25,000 hr LED Bulbs

[Donald]

I wonder like the store sales of "up to 50%" (where most things are 10% off and one item no one wants is 50% off) do these LED bulbs last "up to 25,000 hours".

 

[Snagglefoot]

I wonder like the store sales of "up to 50%" (where most things are 10% off and one item no one wants is 50% off) do these LED bulbs last "up to 25,000 hours".

The three bulbs in my original posting each lasted for over 25,000 hours. YRMV.

 

[JTK]

Yesterday I purchased a 10pack of Sunco ballast bypass 48" T8 tubes off Amazon to retrofit some kitchen fixtures for my inlaws. These are old 4 lamp T12 fixtures with custom built wooden enclosures. One fixture has a bad ballast. These Sunco lamps have a "17 year lifespan" and a "7yr warranty". How could you go wrong lol. The 10 pack was just under $57 all in. They're actually shown as being UL listed which is surprising.

 

[SC Maintenance]

When we moved into current house more than 10 years ago wife decided a single 65W flood over the kitchn sink should stay on all the time. A sort of night light. So I went to HD and bought a Cree LED, which at the time was like $25 bucks. I calculated the ROI and determined it was about a year compared to incandescent, so $25 was OK. That bulb still works fine - 87,000 hours? It gets turned off occasionally, but not much.

The rest of the kitchen has the same setup on a different switch. I used LED bulbs I got from Costco for those (found by happenstance). Have since replaced all of them with whatever, which some have also failed, so 3 times for those and counting.

I should have bought a lifetime supply from HD in 2014 for $25 each.

 

[y_p_w]

Yesterday I purchased a 10pack of Sunco ballast bypass 48" T8 tubes off Amazon to retrofit some kitchen fixtures for my inlaws. These are old 4 lamp T12 fixtures with custom built wooden enclosures. One fixture has a bad ballast. These Sunco lamps have a "17 year lifespan" and a "7yr warranty". How could you go wrong lol. The 10 pack was just under $57 all in. They're actually shown as being UL listed which is surprising.

I bought ballast bypass LED tubes from toggled. They claim a 50,000 hour typical life but also a lifetime warranty for residential use, but 6 years in commercial use.

https://toggled.com/products/standard-led-tubes/

They weren't cheap, but they should be able from Home Depot now - at least some variation. I've bought them on Amazon or at HD at maybe $10 per tube. It's an American company but the manufacturing is overseas.

I did have a problem with one of the tubes. I believe it was a mechanical connection to the pins coming loose and not making contact internally. When I checked, the pins looked like they were bent and would kind of spin around. I'd see that tube flicker. But I had two tubes in the setup so I could remove just one and wait for the warranty replacement to arrive, which took about a week to arrive from Michigan. But the connection has been solid since then.

I disassembled the old tube, which they didn't ask me to send back to them. I found it was just a transformer at one end (this one was dimmable so it required 110-120V) and then a strip of LEDs going along the length on an epoxy board.

 

[Snagglefoot]

I haven't been impressed by Cree. They built their reputation on emitters, but the bulbs haven't met the same standard.

During the early days, their bulbs with the finned heatsinks sold at Home Depot had a dubious record for reliability, and many warranty claims.

HD eventually dropped the line, and the company sold the bulb business.

Gave the brand a second chance with some canelabras a couple years ago, and had a failure. To their credit, customer service issued a credit which rendered them free, since they no longer made them and couldn't offer replacements.

I happen to have two Cree 3-way bulbs that certainly seem obsolete. The huge heat sinks get pretty hot but the bulb is just luke warm. On the bulb it reads 320,820 and 1620 lumens and each of the three levels still works. What is puzzling is that the printing on the bulb says 18 W which seems to be too low given how hot the heat sink is. Any thoughts?

 

[TumblrDucks]

I have had smart WiFi LED bulbs in my room and various places in the home for years.

They are usually generic ones off Amazon with weird names that work with Tuya/Smart Life.

They randomly die. Some “brands” and batches have lasted years and years but many of them don’t even make it past a year.

They either just stop working or they go pop and let the magic smoke out and horribly stink up the room. I think they fail due to high temperature as something they all have in common is they run really hot.

Nothing has caught on fire yet thankfully. I wish there were better ones I could buy that are compatible with this app. Sadly most name brand ones that would probably last longer use their own app or require a hub and I want to stick to this ecosystem.

Sounds like the capacitor inside blew. Hope you can find good quality one soon!

 

[Bill Judson]

I think it's rare LED bulbs make it to their expected life now.

I just replaced an LED bulb (outside light on my house) that came with a 5 year free replacement warranty... and it lasted a little over 8 years.

No matter how you slice it,. LED bulbs are much better than those old bulbs we used back in the day

 

[Carmudgeon]

I happen to have two Cree 3-way bulbs that certainly seem obsolete. The huge heat sinks get pretty hot but the bulb is just luke warm. On the bulb it reads 320,820 and 1620 lumens and each of the three levels still works. What is puzzling is that the printing on the bulb says 18 W which seems to be too low given how hot the heat sink is. Any thoughts?

I'm not certain about the 3-way, but the 1-way bulbs used 20 Cree XM-L emitters (IIRC) arrayed in central tower design. A robust (but also more costly) design, actually, and teardown pix can be found online. Sometimes, the globes liked to separate themselves from the base on their own accord, which was one of their potential failures.

The figures jibe with what is typical of a "100W equivalent" (~1600 lumens) LED bulb, which consume close to 20W.

Thermally, if you've ever played with a high-powered flashlight, you'll find that they are thermally limited, given the heat generated by even just a single emitter (never mind 20, even if driven at low currents), and the low mass of an aluminum cigar-sized tube.

The hobbyist Anduril flashlight firmware allows adjustments to the thermal safety limit, which is set at 45C default (113 F), right around the threshold at which human flesh will sustain significant damage with contact (there's an industrial standard for this, but I forget what the exact citation is).

Nobody knew more than Cree about the thermal characteristics of their own emitters, so I would trust that the bulb engineers produced designs that were appropriate for the application.

 

[JTK]

Here's a little fun update to post #23 above, just to describe how well my week has been going..

I got the 4ft LED retrofit lamps in and got over to the inlaws to get the install done. The was for two ~30-40yr/old 4-tube, twin ballast T12 troffer style fixtures built into decorative, stained wood boxes. The reason why one fixture was totally out was, most likely because every tomb stone lamp holder was crispy, broken and/or no spring tension left in it. (80yr/old FIL tried re-lamping it some time in the not so distant past) Not a huge deal. Will order some new tomb stones for the new LED retros.

So I move over to the other fixture that was still barely hanging on with two dim T12s (all of them black at the ends), with the purpose of re-lamping it with the good fluorescent lamps out of the other light. By the time I got done with that one, all the tomb stones were broke, so now that one is 100% out as well.. Good times. Probably would be better off to buy two 24"x48" LED troffers and fit them into the wood enclosures.