The first point of failure on LED lighting...

[Perd Hapley]

...is the manufacturer.

http://luxreview.com/article/2016/10/why-there-s-more-chance-the-manufacturer-will-fail-than-the-led-driver?cmpid=enl_Pennwell_Newsletter_2016-10-20&email_address=jkohlhepp@cmasolutions.com

[HeroHog]

I JUST bought 2 3-way CRE LED bulbs off Amazon Prime for what I would pay for one at Lowe's locally. Given their average lifetime VS. the actual average lifetime of incandescent 3-way bulbs, I should see a substantial savings. I've noticed that LED bulbs are coming WAY down in price and the life expectancy is quite good making them a good choice. The one's I have been using run quite cool, even on the power end, and I love that they come right on at full intensity and have a nice bright white color.

[Scout26]

I picked up 4 packs of four 60 watt non-dimmable LED bulbs* at Walmart for less then $3 bucks per four pack.



* They are going into bedroom ceiling fans.

[griz]

I like them.  I've replaced most of the bulbs in the house with them and the closest thing I've had to a problem is one of the three way bulbs goes cycles through Low-High-almost High instead of L-M-H.  I can live with that.

[HeroHog]

one of the three way bulbs goes cycles through Low-High-almost High

That's strange given how the circuitry works on a 3 way socket. 1 contact is Low, the other is Medium and the two combined are High and the bulbs are comprised of two elements. I would assume the 3 way LED would have 2 banks of LEDs working in much the same way. Weird.

[AJ Dual]

That's strange given how the circuitry works on a 3 way socket. 1 contact is Low, the other is Medium and the two combined are High and the bulbs are comprised of two elements. I would assume the 3 way LED would have 2 banks of LEDs working in much the same way. Weird.

A lot of LED lights/bulbs do PWM or pulse-width modulation for "dimming" because it's more efficient to blink them on/off rapidly, faster than the normal human persistence of vision can see which we average out to being a certain intensity. It generates less heat, and uses less electricity to switch the current on/off like that than to leave it always on, but instead use resistance to lower the current and actually dim the LED.

If you flick your eyes quickly past an LED light source, if you see it blinking and strobing or leaving dashes of it's after-image, you can tell if it's using PWM.

[HeroHog]

I was thinking more a bank of 6 and a bank of 12 for example. No dimming needed. They are either on or off either individually or together just like the incandescent bulb.

[lee n. field]

I like them.  I've replaced most of the bulbs in the house with them and the closest thing I've had to a problem is one of the three way bulbs goes cycles through Low-High-almost High instead of L-M-H.  I can live with that.

I've had one of the LED bulbs I've installed fail.  The date installed was earlier this year.  The bulb will go dark intermittently.

[HeroHog]

Don't tell me that... (makes note: KEEP RECEIPT)

[roo_ster]

Bought a 100W equivalent soft-white dimmable LEDfor the front porch light after the CFL went bad.  Better illumination than the 100W equivalent CFL.  Pretty happy with it so far.

[Marnoot]

I've had pretty bad luck with Cree bulbs, unfortunately. I wanted to like them but they keep dying on me.

Walmart and Phillips LED bulbs have given me no problems in the same sockets.

Sent from my LG-D851 using Tapatalk

[lee n. field]

The one I had go bad was a GE.

[Jocassee]

I bought some GE LED bulbs for the first time this week. If they last 13 years like they say on the box, it will be worth the lack of hassle.

[Ben]

Did we ever make a determination on if FEIT (or FIET, whatever they're called) are good or not? That seems to be the only brand my Costco sells. The last batch I picked up were Phillips, but I'm out and need to resupply. I've got a couple of older, take forever to warm up CFLs that I want to replace. Or save them to use in the bathroom. I actually don't mind the light there taking a while to get bright.

[never_retreat]

Did we ever make a determination on if FEIT (or FIET, whatever they're called) are good or not? That seems to be the only brand my Costco sells. The last batch I picked up were Phillips, but I'm out and need to resupply. I've got a couple of older, take forever to warm up CFLs that I want to replace. Or save them to use in the bathroom. I actually don't mind the light there taking a while to get bright.

The FEIT brand has been around for a while, but I have no input on the bulbs.
I picked up a 3 pack of 60w equivalent Osram LED's at lowes over the weekend. They were pretty cheep I can't recall the price. Single pack 100w were a lot more money for some reason.

[Perd Hapley]

Did we ever make a determination on if FEIT (or FIET, whatever they're called) are good or not? That seems to be the only brand my Costco sells. The last batch I picked up were Phillips, but I'm out and need to resupply. I've got a couple of older, take forever to warm up CFLs that I want to replace. Or save them to use in the bathroom. I actually don't mind the light there taking a while to get bright.

My impression of Feit has always been that they are generic junk. That being said, I don't really know. Everybody and his in brother-in-law is making and selling LED stuff (unless they go out of business). A lot of junk out there.

[Perd Hapley]

The FEIT brand has been around for a while, but I have no input on the bulbs.
I picked up a 3 pack of 60w equivalent Osram LED's at lowes over the weekend. They were pretty cheep I can't recall the price. Single pack 100w were a lot more money for some reason.

Higher wattages usually are. 60-watters are cheap; probably because of the volume.

[Regolith]

Did we ever make a determination on if FEIT (or FIET, whatever they're called) are good or not? That seems to be the only brand my Costco sells. The last batch I picked up were Phillips, but I'm out and need to resupply. I've got a couple of older, take forever to warm up CFLs that I want to replace. Or save them to use in the bathroom. I actually don't mind the light there taking a while to get bright.

I've bought a bunch of FEITs. They've had a pretty high failure rate, so far. Maybe 30%. Unfortunately, they didn't start failing until nearly all the lights in the house had been replaced with them. They particularly don't seem to like enclosed light fixtures, although the ones I bought claimed to be rated for it. Failure rate on the BR30s have been lower, but I think I've lost two out of 10 or so.

[Ben]

I've bought a bunch of FEITs. They've had a pretty high failure rate, so far. Maybe 30%. Unfortunately, they didn't start failing until nearly all the lights in the house had been replaced with them. They particularly don't seem to like enclosed light fixtures, although the ones I bought claimed to be rated for it. Failure rate on the BR30s have been lower, but I think I've lost two out of 10 or so.

Surprising to me that Costco sells them then. They usually take better care on quality control. Guess it'll be Lowes or Amazon.

[Brad Johnson]

I have a smattering of Philips and Cree (actual Cree brand, not the "Featuring Cree LEDs!" stuff). Only failure I've had is one Cree due to a bad cap in the driver. The first-gen Philips lamps in my living room have at least three or four thousand hours on them without issue. The Cree lamp over my kitchen sink is on 24/7 and has been for more than three years. That's almost 9000 hours.

Check out BigClive.com for teardowns of both dodgy and non-dodgy electronics. He went through a phase about a year and a half ago where he was stripping down new LED lamps almost every day.

Brad

[K Frame]

I've yet to have an LED fail.

I started going LED last year, buying from WOOT when they had their multipacks on sale. At the time 60 watts were about the best you could get. I also picked up a couple of the Philips SlimStyle LEDs for use in reading lamps as their color rendering seemed to be a bit more true that the woot bulbs.

I also started moving a lot of the bulbs in my Mom's house to LEDs, and that's been an unqualified success, as well.

Some months ago I bought a pack of SlimStyle 75 watt bulbs for use in floor lamps I put in in my living room, then a few weeks ago I picked up a 3-pack of Tiwin 100 watt bulbs from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G1J88V6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1) for the floor lamps and also the lamp in my office.

To be honest, they don't seem to be that much brighter than the 75 watt SlimStyles, and nowhere can I find any indication of how many lumens these bulbs produce, which should have been a warning to me, but the color on the Tiwins is VERY close to an incandescent bulb, so close that it's really hard to tell the difference. I really like them for that reason.

In fact, I just found a review on Amazon that says that the Tiwins aren't much brighter, if at all, than a 75 watt equiv. Oh well, they at least were cheap as anything. I'll wait until the price comes down on the Philips SlimStyles and put the Tiwins in the basement I guess.

One of the big reasons why the price on the higher wattage LEDs is so much more than the 60s is in large part because getting that kind of wattage out the bulbs in a package that mimics the old Edison bulb profile can be very difficult. As the engineering on the higher wattages becomes more stable, the prices will start to come down the same way that the prices on the 60s and 75s have plummeted.

Earlier this year I also replaced the fluorescent light in my kitchen with 3 integrated LED surface mount fixtures from Lowes, very similar to these: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Project-Source-2-Pack-11-in-W-Brushed-Nickel-LED-Ceiling-Flush-Mount-Light/999926358

I actually bought 6, as I wanted 3 for the kitchen, and 3 to replace various hall lights.

Best choice I ever made. Spacing them out along the kitchen ceiling provides a HUGE improvement in the amount of light. No longer are the ends of the kitchen (galley style) dark. The only issue is that with the led chips all of the light goes straight down; there's not much side wash as there used to be with the fluorescent fixture, so the upper shelves of the cabinets are kind of dark when I'm looking for something. Not an issue, though.

[Perd Hapley]

If you like the SlimStyle, stock up. They're discontinued.

[brimic]

GF is a lighting designer/engineer of some sort...
She told me the Cree drivers are used in most LED bulbs, and if they work out of the box (1), their rate of failure is almost infinitesimally small out to about 10 years of continuous use. I can't remember the exact rating or expected failure percentage along the way, but its pretty impressive.

(1) they sometimes fail right out of the box due to bad connections.

[K Frame]

If you like the SlimStyle, stock up. They're discontinued.

Huh. Well that sucks.

[Perd Hapley]

Huh. Well that sucks.

Word is, some FOX execs made the call.