this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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Like the new LED lightbulbs. Buy one now and they last a year or so. I bought one of them WAY back when they were brand new and horribly expensive and the damn thing still works just fine.
Companies can't stand new technologies that just work. They have to build in planned obsolescence. See also: smartphones, especially iTrash that make you buy a new one every year or two because updates slow them down.
Good ones still last a long time. What fails is generally not the LED itself but the cheap-ass rectifier in a cheap-ass case that is optimised for production price instead of heat dissipation. The fixture can also be an issue as nobody designed for heat dissipation in the days of incandescent bulbs, you might be baking those poor capacitors.
And those kinds of bulbs will stay available because there's plenty of commercial users doing their due diligence on life-time costs. Washing machines, fridges? Yes, those too, though commercial ones aren't necessarily cheap. Want a solid pair of pants? Ask a construction crew what they're wearing.
It's more than just a rectifier. LEDs of any type, white or otherwise, require regulated current, not just any voltage, otherwise even an LED will burn out. Vis-a-vis: cheap white LED flashlights that take 3 AA or AAA batteries; there's no current regulation, they just call it 'close enough'. Over time some of those LEDs will fail and start flashing when they heat up. So what usuall fails in white LED bulbs in your house is the electronics responsible for regulation. Sometimes the LEDs themselves (of which there is usually more than one LED, they're usually an array of several) will burn out, killing the whole bulb. I have a 1080p TV that the backlight went out on it after a few years use, which I replaced myself. Inside it are three circuit board strips with white LEDs on them, all wired in series like christmas tree lights used to be wired. All it takes is one of them opening up and the whole backlight stops working. Anything like this that is manufactured at massive scale is bound to have some failures, and white LEDs and white LED bulbs are no exception.
I bought about 20 Cree bulbs 5 years ago, 15 are on about 15 hours a day. I've had 2 fail in that time.
Not a bad record in my book.
Even the off brands, IKEA, Amazon, etc, seem to last as long. They're all in open fixtures, so no cooling issues.