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In reply to the discussion: U.S. pulls plug on incandescent light bulbs as new ban goes into effect [View all]Wonder Why
(6,262 posts)made in China in our rush to the bottom when it comes to quality. Many stores sell three levels of quality - good, better, best - but people look at price and by the cheapest. Sure, the best ones are not cheap but not only do they really last but their power consumption makes them much less expensive over the life of the bulb.
Note that the claimed "lifetime" is based on 3 hours per day. Fine for those occasionally-used places but not for having them on all day but people still buy the cheapos so those outdoor lights last forever but the ones my wife leaves on all day, fail a lot faster.
I have LED fixtures that show the failure was in the connections between the LED sections. Poor soldering. Internal wiring is too thin and can't handle the current. As to bulbs, the quality control is atrocious. I date all my bulbs when they go into service so I know when they failed prematurely. Too many of them do.
50K hours? What a joke. Sure the LEDs will last "forever" but not when packaged so poorly. Manufacturers have to drop the 110V to the voltage of the bulbs. They can't take the heat (yes there is heat).
So many of the LED bulbs claim far more than they deliver. A 100W incandescent puts out 1600 lumens but I've seen "100W"-claimed bulbs that say only 1300 lumens and "60W" (800 lumens) say 600 lumens. At least those liars are better than the ones that falsely claim the higher number but don't put that much out.
Fluorescent bulbs suck. They slowly dim. They have lots of mercury. The individual lamp bulbs are also poorly made (vs the long ones).
The real problem with LEDs is that we're trying to use modern lights in old fashioned fixtures and lamps with too much voltage; they work much longer and much brighter when pulsed with voltage but need higher frequencies than 60Hz to avoid flicker; their are no standards that the Chinese manufacturers have to meet for quality control or honesty in labeling.
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