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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.

st3ph3n ,

Make sure the LED bulbs you’re using are rated for use in enclosed fixtures. Heat is the #1 killer for them. My basement is equipped with a bunch of enclosed fixtures that had 3 bulbs each in them, and they kept killing LED bulbs because the trapped heat had nowhere to go. They were designed for incandescent bulbs that didn’t care about being hot.

MoonManKipper ,

I’ve had the same experience - make sure they don’t get hot (or are rated for it)

snausagesinablanket OP ,
@snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world avatar

I am using GE daylight and they say 13 year guarantee on the box. They are at least 2 times as much money as all the imported ones. I have used Walmart and similar and they never last. I tried OSRAM made in Germany and they sucked for brightness. All my lights are not enclosed. They are all open air fixtures with lamp shades and my ceiling fans all have 4 candelabra style. The longest I have gotten any to last is 3 years.

Anticorp ,

Return them to the store where you bought them from for false claims or defective parts.

lovely_reader ,

Those have a 5- to 10-year warranty, depending on which kind. Have you tried reaching out to GE for replacements?

Tarquinn2049 ,

I’ve only had one led light bulb fail so far despite being an early adopter. And it failed by starting to flicker occasionally, not burn out. So the rest have lasted almost 20 years now.

Might be time to look into what you are feeding them. Check if your power is regular.

mke_geek ,

I’ve gotten LED bulbs at Goodwill for $1 for a 4-pack. I have those in my front and back porch lights which I keep on 24/7. I haven’t had to replace them for years.

You may have an electrical issue that’s causing them to burn out. Have you had an electrician test the wires?

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

I can’t remember the last time I had to replace an LED. You may need to check wiring and voltages.

perviouslyiner ,

and temperature.

Wanderer ,

I remember when I was running the numbers for my dads house. I asked him how often he changes a lightbulb. I worked out it was cost effective to change the light bulb based on replacement alone before I even got to the electricity cost.

I honestly don’t think I have ever replaced a LED.

Beacon ,

I've never had to replace an LED bulb, ever. They last forever if there isn't a problem with your installation, like poor electrical wiring or poor ventilation

Blue_Morpho ,

That’s unusual. I have ones that lasted 10 years but they eventually go. It’s usually the driver circuit, not the led itself.

wjrii ,

Exactly. LEDs are rated for 10k hours. 10-15 watt power supplies made both to cram into a tiny space defined by GE 100 years ago for a completely different lighting technology, and to hit a $2.00 price point for the whole assembly? Not so much.

I’ve actually got a super cheap and super bright LED in my garage that has been working for a long time, but it’s one of those big ugly sunflower looking ones that would never fit in an enclosed fixture anyway, so it actually lets the power supply breathe. Even then, I’m sure it’s putting out more lumens than is good for whatever half-assed components and heat sink are in it.

Beacon , (edited )

The first LED I bought is about 7 years old at this point, so that tracks. I was being hyperbolic when i said "forever", they aren't designed to last literally forever, i just meant many many many years

Brkdncr ,

Are they on a dimmer? Some older dimmers don’t place nice with LED.

RobotToaster ,
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

Buy better quality bulbs with drivers that don’t burn out.

Where can you buy those? No clue now, the one guy I knew making good ones got arrested.

Lost_My_Mind ,

“Hey, whats this?”

“Those aren’t mine officer!!!”

“LED LIGHTBULBS??? Yer goin’ to jail!”

“NOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Audalin ,

The Phoebus cartel strikes again!

snausagesinablanket OP ,
@snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world avatar

I am using GE daylight and they say 13 year guarantee on the box. They are at least 2 times as much money as all the imported ones. I have used Walmart and similar and they never last. I tried OSRAM made in Germany and they sucked for brightness. All my lights are not enclosed. They are all open air fixtures with lamp shades and my ceiling fans all have 4 candelabra style. The longest I have gotten any to last is 3 years.

tyler ,

GE is terrible. Use Phillips or Cree. Also turning them on and off often does shorten the lifespan. I’ve had some running 24/7 for maybe 8 years at this point and they’re still going strong.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Alk ,

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

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.

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

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.

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