
The LED replacements have barely any flickering by comparison, although I have to say that I rarely use main ceiling lights, I use small table spotlights which used to have 12v halogen bulbs, but now have LED replacements, and which are a much nicer light.
In the kitchen I have two LED strip lights under wall cupboards, which are switchable to warm or cool, plus a couple of wall spotlights with LED’s fitted, and none have given me any problems regarding colour or visible flickering, unlike the low-energy fluorescent bulbs.
I’m of the opinion that much of this is basically made-up scare tactics being promoted by people with no true scientific knowledge at all, like those who say you shouldn’t have any electrical devices anywhere near you bed, or even in the bedroom at night when you’re sleeping.
Just woo-woo bullshit.
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Dunno about ‘Dubai’ lights, those classic shaped bulbs with long orange ‘filaments’ are available everywhere here in the U.K., sold as Edison bulbs, and a quick search online shows them available from the likes of Home Depot and 1000Bulbs in the USA, so to say ‘but not available elsewhere as their long life makes them unprofitable’, is just more bullshit.
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Yeah, I’m working on updating this as we speak!
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Yeahhhhhh that’s definitely a factor — people just being resistant because the technology is different from what they’re used to. In 10+ years time, the LEDs will be so commonplace that no one will bat an eyelash, and society (and our brains) will have happily adjusted to whatever different color temps that we perceive. I suspect it’ll end up being sort of like digital vs analog music recording — you’ll have some people who remain eternally stubborn about committing things to tape (or incandescent filament, in this case), while everyone else will go “ehhhh this computerized stuff is easier and more high quality, so I’m gonna stick with that.”
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It’s not about the ‘filaments’ or the style of the bulb, it’s the driver circuitry. The video I linked goes into excruciating detail of the electronics inside.
Not at 200 lumens per watt, which is the spec for the Dubai bulbs.
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I was all on board with the idea of LED early on. I hated florescent (flickery headache-inducing) with a passion. Loved the money-saving potential. Wanted to do my part for the environment.
But. (ranty)
Most of the bulbs last nowhere near their advertised lifespan. Like 10% or less of that span. I’m talking name brands. Oh, and flashlights; watch the diodes die one by one!
The color fade over even just a year is disappointing; most of my daylight bulbs dropped from 5k to 3k values, as the various shades of grey-white to yellowish light between the multiple bulbs in my kitchen and garage attest (all purchased together).
The flickering/flutter - just as headache-inducing as florescent. I can’t bear being in offices or warehouse stores because the LED light hurts. My living room bulbs have now started a flutter after 1.5 years.
The selection, although improved over 10 years, is still limited, especially if you factor in “better” quality brands/components. I want a lamp or ceiling light bulb where light shines downward as well as up; the bulbs that are 50% solid white plastic are not cutting it. I want an actual 5k chandelier bulb that doesn’t flutter or change tone. The box claims are not accurate compared to incandescent color/brightness, or even to each other. And don’t even get me started on lights/fans with shitty integrated non-replaceable LEDs - what a mountain of rubbish they’ll create in the landfill.
The expense isn’t worth the output. I miss the old incandescent bulbs intently; they were usually long-lasting, gave (and retained) great bright light, came in a bazillion shapes/sizes, and were cheap. I feel like the current crop of LED lights is perfect for landlord investors who maintain stacks of apartments or vacation rentals, but if you have to live with them, they’re just not cutting it.
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Indeed.
I replaced a set of 4 foot florescent fixtures in my storage room a couple years ago with LED strip lights; I’ve since had 3 of the four units fail due to bad driver units, and I can’t buy replacement ones because they LED strips (which are perfectly fine!) want something like 65 volts from the driver, and no one sells those, so I would have had to re-build the driver module. I said ‘screw that’, gutted one of the fixtures and put in an off-the-shelf 12 volt driver module and an LED strip to match it. I replaced the other two with an LED “Shop light” which has worked just fine since.
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Wow…I have a completely different experience. I moved into my current house ~10 years ago and switched all the bulbs to LEDs shortly after. I can only remember swapping out 1 bulb that died in that whole time. I bought a bunch of extras just in case…and they are still sitting in my drawer waiting to be used.
Maybe I’m less sensitive to LED lights that gradually break. I also wonder if the electrical current running in the house has an effect on longevity?
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