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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

A lot of comments are trying to defend this by saying a properly designed light could last some amount longer, which is true, but misses the point. These designs couple the light and the fan. That’s an extra failure mode that doesn’t need to exist.

It also prevents the user from changing the bulb if they want a different color temperature or better CRI. Most of the built-in lights I see are in the 3000-3500K range, which is cooler the warm white I’ve chosen for the house. If I could swap the bulb it would be an easy fix, but if it’s built in then I’m stuck with it.

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Yeah anything which forces you to use whatever the manufacturer chooses is an instant no from me too. I don't have any fixed lights cooler than 2200 K at home, the standard 3000 K 'warm' white is going to look crappy the majority of the time.

We're in the middle of trying to come up with a nicer lighting scheme for our home.

For the overhead lights in the main area of the house and in the kitchen, we went with 3500k. The kitchen lights are on when preparing food and the overhead lights in the main area are used pretty much only when cleaning.

Task, accent, and decorative lighting are warmer. The specific temperature depends on the purpose of the light.

What I want more of are dim-to-warm lights. For example in our master bathroom, it would be nice to have candle-like light late at night and have super bright (high CRI) coolish light while cleaning or getting dressed. All the best systems though are pretty expensive (Lutron Ketra for example) and not terribly DIY friendly.

Many of them are switchable color temperature. At least from what I’ve seen.

Those are generally bad quality because they’ve split the LED budget across twice as many modules.

A high CRI single color temperature bulb beats them in light quality.

Most people aren’t going to notice, but if you’ve done any work with color, lighting, or photography then the average consumer LED lights feel terrible. They’re mostly blue light with a little bit of other colors to make them appear white to the eye.

Does the design actually stop you from replacing the parts or is it just more difficult than plugging in a power plug?

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