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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Citation needed on both points. The LED bulbs I'm using right now were less than double the price when I bought my house 15 years ago and while every incandescent and CFL bulb in the house has failed and been replaced since then, the LED bulbs I bought are still going strong and have paid for themselves many times over with 90% reduction in electricity usage.

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Anecdotally, the LED bulbs I've bought from Ace Hardware (BR30 for 65 watt recessed kitchen lighting, and A19 for 75 watt classic bulbs) have consistently failed on order-of-months timescales similar to incandescents. Same with some Feit A19s from a few years back. But they cost more than incandescents!

Apparently the market tolerates this garbage even though LEDs are supposed to be a superior technology and last longer (and some I've bought years ago have, I just don't remember the brand and it was in another house). Perhaps Ace is practicing planned obsolescence and taking advantage of their customers' expectations that "light bulbs get replaced"?

Yeah, weird (see reply to sibling). I have Philips Hue bulbs and I literally haven't replaced any of the ones I put in like 3-4 years ago.

Have you returned them? I have a number of Feit bulbs which are in their second decade so I don't think it's as simple as a particular vendor skimping.

Don't need a citation, as it's my personal experience. I'm not going to do a market research project for fskcing light bulbs. I buy them at Target, or wherever. They maybe last a year, like incandescents. Occasionally they last much less, like a week. And when they die, they are e-waste (at least better than CFLs, which are straight up hazmat waste). An incandescent bulb is a bit of glass and metal.

I used to find incandescent bulbs 4 for a dollar on sale. An LED bulb is typically at least a couple of bucks, that's why I say 10x the price.

I will grant they use less electricity, but my electric bill hasn't noticably changed. The amount of electricity I use for lights in my home isn't even noise in my monthly budget. But what is annoying is having to get out a stepladder once a month to change a bulb, when the huge selling point on these bulbs is that they were worth the price because they would last 10x as long.

Okay, so your personal anecdote is interesting but that doesn't mean that all of the people who have had very different experiences are making things up, it means there's something odd about the power at your house. Have you had problems with other electronics? I had an uncle who had “bad luck” like that until he got it tested and learned that the utility was supplying very noisy power which damaged anything more complicated than an incandescent bulb or old-school electric motor.

Wow, something weird is going on in your house. I literally never change my light bulbs, I was just thinking about this the other day when I was looking at my extra bulbs and considering where to store them. It occurred to me it's been literally years since I changed a bulb, whereas in the old days it used to be a regular occurrence.

Also it's not hard to work out how much electricity you are saving. If you are worried about a couple of bucks, it won't take much usage of a 80W bulb to blow through that.

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