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This is the part that annoys me, and has even prevented me from spending money at all. That cheap stuff exists, hey, there's a place for that. But then the expe
by jerf 4y ago
This is the part that annoys me, and has even prevented me from spending money at all. That cheap stuff exists, hey, there's a place for that. But then the expensive stuff is still garbage. Per a sibling comment, maybe it's different garbage of a higher quality, but garbage.
I particularly remember standing in a lighting store, looking to replace the piece of garbage that we accidentally bought and put over our kitchen table, and realizing that no matter how much I spent, it would all die in a year. Fancy LED strip lighting? Unmaintainable, unrepairable, unreplaceable.
So I bought a $25 extension cord with some light sockets on it and 5 LED bulbs and wrapped it around the old track. I would have spent maybe a grand on a light setup I could trust, but I trust nothing anymore. I've replaced 2 of them so far. 30 seconds, $5-ish. It's a hack, but it works.
I'm in the same place for furniture at this point. My expensive couch is breaking up years before I think it should and I'm not dropping another several grand on replacing it when I'm aware of no way to trust anyone at this point. I don't know what we are going to do, but it probably doesn't involve giving this industry any money.
- midoridensha 4y agoWhy would you need to repair LED strip lighting? LEDs don't normally have a lifespan limit, or at least not one measured in months. And all the LED lighting I've ever seen is repairable; you just need a soldering iron to do it. The individual LEDs are usually very easy to get access to.
- joshspankit 4y agoIt may be that you’re talking about LED strip meaning “flexible PCB with LEDs on it’s surface”, but OP is meaning “strip of LEDs permanently glued in to a larger piece”
- jerf 4y ago"LEDs don't normally have a lifespan limit" So the theory goes. The reality does not agree. "And all the LED lighting I've ever seen is repairable; you just need a soldering iron to do it" That is not repairable. Some of the ones I was looking at were so fancy that I wouldn't even guarantee that you could get them back together if you did take them apart, though. Wouldn't take much for those delicate plastic bits to break permanently.
- midoridensha 4y ago>"And all the LED lighting I've ever seen is repairable; you just need a soldering iron to do it" >That is not repairable. Why not? What if something requires a screwdriver? I'd say that's not repairable either, by your definition, because it requires special tools. If something can't be repaired realistically without destroying it (like a Microsoft Surface laptop), that's "not repairable". Needing a soldering iron is not a big deal.
- wink 4y agoThat's exactly me. If I could actually trust the stuff to be of high quality, I have no qualms paying for that. But if I can't find out/research it well enough, then I'll stick to cheap stuff. I happen to like IKEA a lot and am also not prone to redecorate on a whim, so in the end it really doesn't matter, unless I can't find what I need at IKEA.