How come LED Light Bulbs only last for about 2-3 Years?
I’ve bought and replaced a lot of light bulbs, and I noticed that all of them said “up to 20,000 hours” which would be about 5 years given 12 hours of daily use (which we definitely don’t).
I’m no scientist, but I think it has something to do with actually turning the light off and on that’s actually stressful to most light bulbs. I mean check out the Centennial Light (wiki link). I know it’s an entirely different type of lightbulb, but they have run that light almost continuously since 1901, and it’s largely believed that continuous operation has kept it going for so long (though it has dimmed quite significantly).
I suspect that 20,000 hours operation is likely expected under continuous illumination, not ever turning the light off.
LEDs literally work by flickering constantly, they are always turning off/on. The answer is planned obsolescence. Technology connections video on the topic. There is also veritasium one.
I think he thinks about heat generation. A PWM signal (the ‘flicker’) won’t do anything bad, but it will still generate heat, or not when it’s turned off.
Not everything is planned obsolescence, some is just badly engineered cheap stuff.
My smart LED bulbs don’t even say how long they last, but my experience with LEDs in general tells me they will last practically forever. Out of all the LED things I have, the only ones with any burnt out lights are a couple of cheap LED strips I have and I can’t even be sure the ones that are dead weren’t because of where I cut the strip. I’ve had those things for over 12 years now and they’re in my PC which is always on.
Afaik, the biggest threat to killing the LED is heat, and some cheaper LED bulbs have really poor heat dissipation. Technology Connections has a video about them, which may be more informative.
They’ve been sabotaged by design. LEDs should last 10+ years if built even half away reasonably, but unfortunately the manufacturers basically got together and agreed to build them in such a way they would fail. Same as regular light bulbs, they just have to work harder.
I still have some of the earliest modern LED bulbs on the market–old Philips ones, the AmbientLED (i think) with the yellow casing and large heat sinks. They’ve been running for like 15 years now and not a one of them has failed. I spent several hundred USD replacing all my bulbs with those back in the day and they’ve done me well.
Modern bulbs are trash by comparison. Not because the technology is limited in some way but because they refuse to make anything to that quality anymore.
We need an alternate solution to this planned obsolescence bullshit. Light bulbs hit 50k rated hours long ago and they were talking about making ones that went 100k+ but these days you can’t find anything above 25k. And that’s setting aside the fact that a lot of these rely on apps that could be dropped at a moment’s notice.
I still have some of the earliest modern LED bulbs on the market–old Philips ones, the AmbientLED (i think) with the yellow casing and large heat sinks.
I bought a couple of those for an enclosed fixture inside a skylight. The ceiling height there is 20 feet, plus another 2ft into the skylight tunnel. I bought those LED bulbs (at $40/each) because I never wanted to change them. Both bulbs were still fully functional 15 years later. I have since sold that house, but I bet they’re still functioning.
Wait til people hear that GE, Phillips, and others literally created a cartel to sabotage light bulb lifespan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
One of the originators of the idea of “planned obsolescence”. Even after the cartel got killed the manufacturers never extended the life of the lights into (to an extent) CFLs and then moreso the days of LEDs.
Generally because you’re buying cheaper ones that aren’t built as well. Heat destroys LEDs and the cheap bulbs generally use fewer individual LEDs running at higher power to produce a given output in lumens. More expensive bulbs use more LEDs at lower power to achieve the same light output so that they’re not constantly being overdriven and last much longer.
What would you recommend?
I have dozens of Philips Hue bulbs 6-10 years old and I honestly don’t think one of them has died. I’m sure they have lost some luminance over time, but they still get the job done no problem. I rarely run them at 100% anyway.
But yeah I have also had some cheaper LED bulbs die within a few years.
I bought three of the gen 1 Philips Hue when they first came out and all three died within two years. I hope they’re better now, but I’ll never buy Philips Hue again.
And in case you ask, they weren’t enclosed, they were in IKEA floor lamps. They were at 100% all the time, but I feel like if they can’t survive that, they shouldn’t be able to do it.
Can confirm
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Just fyi for anyone who would care about this: while hue bulbs are built well they are moving towards a model that requires you to put them on “the cloud”, even though they were sold for years and years without that requirement. The update will be mandatory whether you want it or not as part of Philips security being integrated into the app. It’s unclear what will happen if you don’t create an account and sign in at that point
So if you’re like me and put all your iot shit on an isolated vlan without internet access they may not be the best option for you. Or if you just don’t want to support a company that wildly changes the tos years after purchasing their (expensive) product. I don’t want my home shit on the internet, I don’t trust Philips to put enough cash or effort into securing their servers, etc.
The bulbs do work with zigbee though and that seems to be a viable alternative to using their hub/app although I haven’t tested it fully. This also means if you’re using them via HomeKit you’ll need some kind of bridge like home assistant
I’ve been using Philips Hue bulbs with Zigbee in Home Assistant for years without issue.
I added all my 10 year+ Hue bulbs to a zigbee stick about 4 years ago. I control them with Home assistant and Zigbee2mqtt. They were a bit flakey at first but after awhile now with updates they have been flawless. Best thing is you still get firmware updates through z2m. Highly recommend using Hue bulbs for their long term support and quality. I have had 1 bulb start flickering and Hue actually replaced it, free of charge.
That’s good to hear. I have a zigbee stick but haven’t found the time to repair them that way yet. I definitely agree they’re good products, it just left a real bad taste in my mouth when after years of using them I got a notification in the app that soon I’ll be required to put them online, which is nonsense
I had one flicker after 8 years and the company replaced it for free. The rest of my 10 year old bulbs are still working fine. I wish they would die though to give me an excuse to replace them with the better color versions. Many of mine are still the old ones with green that can only go to 🍋🟩 lime.
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Lighting a campfire
Phillips warm glow are my favorites after watching technology connections. They last, and they look just like incandescent bulbs as you dim them.
I just buy a cheap jumbo pack from Amazon. They’re like 15 bucks and last for years which is good enough for me.
Killer of LED bulbs is heat. If you have some in fixtures that trap heat you should either replace the fixtures or get high quality bulbs for those fixtures. Look for bulbs rated for hot locations. And for outdoors make sure it’s rated for wet areas.
I wonder if somebody will ever make some sort of like light bulb extender that has some cooling fins on it to go between your light bulb and the socket and to offer a secondary path for some of that heat to get out.
The bulbs themselves are amazing. There are good ones in cars and computers, the flash of phones etc.
The failure point is typically the electronic components that run or regulate it. And of course most companies want to sell more bulbs so they conveniently skimp on that stuff. So maybe the answer is a more expensive bulb that hopefully will last long enough to justify the extra cost?
What would you recommend that actually last long enough to justify the extra cost?
If you can get a hold of Dubai Led bulbs, they are supposed to last extremely long
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-lights-you-cant-buy/
If you’re technically inclined, Big Clive has a tutorial for ‘fixing’ most bulbs not to overdrive the LEDs by removing or changing a single resistor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HTa2jVi_rc
Make sure to choose lamp fittings that don’t trap the heat.
Maybe stop buying the seizure-brand ones from Amazon?
I think I’ve had to replace one bulb in my entire house in the last 6 years or so.
Can’t actually remember when or if I had a LED bulb die on me yet. Knock on wood …
Are you sure you have the same set up for voltage and resistance? If you don’t you’ll pass more current and burn out faster. Similar to a laptop marketing saying 14hrs, but that’s only if you leave it on low power, airplane mode, and don’t do anything useful. I’m curious to see if someone comments the real answer.
I have a dozen that run 12+ hours a day. I’ve had 1 fail in 5 years.
Don’t buy cheap LEDs, and don’t put them in enclosures that trap heat.
Yep. When I moved into my house the previous owner had used all garbage Walmart LED’s. I think I had one fail each month and just bought a bunch on sale from Phillips eventually.
Most common failure was the driver. So they turned into strobe lights lol. Most annoying failure ever.
And more importantly, not every LED is dimmer compatible. Sometimes they’re super picky or just plain don’t work.
Can you recommend which ones to buy? I have the strobe light problem and it is indeed very annoying
The strobe light problem might also be caused by putting a LED that’s not dimmer-compatible on a dimmer switch
I have Cree, Amazon and IKEA. Those all seem to last about the same.
Generally I don’t buy anything else other than Phillips. They’re usually bulletproof if you don’t get the smart bulbs. I’ve not had a Phillips fail in ~10 years. But that’s a sample size of like 30 or so bulbs.
While I’ve had a Philips fail, it was due to environmental reasons. Otherwise, Philips bulbs have lasted me literal years for hours every day.
I also run General Electric bulbs, and they’ve also lasted years.
Oh dang, a cheap driver is probably $0.50 cheaper than a half decent one that can take the hit.
In Australia anything has 12 months warranty by law, this factory would bankrupt quick.
Speaking from experience: LED drivers hate dirty power. If they burn out frequently, check the wiring for damage. I probably avoided a house fire.
Dirty power? Aww geez it’s been a few years since I last washed and waxed my power lines. Guess I gotta open up the walls again.
That’s a good point. LEDs dislike unstable power a LOT more than incandescent or fluorescent.
As an EE graduate I want to hear more about what dirt means and what driver can be affected by it. I’d expect power electronics to stand 100% over voltage over short periods and easy 20% long term, which would blow up lots of other things on the house before the driver or the LED starts performing worse.
Heat.
While the actual LEDs (*) may be rated up to 20,000 hours+ in optimum circumstances, but the actual 3rd party bulb manufacturers, especially the cheapo brands, are building bulbs with poor heat dissipation designs and cheap and/or poorly designed circuits. Same goes for other parts they may use, such as the power supply. To reach 20,000+ hours, you need everything - not just the LED - to be working optimally together.
(*) the best LED makers out there right now, e.g. Nichia, Cree, Phillips - really do some amazing engineering.
I was going to being up Nichia and Cree! (I’m a flashlight junkie, can’t help it.) There’s a world of difference in quality LEDs vs. cheap units.
I have 3x CREE floodlight-style bulbs on my terrarium, never lost one. The CRI (color rendering index) is 90+ (94?) and the colors are natural. If you contrast those with a regular LED, the results are gross.
I have had the same light bulbs since 2012. One of them broke when I dropped it while moving. Otherwise, no issues at all. Philips brand that I bought a box of 12 of when I moved into an apartment that year. Maybe I’m just lucky, but still no issues.
Planned obsolescence
I fix my LED bulbs when they stop working
How so?
Well I’ve done it just twice, I don’t even remember what I did, I just soldered things that seemed broken.
I’m not al electrical engineer whatsoever but the heat unglued the cover of the bulb exposing the circuits so I was like “lemme try”
Just Google “how to increase my fire risk to save $2 on a new LED”. Should be a how to guide or two out there.
Some people like tinkering. Big Clive has a series of videos on Dubai led bulbs. The government mandates that the bulbs be extra efficient and last extra long, so they are built with more filaments driven at a lower current. They run cooler and last longer. You can do a similar thing with American bulbs if you’re handy with a soldering iron.
Honestly, with how poor many of these things are mass produced, opening them up yourself is practically a personal form of quality control. Whether you modify it or not I bet it’s less likely to die prematurely or burn your house down than those of a regular person who doesn’t open them 🤷♂️
No, shorting a dead LED in a series chain of 10-20 will NOT burn your house down, it’s barely a difference to the driving circuit. Unless you’re buying knockoffs, there is a fuse in the base that will blow at like 0.5 A, no matter what you do to the circuitry. However, the other chips will likely not last much longer than the first dead one (unless you dooby the bulb, see below), so it’s not worth doing, and a poorly reattached plastic globe can come off and expose mains voltage. If all chips are OK, you can cut it open to check the inductor between smoothing capacitors and replace it if it has failed open circuit, or short it if you accept a little extra flicker and/or electrical noise.
I’ve seen power supply boards of LED bulbs that literally burned themselves down to the crisp (never in ones that I modded) but the housing contained the fire thanks to its heat-dissipating design.
In many bulbs, you can adjust the value of a current-sensing resistor (usually one or two in parallel, about 2-30 Ω) to make your own “Dooby” lamp with lower power and way longer life. Of course, you need to know something about electronics.
What can burn your house down is still using incandescent and halogen bulbs. You may lay a piece of paper on top of a lamp and it can fall in when moved by the hot air, touching the bulb…
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Ikea’s are nice too
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Osram literally means “I’ll shit on it” in polish, they are the definition of a shit brand
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It’s a joke in Poland - what shines and actively threatens you? A lightbulb made by Osram
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I’ve got several full color Hue bulbs that are the most used lights in my house. I haven’t had a single failure in a decade.
I was more than a little annoyed when they decided to stop supporting my original controller for them though.
