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What is the secret to making LED light bulbs last as long as the package says?

These bulbs are not economical at all because I have to constantly replace them. Saving on electricity does not justify these expensive bulbs burning out in less than a year. The only two that have lasted are in my range hood for light above my stove. Those experience extreme heat and yet they are fine. I have had to replace 2 light fixtures that have permanent LEDs and no replaceable parts too.

PeroBasta ,

Important: never buy IKEA bulbs (lamps and all the aesthetic part OK, but not the light bulb itself)

I had dozens of those dying one by one in my apartment, I always substituted them with Philips bulbs and they never had issues

Nibodhika ,

Others have said it, but it’s never too much. LEDs last forever, it’s the transformer that breaks. What makes a transformer break is mostly power surges. Either your electric installation has a problem or they’re connected wrongly, for example on a dimmer.

I’ve had LED lights for decades that are still going. In fact I don’t think I have ever needed to replace a led bulb in my life.

CoolMatt ,

I once bought a test bulb cheap off Primecables. The colour was shit and the bulb turned on 5 minutes later after being turned off in the app. Threw it out a day after installing, and bought Phillips Wizz. 2 years later my whole apartment is full of them, no issues whatsoever. 15$/bulb but worth it imo. Much more reasonable buy than Hue.

lemming741 ,

They are commodity now. No way for a brand to differentiate themselves other than price, and consumer s usually buy the cheapest thing available. There’s no market for nicer designs because they’re too expensive. They may offer more expensive bulbs, but it’s probably still the same shitty cheap design.

My experience is that dimmable bulbs last longer because the power supply cannot be shittified as bad as the on/off.

Aceticon , (edited )

Get the ones with the CE mark as, since 2017, the EU rules for LED Light Bulbs are very strict (for example, models must be tested for min 10k hours of life with at last 95% of the bulbs passing, and 10,000 on-off cycles) and that CE mark means they were tested in accordance with them (unless the mark is fake, obviously).

Also as others pointed out, you want to make sure the light fixtures you have them in do not trap heat: LED lights emit way less heat that incandescant but if it can’t go anywhere temperatures can get pretty high, plus both the actual LEDs and the components of the power converter at the bottom of the lamp (as the Light Emitting Diodes themselves take DC, ideally with a regulated current, not 110/220V AC) are way more sensitive to temperature than the stuff incandescent lamps are made.

Beyond this, also note that when it comes to overall quality (rather than merelly efficiency), that converter circuit makes most of the difference and manufacturers competing mostly on price will often use designs for those with significantly lower quality to save a few cents per unit. You might want to consider getting the Dimmable LED Light Bulbs even if you aren’t going to use them with a dimmer simply because in order for it to be Dimmable that conversion circuit needs to have a different, better, design that the cheapest ways of designing it.

At one point in time, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, I looked into setting up a business to import those things from China, and most samples I got from back then still work (except the ones from the really crap manufacturer, of the rest maybe 1 in 5 failed since then) - this is also why I know all those details about EU LED Light Bulb requirements and certification.

I’ve also been using LED Light Bulbs since even before that and have had very few failures in almost 10 years of using those things, even though I never buy the branded expensive stuff.

Last I checked the factory price of a decent 100 lumens LED Filament Light Bulb at the factory in China was around $1 so LED Light bulbs above $/£/€5 are way overpriced.

lemming741 ,

You got to watch those sneaky bastards

kimuagroup.com/…/differences-between-ce-and-china…

plz1 ,

Well that’s downright diabolical…

pau_hana ,

It looks like that information may be come from a myth, according to the current Wikipedia page. CE Marking/ Misuse

EarthShipTechIntern ,

Some nice YouTube vids on repairing ‘burnt’ LEDs. A lot of times, it’s a single LED (of 12), bypass that, light works again.

Successful_Try543 ,

But then the voltage per LED increases, leading to soon death of another LED, so this is a ‘just for the moment’ fix.

XeroxCool ,

Not necessarily. Proper LED drivers adjust voltage to feed them a certain specified current. The driver will decrease voltage and heat more if it’s a basic transistor circuit but smarter circuits will just chop the power more. Even if it does supply the higher voltage due to use of a basic resistor circuit, there should be some safety factor that keeps the emitters below max power, so having 8% higher voltage shouldn’t affect longevity much. There’s many variables. Obviously everything I listed is regarding ideal conditions

Successful_Try543 ,

Ah, yes the LED driver is usually constant current type. I’ve been thinking too simply and assumed it’s constant voltage.

CheeseNoodle ,

Tangential, according to one of my college lecturers even the cheapest LED bulbs are capable of lasting multiple human lifetimes, its the little power supply circuit that comes with each bulb that breaks and ruins the bulb.

Aceticon ,

The actual Light Emitting Diodes loose brighness over time due to, amongst other things, dopant migration which is something that gets accelerated by higher temperatures (though even when disconnected and in storage, it still happens).

(I have some red LEDs which are almost 4 decades old from back when I played with Electronics as a kid and they’re way less bright - barelly lighting up - than the ones I got a few years ago)

That said, the cheap conversion/regulation circuits in those lamps can exposed the LEDs to frequent spikes of voltage or current beyond their spec, and even though most electronic components can handled occasional slightly out of spec power (they tend to be designed with chunky margins), do it too often and they’ll will probably die.

And then, of course, as your college lecturer pointed out, those conversion/regulation when done with cheap designs and components tend to die way more easilly than the LEDs themselves.

Hugh_Jeggs ,

I replace bulbs as part of my business. Cheap LEDs are a false economy

I only use Osram or Phillips, cost me a bomb to start with but now it’s rare I ever have to replace a lamp

Jakeroxs ,

How do you feel about the color changing/smart bulbs? I have the ikea ones and basically have them on most of the time for several years now.

Hugh_Jeggs ,

Ooo I’ve got an Osram one for my living room. Works with either automation or a quick flick of the on off switch.

IKEA bulbs used to be very good, I don’t know if they are still. There are some ten year old ones in my chalets, though their light output is pretty pathetic compared to modern ones

Pyr_Pressure ,

Never buy fixtures with irreplaceable built in LEDs, they’re mostly a scam to get people to buy a $50 fixture instead of a $30 fixture and a $5 bulb.

Also LED bulbs, the light emitting portion (light emitting diode, LED) is just a small part of the actual “bulb”. LED bulbs also have lots of little circuitry components which are typically what dies first. The actual LED is unlikely to fail, but the circuitry can easily get burnt out in cheap bulbs.

Don’t get the cheapest ones that you can find.

Don’t put them in airtight enclosures (i.e. those old nipple lights)

Dont turn them on and off constantly. You’re not using much energy, it’s fine to them on for a bit. They more they turn on and off the faster they will fail.

frezik ,

Built-in fixtures usually work better. It avoids having to cram power supply components into a small, hot space.

Alk ,

Get an electrician. It sounds like bad wiring or voltage control or something.

Alexstarfire ,

The only LED bulbs I’ve ever seen die have all been from one light fixture. Eaten at least 1 every 8-12 months. I’m not buying new ones to replace them. Just going through the stock I have then going with something that cares less about voltage. I’m pretty sure it’s a power delivery problem and I’m uninterested in trying to solve it because this is the only effect I’ve experienced.

fishos ,
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

That’s a wiring issue. Bulbs burning out shockingly fast means something else is wrong. Had the same issue in a ceiling light until we replaced the wiring.

DebatableRaccoon ,

Dimmer switches + dimmable bulbs and never, ever buy whole units with non-replaceable LEDs, those things are a scam and little more than e-waste.

cecilkorik , (edited )
@cecilkorik@lemmy.ca avatar

Most cheap non-dimmable LEDs have drivers that use resistors to determine the current to drive through the LEDs. As a rule, these are always set too high to overdrive the LEDs (sometimes as much as twice their rated current) for marginal brightness gains and to burn out the bulb prematurely. I’m obviously unable to actually see directly into the operation of the great minds that design LED lightbulbs but logic leaves me with only those two plausible conclusions, I’ll let you decide which motivation you think is a bigger factor for most manufacturers.

Conveniently, most manufacturers carefully fine-tune this value to prematurely destroy the LEDs at just the right time, which requires careful balancing of resistors, and even MORE conveniently (for us) the cheapest way for them to do this is typically to use two resistors. And MOST conveniently (for us), if you were to carelessly break one of the pair of resistors they use, and leave the other one intact, the current would immediately drop to a very reasonable and appropriate level, generating much less heat, drawing much less power, making LED death extremely unlikely, and only modestly reducing brightness in many cases, because LEDs have non-linear brightness and the heavily overdriven ones are typically FAR beyond the point of diminishing returns. In some cases the reduction in power results in basically no visible difference in light output. In some cases it can be argued they’re literally stealing extra power from your electricity bill and using it as an electric heater for no purpose other than to burn out your own light bulbs prematurely so you have to replace them.

The good news is, like I said, removing one of the responsible resistors instantly solves the design flaw and is usually quite easy even without any special tools or electronics knowledge. BigCliveDotCom calls this “Doobying” the bulbs after the Dubai bulbs that were mentioned in other comments. If you watch some of his videos about LED bulbs you should be able to see the pattern of which resistors to remove, if they are on the board they will basically always be right next to each other and relatively small values (typically in the 20 ohms to 200 ohms range). The only modification I make to his procedure is that I prefer to remove the HIGHER value of the two resistors instead of the lower one, which results in perhaps somewhat less lifetime preservation (still much more than the original setting) and less power savings, but more brightness, and is usually adequately good for my purposes. I also use sturdy tweezers to remove the resistor instead of a screwdriver which seems to me that it would have a higher risk of collateral damage.

Is it a lot of work for a single light bulb? Kind of, yes. But once you get it done a bunch of times, you’ll probably rarely have to do it again, as these bulbs last almost forever. In fact, I have yet to have one actually fail, I am mostly just replacing the occasional old unmodified LED bulb from time to time.

This will not work with dimmable bulbs or certain fancy high end bulbs. Also some are much, much easier to modify than others. Clive calls the ones that are relatively easy “hackable” and it’s really a crapshoot to find them. Some have covers/bulbs/diffusers that are nearly impossible to remove without catastrophic damage to the bulb and/or your hands. Others simply use a different circuit design that doesn’t have resistors. Some only have a single resistor, meaning to change the value you need to solder a new one in its place. In my experience, the bargain-basement, junkiest, least reliable bulbs tend to be the easiest to hack this way and often skimp on things like “gluing the lens on” so it’s easy to get off. But you’ll have to experiment to find a brand and style that works well for this.

db2 ,

LED bulbs do last, that’s why they’re manufactured to overdrive the elements so they burn out sooner.

Try getting dimmable ones and run them a little lower.

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