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Philips LEDs from Dubai: The Royal Lights You Can’t Buy
- atemerev 5y agoI don’t know, these can be bought freely here in Switzerland.
- killingtime74 5y agoHey don’t argue with the click bait
- Dah00n 5y agoPlease don't.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoLink? The same bulbs as described, or just "normal" Philips LEDs?
- chmars 5y agoI found some similar looking LED offers by Migros, the largest (or second largest) retail chain in Switzerland: https://produkte.migros.ch/osram-led-special-t26-25-2700k-e14 https://produkte.migros.ch/osram-led-special-t26-25-2700k-e1... https://produkte.migros.ch/osram-led-special-t26-40-2700k-e14 https://produkte.migros.ch/osram-led-special-t26-40-2700k-e1... https://produkte.migros.ch/osram-led-retrofit-clas-a-60-e27 https://produkte.migros.ch/osram-led-retrofit-clas-a-60-e27
- Symbiote 5y agoPhilips themselves say they're only available in Dubai. https://www.mea.lighting.philips.com/consumer/dubai-lamp https://www.mea.lighting.philips.com/consumer/dubai-lamp
- Dma54rhs 5y agoYou might think they are the same because of the same Phillips purple box design, you'd have to read the number of philaments.
- userbinator 5y agoPreviously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25808959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25808959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758652 Clive has also made a few more videos since then, showing how reducing the power at which LEDs are run at can dramatically increase their efficiency - they put out less light, but at more lumens/watt.
- xxs 5y agoThe power factor is 0.5 which is appalling - can't really get lower than 0.5 with capacitive load. Industrial clients do pay for the VA (apparent) than W (actual) power. But even then most urban EU power network is dominated by capacitive loads as the inductive ones tend to use 3-phase 400v (which is balanced) Most of the constant current driven LED would have similar characteristics when they are not overdriven. 25KHz+ PMW driven LED would have similar features as well. It's not hard to make LEDs that actually last and have high lumen/watt ratio with off the shelf components. Overall the main culprit is the LED installation mechanism, e.g. E27 - there is just not enough room to make efficient light out of that. Near ceiling lights do look better (at least to me) and they can have both not overdriven LEDs (say 90mA per 5730), high (over 87%) power factor, decent passive elements... and they are repairable with some electronics background.
- dvdkon 5y agoYou can have plenty of LEDs and a reasonable switching PSU in an E27 lamp, it's just harder to cool them with the typical design. Most LED lamps use ridiculously few chips, you could fit multiple times more even on the one-PCB designs, not to mention "corn cob" arrangements or those with LED filaments. That's not to say E27 is an ideal form factor for LEDs, I'm hoping we'll see more and more homes with LED-optimised lighting designs.
- xxs 5y ago>reasonable switching PSU in an E27 lamp You can't have active pf correction for real in there (so pf would be 0.5). Pretty much all of them have bridge rectifier + capacitor. Most of them lack input filtering (common mode choke). The real issue is that even with the best light/power ratio, 2/3rd would be heat and that heat has to be dissipated. Electronics hate heat, even with full aluminium body, the light bulb requires plastic casing (as there is no earth available), so heat dissipation is heavily limited. Personally I have mostly near ceiling lights in the house. The non-dimmable/remote control ones would be fully repairable. For ones with the remote controls I can't replace the microcontroller as I could not copy the firmware but all the power driver would be fixable (the controller can be replaced with esp-32 and blue tooth dimming, though). Of course, for most people that would be an extra hassle and fully replaceable lights are likely better. However, custom designs allow for the most optimal heat dissipation.
- zackees 5y agoI saw these bulbs in Shenzen China in 2015. They have never come to the US surprisingly.
- Havoc 5y agoWhat I don't get is why they didn't pitch it as Dubai only for first year then global. I mean this is basically free PR
- StavrosK 5y agoBecause why would Philips want longer-lasting bulbs?
- vanderZwan 5y agoFor the unaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
- des1nderlase 5y agoVeritasium did a story on this: https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE
- hh3k0 5y agoThis. It's one thing to oblige when a monarch demands – but why hurt your business elsewhere?
- Giorgi 5y agoIt's intended for 220v market, not that you could use it in US even if you could buy it.
- vanderZwan 5y ago> Overall, it is interesting that a nice design came from what amounts to government regulation. I guess the author isn't familiar with what caused dishwashers to become more efficient[0]. In general I don't see how anything except government regulation can force these improvements whenever consumers find themselves in an "any color as long as it's black" kind of position regarding market choices, and this looks like it is one of those situations. EDIT: Also, before anyone thinks I'm blindly pro-government regulation, Philips got rich by exploiting the fact that the Netherlands did not enforce patent laws for a large part of the 19th century. This let them combine innovations that other competitors didn't dare to use due to fear of being sued by Edison, resulting in them having the best light bulbs available at the time (the fact that many competitors that Edison sued out of business happily joined Philips probably helped too). So it's all context-dependent. [0] https://www.reviewed.com/dishwashers/features/why-obamas-dishwasher-efficiency-crusade-makes-sense https://www.reviewed.com/dishwashers/features/why-obamas-dis...
- arsome 5y agoSo that's why my new dishwasher is terrible.
- wilsynet 5y agoWhich dishwasher is it?
- minikites 5y ago>EDIT: Also, before anyone thinks I'm blindly pro-government regulation The fact that you feel the need to add this edit makes me think about how the conservative framing of almost every issue is assumed to be true by both sides. Nobody would make an edit like this about being blindly anti-government regulation, because that's the default position. Government regulation is not bad by default and your overall point is excellent.
- vanderZwan 5y agoThe edit was simply because I know on what kind of discussion forum I am right now and in which direction it leans. While I agree that I shouldn't have had to make it, I just wanted to be ahead of the likely fallacies that would be thrown against me.
- sascha_sl 5y agoFor a city that continuously runs AC units at every corner, even outside, this is a weird priority. Though I guess it's a good example of how progress can be limited by mutual interests of competitors.
- martyvis 5y agoI just threw away an Osram "15000 hour" LED light bulb that I installed 950 days earlier, which by my estimate only served a third of it's rated life at best. https://twitter.com/martyvis/status/1390590392773472261?s=19 https://twitter.com/martyvis/status/1390590392773472261?s=19
- anotha1 5y agoI've had a noticeable amount of cheaper (WalMart) LEDs burnout in less than a year. But my Philips Hue lights have been running strong 4+ years now :)
- tzs 5y agoA coworker and I both replaced almost every incandescent we had with cheap Walmart LEDs [1] about three years ago. That was 26 bulbs for me, and I believe quite a bit more for him. All are still working fine for both of us. I went around after installing them and measured their light output. A couple years later I went around and measured again, and there was little or no detectable reduction. [1] they were a particularly good deal because the electric company here and Walmart had made some sort of deal that marked the 60 W equivalent and 40 W equivalent bulbs down to $0.17 each.
- anotha1 5y agoThey are a good deal and I had replaced at least six. My assumption was it's just a manufacturing defect since it's low cost and mass produced. And I'll buy the same ones to replace them. Also note, these are spotlight LEDs that in the past were halogen, and not your standard sized lightbulbs, which are probably a few generations ahead in terms of manufacturing.
- Symbiote 5y agoThe small spotlight bulbs (GU10 fitting) are the most difficult to make reliable, since there's very little space for air circulation to cool the lamp. As this video says, Philips don't even make these bulbs with GU10 fittings, probably because they can't achieve the necessary reliability.
- guerrilla 5y agoOh I love Big Clive, I haven't watched him in so long. I wonder if we could somehow get the same under-powering effect using special bulb socket splitters that reduced the power. So you could have two bulbs in your lamp running at half the power each.
- MereInterest 5y agoThe wording for the cookie banner is absolutely hilarious. "By using our website and services, you expressly agree to the placement of our performance, functionality and advertising cookies." The "expressly" there is completely nonsensical, as there's nothing explicit at all about it. It's like somebody read that the GDPR requires "explicit consent", and thought that they could just add "this implicit consent counts as explicit" to their banner.
- 404mm 5y agoThis nice video re-ignited my desire to find “the right” bulb manufacturer again (in the US market). I tend to go with Philips because I had pretty decent experience with longevity and customer service. But I wonder where do we stand now? Are there any clear winners (considering the light quality, bulb longevity and of course the price)