LED bulbs ready for prime time?

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mitten
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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by mitten » January 31st, 2018, 11:54 am

I've been buying the Feit 60W equivalent (2700) from Costco for the past 2 years and replaced most in my house. The color is very nice and I like that they use less than 10 watts. Unfortunately many are starting to fail now. They start flickering or glowing dimmer before being fried completely. I do have an old house (built in 1930) so it's either bad bulbs or bad wiring.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by andy10917 » February 2nd, 2018, 12:06 am

A good bulb theoretically should last 22 years, but I think that anything past ten years is gravy.

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mitten
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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by mitten » February 4th, 2018, 12:02 am

andy10917 wrote:
February 2nd, 2018, 12:06 am
A good bulb theoretically should last 22 years, but I think that anything past ten years is gravy.
Yeah, the package says they are supposed to last 13 years (figuring 3 hours of use a day). Unfortunately they are failing in about a year.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by bpgreen » February 4th, 2018, 1:19 am

mitten wrote:
February 4th, 2018, 12:02 am
andy10917 wrote:
February 2nd, 2018, 12:06 am
A good bulb theoretically should last 22 years, but I think that anything past ten years is gravy.
Yeah, the package says they are supposed to last 13 years (figuring 3 hours of use a day). Unfortunately they are failing in about a year.
Since you bought them ast Costco, you should be able to get a refund. Costco is well known for standing behind their products.

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mitten
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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by mitten » February 5th, 2018, 10:51 am

Since you bought them ast Costco, you should be able to get a refund. Costco is well known for standing behind their products.
[/quote]

Yes, I've actually been saving them as they burn out and I'll be returning about 6 in the next week. Gotta love Costco!


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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » May 17th, 2018, 12:36 pm

One problem I ran into when trying to return bulbs to Home Depot was the packaging. I bought a 2-pack so when 1 of them failed, I needed to return both of them.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by snidd111 » May 18th, 2018, 3:20 pm

Dchall_San_Antonio wrote:
May 17th, 2018, 12:36 pm
One problem I ran into when trying to return bulbs to Home Depot was the packaging. I bought a 2-pack so when 1 of them failed, I needed to return both of them.
I'd view that as a hassle, but a beneficial one. It means you get two new bulbs because one failed. It's wasteful, but beneficial for you.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by ken-n-nancy » June 19th, 2018, 3:16 pm

Today I bought a 4-pack of 800 lumen (60W equivalent) soft white (2700K) LED bulbs which use 8.5W each at Walmart for $2.88 total. That's only $0.72 per bulb.

Yes, I'd say prime time is here for LED bulbs.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by mitten » June 21st, 2018, 8:43 am

ken-n-nancy wrote:
June 19th, 2018, 3:16 pm
Today I bought a 4-pack of 800 lumen (60W equivalent) soft white (2700K) LED bulbs which use 8.5W each at Walmart for $2.88 total. That's only $0.72 per bulb.

Yes, I'd say prime time is here for LED bulbs.
Yes, now it would be great if I could get them to last even half as long as advertised. The energy savings and lower more affordable cost makes it worth it either way now though.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » June 21st, 2018, 2:17 pm

For me it's all about saving time. I'll happily trade a few dollars for time.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » June 21st, 2018, 2:19 pm

Most of my household is now LEDs, with current in-socket lifespans of 6 months to about 5 years.

One thing to consider is that the killer of LEDs is heat. The more open the socket, and the better the heat dissipation of the bulb, the longer it'll last. And that includes the electronics, which are the things that tend to fail (the LEDs themselves are great, the electronics are cheap crap like everything else).

Lately I've been making my own small decorative LED lamps, solar and plug-in, running the LED junctions at 10%-70% of recommended maximum (dramatically reducing heat and increasing lifespan) and making the electronics as modular and replaceable as I can (plus as durable and heat-dissipating). Estimated LED lifespan is in the 30,000-100,000 hour span.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by DevilDawg81 » June 30th, 2018, 6:05 pm

I have several GE LED Bright Stik bulbs. The five I have in our living room ceiling fan are on 4-5 hours a day. Even more on the weekend and I’ve had them for about three years. I’m very satisfied with their light output and longevity thus far.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by KBGkicksazz » September 9th, 2018, 8:11 am

Interesting to read about the prevalence of failures.

I work in the semiconductor industry and for sure the most likely cause of the bulb failing to light is 99.9% of the time going to be the driver circuit not the actual LED itself or it’s a bad connection.

I’m probably jinxing myself but I’ve never had an LED fail. My last house every bulb had been converted to LED and in my current new construction home everything is LED.

I’ll be curious to see how my garage LED 4 ft strip lights last as those were not cheap.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by PW405 » September 9th, 2018, 11:53 am

I've had a very mixed bag of conclusive LED results. I moved in to my current house in August of '14 and rapidly started replacing all bulbs with LED. I've tried many brands - GE, Fiet, LE (only seen on Amazon), Walmart/GreatValue, Phillips, etc. I really like the quality of light from the new Phillips bulbs. The Phillips I got back in '15 were a very ugly color (likely low CRI). I've had the vast majority of bulbs fail FAR faster than they are supposed to. So far the record holder goes to LE - a bulb I have on the exterior of the house has been on 24/7/365 for about 2 1/2+ years. That largely seems like dumb luck though, as every other bulb by LE has failed and has been used much, much less.

I'm pretty sold on GE and Phillips LED's now. I have some 1200 Lumen Phillips bulbs that I've really liked, and some GE Candelabra style ones that have been going strong for over a year.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by MorpheusPA » September 9th, 2018, 3:22 pm

Scarily, one of the best bulbs I've found is a 10 watt Sunbeam I get at the dollar store. All of them are over a year in-socket without failures, and some of those bulbs take a beating (most notably the one at the back patio door, which gyrates between 10 degrees and 140 degrees in the mostly-enclosed socket against the wall.

And frankly, for a dollar, if it fails I'll pitch it and get another. They're comparable to the incandescent bulbs and have already outlasted them.

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Re: LED bulbs ready for prime time?

Post by PW405 » April 6th, 2019, 12:57 pm

I agree Morpheus - the cost of LED's is so low now, that I don't really get bummed out if one burns out. The technology & CRI (Color rendering index) continues to get better and the newer bulbs tend to give much better quality of light.

I recently replaced some Halogen 45W G9 socket bulbs with LED's. The Halogen's produced ~500 lumens, while the LED's produce 700 Lumens and use only 7W. The LED's are much longer than the Halogens, but this particular fixture had plenty of spare room. Very happy with the quality & quantity of light output.

Also recently installed two 48" Honeywell 5000K LED shop lights (from Sam's Club) in the garage. VERY happy with the performance compared to old fluorescent tubes. So far, I highly suggest this product. Longevity will be a concern, as it appears to use a proprietary lamp type.

The "last stand" for LED usage in my house is the ceiling fan fixture. It has a remote control dimmer, but uses a strange socket ("E11"). I've tried a "dimmable E11 LED" from Amazon twice. It fits the socket, but will not turn on. I'm guessing the dimmer isn't the right type? I'll be very happy to get rid of this halogen, as it uses a 100W+ bulb and gets HOT.

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