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The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. H

by jghn 4y ago

The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality? And then how do I know that they stick with the high quality approach? What happens when a brand decides to rest on the laurels of their brand name and start slipping in lower quality parts?

jchw 4y ago
Some bulbs will give you information on their CRI which ideally should be required to be labeled on the bulbs packaging the way calorie information is required on food packaging (but I don't think it is.) That will tell you roughly how good the quality of the light is by proxy of the spectrum of light it covers. On the other hand, there is no equivalent afaik for knowing how well the power supply is designed or how hard the LEDs are driven. I guess for that, the consumer can turn to the trusted source for this kind of information, bigclivedotcom. (Sarcasm; but seriously, this is a problem.)
- terr-dav 4y ago
  An important point in the article is that CRI for LED bulbs does not meaningfully map to the light quality. >Oh, but: Experts agree that the color-rendering index doesn’t really index how colors are rendered. Some bulbs with a 90 CRI make things look wan; some with an 80 are passable. There are better, more useful metrics, but you can’t have them. Nobody puts them on the packaging. One lighting professional — an LED advocate, no less — told me he sometimes calls up the manufacturer and asks to talk to an engineer to get the real specs.
  - jchw 4y ago
    Yes that's a good point, there's definitely more to it than just CRI. That said, a bulb with very poor CRI definitely sucks, so it's not entirely useless. This seems like one of those things that will suck until it doesn't.
  - mech987987 4y ago
    CRI has to do the hard job of describing a spectrum using a single number. It's like looking at the entire menu of a restaurant and having to say how healthy the food there is. (heck, there's probably way better metaphors).
    - terr-dav 4y ago
      It does! And it seems that CRI is simply not a useful way to characterize LED light sources, as (i assume) it was established when incandescent and other non-semiconductor light sources were the only option. To expand your metaphor: it's like judging a dish solely on the balance of flavors while not noticing that the restaurants have started changing the smell of the air, the firmness of the seats, the relative humidity and temperature individually.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    It's interesting how the led datasheets have all the useful information (spectrum, CRI, angular spread). But once manufacturers put them on a bulb, they will refuse to tell even what leds they used. At this point I believe companies are willfully refusing to inform their customers.
    - rkeene2 4y ago
      That could be because putting it on the box creates a liability that the LEDs are meeting those specifications -- just because the source LEDs claim to meet those specifications doesn't mean that the enclosure being sold using them as a component will actually produce that. Additionally, any change to LED suppliers/etc now means that the box also has to be changed. In other words, what they are selling isn't the same as the thing in the box nor the aggregate of all the components (since they interact with one another).
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Which means they're selling marginal stuff. High end museums for example buy bulbs guaranteed to meet their datasheet specs, at a much higher cost of course.
- llbeansandrice 4y ago
  Can't wait to become a mini-expert in fucking LED lightbulbs just to have decent lighting in my house. I hate that the vast information of the internet has basically required us mere mortals to try and become experts in literally anything and everything just to be able to buy something that isn't awful. Computer? Better keep up to date on all of the CPU, GPU, etc. info. That doesn't even include the insanity of monitors. Cars? Better spend multiple weekends doing research before spending more weekends being ready to walk away from any dealership just to play the stupid negotiation game. I feel like I can't just have a casual fun hobby anymore. You have to have all of the knowledge about the entire space just to be able to decide if something may or may not be garage.
  - acuozzo 4y ago
    > I hate that the vast information of the internet has basically required us mere mortals to try and become experts in literally anything and everything just to be able to buy something that isn't awful. This has always been the case. The difference now is that with the internet it's within reach. You don't have to dig through your social network to find someone working for the lighting division of GE. You don't have to visit your local library to check out books on how lightbulbs work in order to figure out which makes one better than another. You just need to hop on Google or ask New Bing. -- Think all incandescent bulbs were the same? Think again. Manufacturing conditions and filament thickness are two of the several factors involved in how long that lightbulb will last and how bright it will get. Cheap, shitty lightbulbs from discount stores were a thing. Oh, and one more thing! You're pretty much stuck with one color temperature. -- There are plenty of examples throughout the 20th century of poorly-made, barely-working tech being sold as acceptable. The plethora of non-electric "vacuum cleaners" sold around the turn of the century are one notable early example. The lightbulbs which came after the agreements made by the Phoebus Cartel are another. 1978! Home video! Do you go with VHS from JVC, Betamax from Sony, SelectaVision from RCA, or DiscoVision from MCA? For an entertaining diversion, imagine you're living in 1973 and it's time to purchase a new car. Is that Plymouth really going to hold up against your new concerns about gas mileage? How do you know? Do you have any mechanic friends? Do you know anything about how cars work? Does the local library have any books to help? Random final tidbit: The "older"=="better" myth is the result of the fact that we're not exposed to the junk of yesteryear; only the good stuff. The junk was thrown away years and years ago.
- mjx0 4y ago
  bigclivedotcom, aka the Consumer Reports of electronics that catch on fire and/or perform miracles.
ccvannorman 4y ago
> as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? Like any informed consumer you must read every retail-based HN comment thread ;-]
- seanp2k2 4y ago
  Philips is generally a safe bet, and G.E. + Osram are as well. The generic crap at Home Depot and Amazon and Walmart that costs 1/4 as much will probably perform awful, but could be a hidden gem. Some dead giveaways are total lack of heatsinks and low price, but higher price does not necessarily equal good quality.
BizarroLand 4y ago
I spent probably $150-$200 for 7 packages of "high CRI" "long lasting" phillips brand LED bulbs last year, for a total of 28 bulbs. 6 of them have failed in less than 9 months, either flickering so badly it could cause an epileptic seizure or just straight up dying on me. It's maddening.
- smolder 4y ago
  Look at the fixtures you're putting them in and consider if they're getting adequate cooling. If your average "long lasting" (they all claim this, but not at what temperature...) LED bulb is uncomfortably hot to touch, it's on the fast track to failure.
  - sp332 4y ago
    Mine are hanging in thin air over my bathroom mirror. The GE Reveal bulbs say they're good for bathrooms, but I suspect they don't like the humidity. I have four at a time in the fixture and six of them have died in the last two years. Once this box is empty I'll get something else.
    - smolder 4y ago
      Ah, probably not a heat problem, then.
      - sp332 4y ago
        Oh, it's a good point to look out for. I'm just really annoyed at these.
    - vxNsr 4y ago
      If you still have the receipt you can file a warranty claim.
- jimbobjim 4y ago
  The Phillips bulbs I bought have a ridiculously high failure rate. About half have failed within 6 months. Much worse than the supermarket own brands, or cheaper ones from Amazon.
chongli 4y ago
The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? The issue is that LED bulbs aren’t simple devices like incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs have an electronic power supply inside which drives the LEDs at a constant current. Power supply design is a major subfield of electronics engineering and there are all kinds of tradeoffs you can make to optimize for different goals. Consumer electronics almost always optimizes for cost, to the detriment of all else. It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs that will practically outlive their owners [1]. The problem is that it requires putting more LEDs in the bulb and driving them at lower current. This makes the bulb cost more and the only benefit is longer life. For a manufacturer, there are nothing but downsides to this approach. [1] https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4 https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4
- jasonlaramburu 4y ago
  >It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs that will practically outlive their owners It is also possible (and not very difficult) to design incandescent bulbs that will outlive their owners. In fact, the first mass produced light bulbs generally lasted 2,500+ hours. In the 1920s, the major bulb manufacturers formed the 'Pheobus Cartel' in Geneva and secretly colluded to limit the lifespan of bulbs to 1,000 hours to boost sales [1]. Another example of planned obsolescence harming consumers and the environment. [1]https://interestingengineering.com/science/everlasting-lightbulbs-exist-ed https://interestingengineering.com/science/everlasting-light...
  - shagie 4y ago
    This goes into the "actual conspiracy - not a theory" category. Veritasium - This is why we can't have nice things - https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy > On 23 December 1924, a group of leading international businessmen gathered in Geneva for a meeting that would alter the world for decades to come. Present were top representatives from all the major lightbulb manufacturers, including Germany’s Osram, the Netherlands’ Philips, France’s Compagnie des Lampes, and the United States’ General Electric. As revelers hung Christmas lights elsewhere in the city, the group founded the Phoebus cartel, a supervisory body that would carve up the worldwide incandescent lightbulb market, with each national and regional zone assigned its own manufacturers and production quotas. It was the first cartel in history to enjoy a truly global reach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
throw10920 4y ago
> The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality ${PRODUCT} that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality? That's the million-dollar question of the '10s and '20s (and likely beyond), and is far bigger than just bulbs. The only solution that I can think of that could work is a distributed rating system with a built-in web of trust. It theoretically shouldn't be that difficult for people to adopt, if only they got collectively fed up with the universe of crap we have now, and someone provided a nice app and protocol to federate information with. (direct regulation of quality, vendor-controlled ratings, and browsing Reddit/HN comment threads are all fatally flawed non-solutions)
acomjean 4y ago
That’s the current problem is knowing when a “Brand” which was a marker for quality cashes in. Consumer Reports tests a lot of consumer goods and used to be my go to for testing. They don’t take ad revenue so that helps. Though you have to be a member to see their reviews. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/what-we-do/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/what-we-do/inde... They used to be the go to for car reliability info (when your car was rated high you sold more, according to my dad who was in the car business)
- plemer 4y ago
  Why “used to”? Did something go wrong? Is there something better now?
  - acomjean 4y ago
    I guess because I haven't bought anything in a while so for me it was a "used to", not any perceived change. So poor wording on my part. I can't edit my post. Trusted reviews are hard to find, I would still trust Consumer Reports over random Amazon reviews.
sp332 4y ago
Subscribe to Consumer Reports. https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/lightbulbs/ https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/lightbulbs/ There are lots of categories of products that have the same problem. This covers a bunch of them.
zajio1am 4y ago
> The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality? There is simple heuristic - all LED bulbs are bad. They generally have insufficient heatsink and unreplaceable PSU immediately next to LEDs. Better are LED tubes (with T12 interface, as a replacement for fluorescent tubes), they have much more area for cooling and for PSU, and sometimes have replaceable PSU. Similarly lighting units with integrated LEDs.
- gcr 4y ago
  Technology Connections has a great video about exactly this! https://youtu.be/fsIFxyOLJXM?t=843 https://youtu.be/fsIFxyOLJXM?t=843 At the end of the day, the author recommends giving filament-style LED bulbs a try, where the emitter is built onto a thin filament away from the circuit housing so it's far away from the heat.
drjasonharrison 4y ago
I was going to dismiss your comment as being naive. Because every generation before us had to deal with the problem of "how do I know that I'm getting quality item X from supplier Y?" See the clay tablet complaining about the quality of a bronze shipment. The answer really is "you have to test it" and frankly return policies at stores generally support purchase, test, and decide to keep or return. An option that many of our ancestors did not have, and yes not everyone can do this. On the other hand, Daniel Kahneman was awarded a Nobel prize in 2002 for researching with Amos Tversky on how we make decisions, and how having more options makes our eventual decision less fulfilling as we suspect that we probably did not make the optimal decision. However, done is better than perfect. At least that's what some people say. Given that we have multiple technology purchases to make, all of which will involve "research" and making decisions it is very frustrating, to me, that we do not have more reliable trustworthy guidance. There are competent review organizations and websites but they more frequently tend to be owned by product manufacturers and funded by advertisers. We know that marketing tries to create desire in our primitive consumer brains. And as individuals with deep and long experience in at least one or more areas, we have our own biases that help us make decisions. And if we think carefully about how we gained this expertise, we should conclude that a lot of wasted time and mistakes were involved. And we know that becoming an expert in lighting, spectral, power consumption, lifetime, CRI, etc could take a long time and there would be more to learn as the engineers create new solutions (blue LED plus yellow phosphor, or RGB LEDs, COB or something else...). So to answer your question. You won't know that brand X produces quality bulbs that last a long time until you purchase and test them. Assume that they won't last a long time, don't buy the most expensive option, there will be improvements in LEDs and bulbs that will make your next purchase even better. To sift past the marketing to get actual quality, well we do have some well known brands that distribute through well known stores. Buying from Alibaba or the dollar store is not going to result in the best outcome, but it might. Put those options aside as an experiment rather a "must make me happy now" experience. How do you know that a product won't slip in quality over time? Well you won't know until you make that purchase. This happens all of the time with everything from salt ("Himalayan" salt with rocks, sea salt with microplastics, honey adulterated with sugar, olive oil with other oils)... We live in a very interesting time, we no longer have to "follow the herd" or "hunt for the roots" in new locations. We're mostly protected from weather, earthquakes, famine, etc (exception occur). Our health generally good. There is however dog poop on the sidewalk and pot holes in the roads. So when the grocery store moves your familiar product to another aisle, or changes their product line up, or increases the price, these are all opportunities to step out of "cruise control" and experience the uncertainty that comes with a constantly changing world. "Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery." - Erma Bombeck
Tarball10 4y ago
California's JA8 certification requires LED bulbs to meet specific criteria related to efficiency, lifespan, and light quality. - Efficiency >= 45 lumens per watt - CRI >= 90 - R9 Color Rendering value >= 50 - Rated life >= 15000 hours - Minimum dimming level <= 10% - Flicker <= 30% Theoretically if a bulb is listed as JA8 compliant (and the certification isn't fake) you know it at least meets these thresholds.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > - Rated life >= 15000 hours And what do you do when the lightbulb burns out after only 3 years? The product has long since changed SKU, the manufacturer gets to claim they fixed any deficiencies (and it'll take years to find out if they are telling the truth), and you long since lost any proof of purchase.
  - Tarball10 4y ago
    Yeah there's not much you could personally do, other than maybe report it to the California Energy Commission. Bulbs need to be lab tested and the results submitted to the CEC, but I'm not sure how the lifespan testing is actually done, how accurate it is, or how easily it could be manipulated.
- garaetjjte 4y ago
  What does it mean to specify flicker in percents?
  - Tarball10 4y ago
    > Light source in combination with specified control shall provide “reduced flicker operation” when tested at full light output as specified in JA10, where reduced flicker operation is defined as having percent amplitude modulation (percent flicker) less than 30 percent at frequencies less than 200Hz. https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2019/index.html#!Documents/ja84qualificationrequirements.htm https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2...
- 4y ago
xxs 4y ago
Weight them and buy the heaviest one, for E27 likely you don't wish to go over 8-10W of total power (this can be measured easily as well). A scale that can measure grams is like $10.
Self-Perfection 4y ago
One guy bought over 4 thousands LED lamps over years, meticulously measured their actual specs and made a huge online catalog https://lamptest.ru/ https://lamptest.ru/ I follow his project a bit and it looks like consumers are really at loss. Generally there is no reliable way to choose a good led lamp without consulting such catalog. Lamps packaging often lies about actual specs, lamps with the same packaging but manufactured in different years might have different quality etc
- leobg 4y ago
  Great site. I wish he had an English translation. But I forgive him. This is what the Internet should be! Individual people who do one thing really well. So happy to see that this still exists online.
  - walterbell 4y ago
    Could we improve discovery of these indie sites via HN or elsewhere? A standard tag for Algolia/web search could work, if any spam comments with the same tag were flagged.
    - leobg 4y ago
      That would be the benevolent Engelbart version of AI, wouldn’t it? Instead of dumb capitalism, clickbait and silly content marketing driving human activity, to have an AI that saves us from wasting our time figuring out the answer to questions that have been answered long before. And then, instead, points us to those questions that have not yet been asked, much less answered. What experiments have not yet been done. After all, no GPT-4, no matter how many billions of parameters, could tell you what the best battery is in the world if it wasn’t for that one human dude in his garage in Denmark, or Latvia, or wherever, who actually tested them all.
      - walterbell 4y ago
        There have been attempts to reboot webrings for indie site discovery. With AI harvesting and monetizing indie sites, there is some risk of future content being gated by pay/auth/bot walls. Another approach could be private overlay P2P VPNs where participants are invited/vetted by the social contract of a small community. (random indie site: wet/dry shop vacuums, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32411206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32411206)

by jghn 4y ago

jchw 4y ago

Some bulbs will give you information on their CRI which ideally should be required to be labeled on the bulbs packaging the way calorie information is required on food packaging (but I don't think it is.) That will tell you roughly how good the quality of the light is by proxy of the spectrum of light it covers. On the other hand, there is no equivalent afaik for knowing how well the power supply is designed or how hard the LEDs are driven. I guess for that, the consumer can turn to the trusted source for this kind of information, bigclivedotcom. (Sarcasm; but seriously, this is a problem.)

terr-dav 4y ago
An important point in the article is that CRI for LED bulbs does not meaningfully map to the light quality. >Oh, but: Experts agree that the color-rendering index doesn’t really index how colors are rendered. Some bulbs with a 90 CRI make things look wan; some with an 80 are passable. There are better, more useful metrics, but you can’t have them. Nobody puts them on the packaging. One lighting professional — an LED advocate, no less — told me he sometimes calls up the manufacturer and asks to talk to an engineer to get the real specs.
- jchw 4y ago
  Yes that's a good point, there's definitely more to it than just CRI. That said, a bulb with very poor CRI definitely sucks, so it's not entirely useless. This seems like one of those things that will suck until it doesn't.
- mech987987 4y ago
  CRI has to do the hard job of describing a spectrum using a single number. It's like looking at the entire menu of a restaurant and having to say how healthy the food there is. (heck, there's probably way better metaphors).
  - terr-dav 4y ago
    It does! And it seems that CRI is simply not a useful way to characterize LED light sources, as (i assume) it was established when incandescent and other non-semiconductor light sources were the only option. To expand your metaphor: it's like judging a dish solely on the balance of flavors while not noticing that the restaurants have started changing the smell of the air, the firmness of the seats, the relative humidity and temperature individually.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  It's interesting how the led datasheets have all the useful information (spectrum, CRI, angular spread). But once manufacturers put them on a bulb, they will refuse to tell even what leds they used. At this point I believe companies are willfully refusing to inform their customers.
  - rkeene2 4y ago
    That could be because putting it on the box creates a liability that the LEDs are meeting those specifications -- just because the source LEDs claim to meet those specifications doesn't mean that the enclosure being sold using them as a component will actually produce that. Additionally, any change to LED suppliers/etc now means that the box also has to be changed. In other words, what they are selling isn't the same as the thing in the box nor the aggregate of all the components (since they interact with one another).
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Which means they're selling marginal stuff. High end museums for example buy bulbs guaranteed to meet their datasheet specs, at a much higher cost of course.
llbeansandrice 4y ago
Can't wait to become a mini-expert in fucking LED lightbulbs just to have decent lighting in my house. I hate that the vast information of the internet has basically required us mere mortals to try and become experts in literally anything and everything just to be able to buy something that isn't awful. Computer? Better keep up to date on all of the CPU, GPU, etc. info. That doesn't even include the insanity of monitors. Cars? Better spend multiple weekends doing research before spending more weekends being ready to walk away from any dealership just to play the stupid negotiation game. I feel like I can't just have a casual fun hobby anymore. You have to have all of the knowledge about the entire space just to be able to decide if something may or may not be garage.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  > I hate that the vast information of the internet has basically required us mere mortals to try and become experts in literally anything and everything just to be able to buy something that isn't awful. This has always been the case. The difference now is that with the internet it's within reach. You don't have to dig through your social network to find someone working for the lighting division of GE. You don't have to visit your local library to check out books on how lightbulbs work in order to figure out which makes one better than another. You just need to hop on Google or ask New Bing. -- Think all incandescent bulbs were the same? Think again. Manufacturing conditions and filament thickness are two of the several factors involved in how long that lightbulb will last and how bright it will get. Cheap, shitty lightbulbs from discount stores were a thing. Oh, and one more thing! You're pretty much stuck with one color temperature. -- There are plenty of examples throughout the 20th century of poorly-made, barely-working tech being sold as acceptable. The plethora of non-electric "vacuum cleaners" sold around the turn of the century are one notable early example. The lightbulbs which came after the agreements made by the Phoebus Cartel are another. 1978! Home video! Do you go with VHS from JVC, Betamax from Sony, SelectaVision from RCA, or DiscoVision from MCA? For an entertaining diversion, imagine you're living in 1973 and it's time to purchase a new car. Is that Plymouth really going to hold up against your new concerns about gas mileage? How do you know? Do you have any mechanic friends? Do you know anything about how cars work? Does the local library have any books to help? Random final tidbit: The "older"=="better" myth is the result of the fact that we're not exposed to the junk of yesteryear; only the good stuff. The junk was thrown away years and years ago.
mjx0 4y ago
bigclivedotcom, aka the Consumer Reports of electronics that catch on fire and/or perform miracles.

ccvannorman 4y ago

> as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? Like any informed consumer you must read every retail-based HN comment thread ;-]

seanp2k2 4y ago
Philips is generally a safe bet, and G.E. + Osram are as well. The generic crap at Home Depot and Amazon and Walmart that costs 1/4 as much will probably perform awful, but could be a hidden gem. Some dead giveaways are total lack of heatsinks and low price, but higher price does not necessarily equal good quality.

BizarroLand 4y ago

I spent probably $150-$200 for 7 packages of "high CRI" "long lasting" phillips brand LED bulbs last year, for a total of 28 bulbs. 6 of them have failed in less than 9 months, either flickering so badly it could cause an epileptic seizure or just straight up dying on me. It's maddening.

smolder 4y ago
Look at the fixtures you're putting them in and consider if they're getting adequate cooling. If your average "long lasting" (they all claim this, but not at what temperature...) LED bulb is uncomfortably hot to touch, it's on the fast track to failure.
- sp332 4y ago
  Mine are hanging in thin air over my bathroom mirror. The GE Reveal bulbs say they're good for bathrooms, but I suspect they don't like the humidity. I have four at a time in the fixture and six of them have died in the last two years. Once this box is empty I'll get something else.
  - smolder 4y ago
    Ah, probably not a heat problem, then.
    - sp332 4y ago
      Oh, it's a good point to look out for. I'm just really annoyed at these.
  - vxNsr 4y ago
    If you still have the receipt you can file a warranty claim.
jimbobjim 4y ago
The Phillips bulbs I bought have a ridiculously high failure rate. About half have failed within 6 months. Much worse than the supermarket own brands, or cheaper ones from Amazon.

chongli 4y ago

The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? The issue is that LED bulbs aren’t simple devices like incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs have an electronic power supply inside which drives the LEDs at a constant current. Power supply design is a major subfield of electronics engineering and there are all kinds of tradeoffs you can make to optimize for different goals. Consumer electronics almost always optimizes for cost, to the detriment of all else. It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs that will practically outlive their owners [1]. The problem is that it requires putting more LEDs in the bulb and driving them at lower current. This makes the bulb cost more and the only benefit is longer life. For a manufacturer, there are nothing but downsides to this approach. [1] https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4 https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4

jasonlaramburu 4y ago
>It is possible (and not very difficult) to design LED bulbs that will practically outlive their owners It is also possible (and not very difficult) to design incandescent bulbs that will outlive their owners. In fact, the first mass produced light bulbs generally lasted 2,500+ hours. In the 1920s, the major bulb manufacturers formed the 'Pheobus Cartel' in Geneva and secretly colluded to limit the lifespan of bulbs to 1,000 hours to boost sales [1]. Another example of planned obsolescence harming consumers and the environment. [1]https://interestingengineering.com/science/everlasting-lightbulbs-exist-ed https://interestingengineering.com/science/everlasting-light...
- shagie 4y ago
  This goes into the "actual conspiracy - not a theory" category. Veritasium - This is why we can't have nice things - https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy > On 23 December 1924, a group of leading international businessmen gathered in Geneva for a meeting that would alter the world for decades to come. Present were top representatives from all the major lightbulb manufacturers, including Germany’s Osram, the Netherlands’ Philips, France’s Compagnie des Lampes, and the United States’ General Electric. As revelers hung Christmas lights elsewhere in the city, the group founded the Phoebus cartel, a supervisory body that would carve up the worldwide incandescent lightbulb market, with each national and regional zone assigned its own manufacturers and production quotas. It was the first cartel in history to enjoy a truly global reach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

throw10920 4y ago

> The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality ${PRODUCT} that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality? That's the million-dollar question of the '10s and '20s (and likely beyond), and is far bigger than just bulbs. The only solution that I can think of that could work is a distributed rating system with a built-in web of trust. It theoretically shouldn't be that difficult for people to adopt, if only they got collectively fed up with the universe of crap we have now, and someone provided a nice app and protocol to federate information with. (direct regulation of quality, vendor-controlled ratings, and browsing Reddit/HN comment threads are all fatally flawed non-solutions)

acomjean 4y ago

That’s the current problem is knowing when a “Brand” which was a marker for quality cashes in. Consumer Reports tests a lot of consumer goods and used to be my go to for testing. They don’t take ad revenue so that helps. Though you have to be a member to see their reviews. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/what-we-do/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/what-we-do/inde... They used to be the go to for car reliability info (when your car was rated high you sold more, according to my dad who was in the car business)

plemer 4y ago
Why “used to”? Did something go wrong? Is there something better now?
- acomjean 4y ago
  I guess because I haven't bought anything in a while so for me it was a "used to", not any perceived change. So poor wording on my part. I can't edit my post. Trusted reviews are hard to find, I would still trust Consumer Reports over random Amazon reviews.

sp332 4y ago

Subscribe to Consumer Reports. https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/lightbulbs/ https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/lightbulbs/ There are lots of categories of products that have the same problem. This covers a bunch of them.

zajio1am 4y ago

> The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? I'm very happy to pay more for that. How does one sift through marketing to get to actual quality? There is simple heuristic - all LED bulbs are bad. They generally have insufficient heatsink and unreplaceable PSU immediately next to LEDs. Better are LED tubes (with T12 interface, as a replacement for fluorescent tubes), they have much more area for cooling and for PSU, and sometimes have replaceable PSU. Similarly lighting units with integrated LEDs.

gcr 4y ago
Technology Connections has a great video about exactly this! https://youtu.be/fsIFxyOLJXM?t=843 https://youtu.be/fsIFxyOLJXM?t=843 At the end of the day, the author recommends giving filament-style LED bulbs a try, where the emitter is built onto a thin filament away from the circuit housing so it's far away from the heat.

drjasonharrison 4y ago

I was going to dismiss your comment as being naive. Because every generation before us had to deal with the problem of "how do I know that I'm getting quality item X from supplier Y?" See the clay tablet complaining about the quality of a bronze shipment. The answer really is "you have to test it" and frankly return policies at stores generally support purchase, test, and decide to keep or return. An option that many of our ancestors did not have, and yes not everyone can do this. On the other hand, Daniel Kahneman was awarded a Nobel prize in 2002 for researching with Amos Tversky on how we make decisions, and how having more options makes our eventual decision less fulfilling as we suspect that we probably did not make the optimal decision. However, done is better than perfect. At least that's what some people say. Given that we have multiple technology purchases to make, all of which will involve "research" and making decisions it is very frustrating, to me, that we do not have more reliable trustworthy guidance. There are competent review organizations and websites but they more frequently tend to be owned by product manufacturers and funded by advertisers. We know that marketing tries to create desire in our primitive consumer brains. And as individuals with deep and long experience in at least one or more areas, we have our own biases that help us make decisions. And if we think carefully about how we gained this expertise, we should conclude that a lot of wasted time and mistakes were involved. And we know that becoming an expert in lighting, spectral, power consumption, lifetime, CRI, etc could take a long time and there would be more to learn as the engineers create new solutions (blue LED plus yellow phosphor, or RGB LEDs, COB or something else...). So to answer your question. You won't know that brand X produces quality bulbs that last a long time until you purchase and test them. Assume that they won't last a long time, don't buy the most expensive option, there will be improvements in LEDs and bulbs that will make your next purchase even better. To sift past the marketing to get actual quality, well we do have some well known brands that distribute through well known stores. Buying from Alibaba or the dollar store is not going to result in the best outcome, but it might. Put those options aside as an experiment rather a "must make me happy now" experience. How do you know that a product won't slip in quality over time? Well you won't know until you make that purchase. This happens all of the time with everything from salt ("Himalayan" salt with rocks, sea salt with microplastics, honey adulterated with sugar, olive oil with other oils)... We live in a very interesting time, we no longer have to "follow the herd" or "hunt for the roots" in new locations. We're mostly protected from weather, earthquakes, famine, etc (exception occur). Our health generally good. There is however dog poop on the sidewalk and pot holes in the roads. So when the grocery store moves your familiar product to another aisle, or changes their product line up, or increases the price, these are all opportunities to step out of "cruise control" and experience the uncertainty that comes with a constantly changing world. "Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery." - Erma Bombeck

Tarball10 4y ago

California's JA8 certification requires LED bulbs to meet specific criteria related to efficiency, lifespan, and light quality. - Efficiency >= 45 lumens per watt - CRI >= 90 - R9 Color Rendering value >= 50 - Rated life >= 15000 hours - Minimum dimming level <= 10% - Flicker <= 30% Theoretically if a bulb is listed as JA8 compliant (and the certification isn't fake) you know it at least meets these thresholds.

com2kid 4y ago
> - Rated life >= 15000 hours And what do you do when the lightbulb burns out after only 3 years? The product has long since changed SKU, the manufacturer gets to claim they fixed any deficiencies (and it'll take years to find out if they are telling the truth), and you long since lost any proof of purchase.
- Tarball10 4y ago
  Yeah there's not much you could personally do, other than maybe report it to the California Energy Commission. Bulbs need to be lab tested and the results submitted to the CEC, but I'm not sure how the lifespan testing is actually done, how accurate it is, or how easily it could be manipulated.
garaetjjte 4y ago
What does it mean to specify flicker in percents?
- Tarball10 4y ago
  > Light source in combination with specified control shall provide “reduced flicker operation” when tested at full light output as specified in JA10, where reduced flicker operation is defined as having percent amplitude modulation (percent flicker) less than 30 percent at frequencies less than 200Hz. https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2019/index.html#!Documents/ja84qualificationrequirements.htm https://energycodeace.com/site/custom/public/reference-ace-2...
4y ago

xxs 4y ago

Weight them and buy the heaviest one, for E27 likely you don't wish to go over 8-10W of total power (this can be measured easily as well). A scale that can measure grams is like $10.

Self-Perfection 4y ago

One guy bought over 4 thousands LED lamps over years, meticulously measured their actual specs and made a huge online catalog https://lamptest.ru/ https://lamptest.ru/ I follow his project a bit and it looks like consumers are really at loss. Generally there is no reliable way to choose a good led lamp without consulting such catalog. Lamps packaging often lies about actual specs, lamps with the same packaging but manufactured in different years might have different quality etc

leobg 4y ago
Great site. I wish he had an English translation. But I forgive him. This is what the Internet should be! Individual people who do one thing really well. So happy to see that this still exists online.
- walterbell 4y ago
  Could we improve discovery of these indie sites via HN or elsewhere? A standard tag for Algolia/web search could work, if any spam comments with the same tag were flagged.
  - leobg 4y ago
    That would be the benevolent Engelbart version of AI, wouldn’t it? Instead of dumb capitalism, clickbait and silly content marketing driving human activity, to have an AI that saves us from wasting our time figuring out the answer to questions that have been answered long before. And then, instead, points us to those questions that have not yet been asked, much less answered. What experiments have not yet been done. After all, no GPT-4, no matter how many billions of parameters, could tell you what the best battery is in the world if it wasn’t for that one human dude in his garage in Denmark, or Latvia, or wherever, who actually tested them all.
    - walterbell 4y ago
      There have been attempts to reboot webrings for indie site discovery. With AI harvesting and monetizing indie sites, there is some risk of future content being gated by pay/auth/bot walls. Another approach could be private overlay P2P VPNs where participants are invited/vetted by the social contract of a small community. (random indie site: wet/dry shop vacuums, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32411206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32411206)