My wife and I were out recently looking at ceiling fans to replace the one in our dining room, which has committed no crimes, other than having the appearance of being very much from the 1980s.
I was taken aback by how few of the fans had replaceable lightbulbs! In the entire store there were maybe three or four options with a replaceable bulb!
Call me crazy, but a nonreplaceable LED is a complete dealbreaker. I go through so many LED bulbs! I don't know if my electricity is like particularly bad or if that's just normal? The first LED bulb I ever bought (Shout out EarthLED) in 2008 for like $30 is still going strong, but every bulb I buy these days lasts like two years tops.
When an LED bulb dies, it's typically not the LED, it's the electronics driving it. This is worsened substantially by heat. If you have recessed downlights or something, that's close to worst-case for an LED bulb.
Lights with non-replaceable bulbs can actually be far better, because they can be designed for their environment. Recessed downlights with built-in LEDs for example can thermally couple the LEDs directly to the metal housing, so the heat can be dissipated into the surrounding air, instead of into the recess.
Maybe in theory. In practice, the Phoebus Cartel was a real thing, and they limited lightbulb lifespans, worldwide. The same thing exists today, albeit more because companies that sell lightbulbs want to keep selling them, instead of putting themselves out of business. So, many LED lightbulbs are intentionally designed to fail early.
The only place where this doesn’t happen is in the country of Dubai. Because of national law, lightbulbs sold there are required to have very long lifespans. That’s why there is a world-wide grey market business for taking existing LED lightbulbs apart, snipping off a resistor so that they pull about half the amperage and then putting them back together, and suddenly their lifespan is increased by 10-100x. This is called a “doobie”, after the name of the country. Check out “bigclivedotcom” on YouTube if you want to see this in action.
You will notice this if you buy Philips Ultra Definition bulbs in Dubai, versus the same bulbs sold at the same amount of lumen output from the UK or elsewhere in the world. The “doobie” version has twice as many LED filaments inside, compared to the UK version. Same price, way different life span. Philips is one of the better manufacturers of lightbulbs, and nowhere remotely close to the only one doing this.
With regards to LED light fixtures (ones that don’t allow you to screw in your own bulb), most manufacturers do the same thing. They’re designed to fail early. Who wants light fixture styling that is fifty years old, just because the LED lights inside haven’t failed yet? They want to make you buy new fixtures every couple of years, just like they do for bulbs.
Yes, there are exceptions in both cases. But they are the rare exceptions, not the rule. And if you haven’t studied up on the Phoebus Cartel, you can start with the article on Wikipedia.
There's definitely no cartel today, there are wayyy too many manufacturers for that to be a practical reality.
The reason most consumer LED bulbs fail early today is because consumers are low-information buyers who make purchase decisions based overwhelmingly on price and secondarily on aesthetics. The typical buyer has no way to accurately judge the actual design longevity of a bulb on the shelf. Yes, bulbs have lifetime ratings, but even if people bother to read them, those ratings in many places are not well regulated and reflect an ideal scenario that oftentimes is not reflective of real-world use.
The sales success of these race-to-the-bottom bulbs has driven higher quality bulbs off of the shelf at most retailers. You can get well designed long-life LED lighting, but you'd need to step up to commercial/industrial options. There are long life bulbs available, but they generally are designed for uses where they are difficult to replace... because in those use cases a high product price can be justified by lower labor costs to maintain their installation... e.g., bulbs for use high up on a structure, factory lighting, continuous use, etc.
The reason Dubai has better bulbs is simply because they have decided to require it. The reason the US has shit bulbs is because Americans love buying $0.80-1.50 light bulbs. The Dubai bulb is an order of magnitude more expensive. This is a hard sell at Walmart. And the TCO of the $0.87 bulbs on Amazon is still less even accounting for early failures if you are a homeowner who is not factoring in labor costs.
donatj · · focus · HN ↗
I was taken aback by how few of the fans had replaceable lightbulbs! In the entire store there were maybe three or four options with a replaceable bulb!
Call me crazy, but a nonreplaceable LED is a complete dealbreaker. I go through so many LED bulbs! I don't know if my electricity is like particularly bad or if that's just normal? The first LED bulb I ever bought (Shout out EarthLED) in 2008 for like $30 is still going strong, but every bulb I buy these days lasts like two years tops.
Anyway, we did not buy a fan.
Youden · · focus · HN ↗
Lights with non-replaceable bulbs can actually be far better, because they can be designed for their environment. Recessed downlights with built-in LEDs for example can thermally couple the LEDs directly to the metal housing, so the heat can be dissipated into the surrounding air, instead of into the recess.
bradknowles · · focus · HN ↗
The only place where this doesn’t happen is in the country of Dubai. Because of national law, lightbulbs sold there are required to have very long lifespans. That’s why there is a world-wide grey market business for taking existing LED lightbulbs apart, snipping off a resistor so that they pull about half the amperage and then putting them back together, and suddenly their lifespan is increased by 10-100x. This is called a “doobie”, after the name of the country. Check out “bigclivedotcom” on YouTube if you want to see this in action.
You will notice this if you buy Philips Ultra Definition bulbs in Dubai, versus the same bulbs sold at the same amount of lumen output from the UK or elsewhere in the world. The “doobie” version has twice as many LED filaments inside, compared to the UK version. Same price, way different life span. Philips is one of the better manufacturers of lightbulbs, and nowhere remotely close to the only one doing this.
With regards to LED light fixtures (ones that don’t allow you to screw in your own bulb), most manufacturers do the same thing. They’re designed to fail early. Who wants light fixture styling that is fifty years old, just because the LED lights inside haven’t failed yet? They want to make you buy new fixtures every couple of years, just like they do for bulbs.
Yes, there are exceptions in both cases. But they are the rare exceptions, not the rule. And if you haven’t studied up on the Phoebus Cartel, you can start with the article on Wikipedia.
kube-system · · focus · HN ↗
The reason most consumer LED bulbs fail early today is because consumers are low-information buyers who make purchase decisions based overwhelmingly on price and secondarily on aesthetics. The typical buyer has no way to accurately judge the actual design longevity of a bulb on the shelf. Yes, bulbs have lifetime ratings, but even if people bother to read them, those ratings in many places are not well regulated and reflect an ideal scenario that oftentimes is not reflective of real-world use.
The sales success of these race-to-the-bottom bulbs has driven higher quality bulbs off of the shelf at most retailers. You can get well designed long-life LED lighting, but you'd need to step up to commercial/industrial options. There are long life bulbs available, but they generally are designed for uses where they are difficult to replace... because in those use cases a high product price can be justified by lower labor costs to maintain their installation... e.g., bulbs for use high up on a structure, factory lighting, continuous use, etc.
The reason Dubai has better bulbs is simply because they have decided to require it. The reason the US has shit bulbs is because Americans love buying $0.80-1.50 light bulbs. The Dubai bulb is an order of magnitude more expensive. This is a hard sell at Walmart. And the TCO of the $0.87 bulbs on Amazon is still less even accounting for early failures if you are a homeowner who is not factoring in labor costs.