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Obviously it is possible to design well or to design badly the LED bulbs.

Those which fail are likely to fail due to inadequate cooling. With good cooling even large currents cannot damage the LEDs. As long as the temperature of the LED is limited there is no need to drive it less.

I have bought 8 years ago about two dozen LED lamps of 1500 lumen (equivalent to 100 W incandescent lamps) and of 4000 K color temperature (slightly yellowish white, but not yellow like those that imitate incandescent lamps), which were made by Philips and which have the same size as traditional incandescent bulbs.

All of those still work flawlessly, while consuming only a little more than half of the power consumed by the compact fluorescent lamps replaced by them.

I do not doubt your experience, but it is possible to choose better LED lamps.

> I have bought 8 years ago about two dozen LED lamps

> All of those still work flawlessly

That's the point: you (mostly) can't buy LEDs made 8 years ago new. The LEDs I have from a decade ago weigh three times as much.

>Those which fail are likely to fail due to inadequate cooling. With good cooling even large currents cannot damage the LEDs. As long as the temperature of the LED is limited there is no need to drive it less.

This seems like a logical conclusion considering lower power extends their life and the diodes that fail are usually discolored (as if they overheated). However, I'm not entirely sure it is as simple as inadequate cooling. All my high power LED floodlights are installed outdoors. I had 3 failures in the middle of winter when outside temperatures are way below zero (I remember these especially well, because climbing a tall ladder in freezing -20C wind is not something you forget easily). My theory is that they initially fail short that's why they appear burned. Also better cooling definitely extends their life, but it is not the only factor. The LED floodlights I mentioned were all housed in flat cast aluminum casings with find. The pcb is made of aluminium (with a very thin white insulating layer and copper traces on top). There is thermal paste between the back of the pcb that is raw aluminium and the case. I can't imagine a more favourable cooling solution. And still these floodlights are amongst the worst LED experiences I had. I tried all sellers available that didetry to charge >6x the price.

>I do not doubt your experience, but it is possible to choose better LED lamps

Perhaps it is location dependent. The lights I had a good experience with were purchased in the UK, but I've since moved to Poland. I'm happy to order from other countries within the EU (I even wanted to get the same LEDs from the UK again, but they don't sell them anymore).

The brands I see around here are either noname/picked up from thin air, kobi, samsung,philips or sometimes Osram. I have to admit I haven't got much experience with Philips or Osram. All the others are the same (including Samsung Pro). I would've bought more of the Philips/Osram lights, but none of my local stores carry them in cool white, ordering one or two online seems a waste of the shipping while I'm not ordering 20 without checking them out first... (if someone says "Philips is great" I'll get a 10 pack) Also I noticed people who like warm rather than cool light seem to have a better experience overall. Two of the best LEDs I have are warm, and they look like the famous Philips Dubai bupbs(I couldn't get any cool whites with the right fitting). They have been living outside for last 7 years, hooked up to a PIR next to a cat's food&water so they are activated a lot. I've replaced the PIR sensors, but the lights are still fine. Again, these were purchased years ago.

If anyone knows any good brands available in Europe, please mention them.

I write the date I install light-bulbs on the shaft, with a permanent marker. Because I've always had a feeling that bulbs die "too often".

The ones I just checked in my flat which are over four years old are all Osram. I have none older than that, due to moving house too much.

To be honest I just buy whichever bulbs are on sale at the local hardware store.

I've never really gone out of my way to try anything fancy or specific. I did have a pair of Hue bulbs at one point, but I got annoyed with the state mismatch between the bulbs and the switches, and always figured I'd rewire to smart switches in the future and gave up on the lighting until that time.

The only thing that did stick was using a bunch of lamps in my bedroom with a 3-in-1 radio-controller for socket-switches. That's nice, to be able to toggle a bunch of lamps via a little remote in the bed.

> All my high power LED floodlights are installed outdoors. I had 3 failures in the middle of winter when outside temperatures are way below zero

An SMD LED chip is only a mm or two in size. I doubt that even a -20C wind directly on it could cool it fast enough to make a huge difference just because of lack of surface area.

For a given power level, the chip temperature will be a certain number of degrees warmer than ambient. So if the chip is at 50C in 30C ambient, it'll be something like 30C in 10C ambient.

LEDs don't die of being at 30C.

For that I saw in dead lamps/floodlights I opened I mostly wondered how this managed to even last for the time it did.

The best engineering of a LED light I ever saw is still the 2013-ish era Maglite bulb. It just works, no overheating, no nothing.

> If they were driven with 10% less power they would have a chance to last.

You are describing Dubai LEDs, which are driven lower, last longer, but are dimmer:

https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...

Last mention on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35003411

Have you tried some from Waveform Lighting? I have some of their bulbs (none of which has broken yet) and I selected them because of the low blue light and zero flicker. (No relationship with them beyond being a satisfied customer).

https://www.waveformlighting.com/

I just purchased like $1500 worth of linear LED's from these guys for my workshop. I'm really sensitive to LED flicker and these were one of the only websites I found that specifically talked about flicker and claimed their LED's don't do it.

Does anyone else notice when LED's flicker at 60hz?

I was in a restaurant last week that had some of those LED's made to look like old time lights and the flicker in the room was terrible. If anyone moved their hand or the menu, you could see the strobe effect very easily.

I do. Fortunately my house (full of led lighting) only has one place with visible flicker: my vent hood. Strangely enough I’m the only one in my family who notices the flicker, but it annoys me whenever anyone uses those lights while cooking.

I haven't. I should've probably mentioned I'm in Europe. That most likely excludes them for me.

I've had a look at their page, they don't have the fittings I get (gu10, E27 - probably these are not used in the US) and no European resellers as far as I can find (and no 4500K option, but that's a minor thing).

Conspiracy! No really, there was a conspiracy to fix the life expectancy of tungsten bulbs. Nobody would be doing that here, of course. /s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

Honestly that story is really not as simple as people suggest it is. There is a tradeoff between bulb life and brightness and standardization may have been good for the industry. Technology Connections does a thoughtful deep dive in to this story in this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY

It's probably because they're so small, integrated and installed in confined insulated spaces. My house is 5 years old and I've never had an LED light break. The hardware I have is split into the LEDs (bigger ones with a heat sink) and the AC/DC drivers which are installed above the ceiling insulation or in a wall cavity for wall lights. The old school gu10 bulbs are notorious for burning out as well I used to go through about 4 a year just in a kitchen rangehood.

I bought higher CRI LEDs from IKEA about 4 years ago when I moved into my apartment, they are all still working. But those LEDs are not sold anymore, hopefully the newer ones are as decent.

Very interesting. An acquaintence was describing something similar - a frustratingly high rate of early failures across various bulb types usually meant to last 10-15 years.

I have exclusively IKEA smart bulbs where the right fitment is available, plus a motley array of other bulbs and LED lamps (often cheapish Chinese brands resold on Amazon) where IKEA doesn't offer something suitable, and I've not had a single failure in ~5 years. Such a disparity is difficult to explain.

You can modify the resistors on the PCB manually to run them cooler and last longer. It's not ideal but one solution.

I noticed that virtually all LEDs driver resistors are two vastly different values, in parallel. Such that if you snip off the correct one, you are left with a slightly lower output light, that consumes half the power and last many time longer.

It's like a secret cheat code for people in the know. It's almost a conspiracy.

Just cut off the highest value resistor with a pair of snips.

This is a really good tip. Although ripping them apart is the last thing I'd like to do when I buy a new set of lights I might have to start doing that.

Keep your receipt details and return to seller (if in UK) if they don't meet the stated lifetime. AFAIK there are no time limits to Consumer Rights Act returns beyond 'expected product lifetime'.

Although good that it's possible to get a free replacement, I suspect the broken bulb will still end up in a landfill or polluting some place in the world with more micro plastics. It's a real shame when manufacturers would rather make a worse product and pocket the few cents difference, environment be dammed.

One of the big problems with the process is that people don't return things because of the hassle, so the rubbish remains profitable, meaning the flow to landfill doesn't stop. You can attempt to dictate a better situation, but that doesn't always go well ...

This is the same in Poland (the country I moved to), but who can find receipts for light bulbs bought 6 months ago... I do keep them now (especially for more expensive ones like these Led floodlights). In fact that's how I got through so many of them. I bought them, a couple failed few months later, I'd take them back to the shop, they would just give me new ones in exchange. I'd install these, and they would break again in few months, rinse and repeat. I got so tired of having to swap them up high on a ladder I started fixing them myself and regulating the power supply for lower power (they have a brick style PSU).

Interesting. Some of our TP-Link/Kasa bulbs are going on seven years of operation. Shits have been bulletproof for us.

What is the common failure mode and how are you fixing them?

Virtually all of them fail the same way. One(or more) of the individual LED diodes fail open. They are usually discolored as if they burned. I'm fixing them by replacing the diodes that failed (I desoldering them from other lights that failed). I always buy cool white Led lights and all of them use 1W diodes it seems (at least I think they're 1W, there is no writing on them).

I wonder if the vendors or suppliers know?

It seems like a lemon market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

I'm sure they know.

For sure they do. I spoke about these floodlights with the people in the shop I bought them at and they had a representative of the supplier come every month in a van to collect all the dead ones and give them new ones. I can't understand how they could sell them at such low price, replace 40%, and still make a profit. Perhaps they fix them themselves?