I've never had LED lights last anywhere near the purported 5-7 year timeframe. The worst ones are the small decorative ones with the tinier screw part that my house seems to have an inordinate number of. Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. I like LED lights immensely but the idea they last even 2 years is a lie in my opinion.
Do you keep your light on constantly?<p>I don't know if it's the case with typical LEDs, but I used to have a lamp that I kept replacing bulbs for "all the time". I didn't understand why since the light bulbs claimed to last for years. One day I read the light bulb package more closely, and it said something along the lines of, "7 years life span at 2 hours per day" in small text (the numbers may be wrong, going by memory). Doing the math, the number of active hours claimed on the box turned out to be roughly true.
I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad. Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?<p>A 100 out of 100 success rate after 8 years.
They have become cheaper and cut costs over time. LED bulbs bought around the l-prize time when the technology was new are heavy, you can feel their metal heatsink. New LEDs from the same reputable brand are comparatively cheap.
> I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad.<p>I had a bulb go bad once (out of almost 50 bulbs), but I called their support number and they shipped me a new one for free without any hassle.
Same for me, have Philips Hue bulbs for the past 10 years, some 50 of them and only had one failure unrelated to the LEDs themselves.
No, I started with Philips Hues but then gave up and migrated to Cree light bulbs with Lutron Casetas because the Hues kept dying. These are over 2 different houses as well. I wonder what is going on if it's just me
The old Cree bulbs that Home Depot used to carry have been great for me. I need to find a new supplier though because the brands they have now are junk that last a year or two if I'm lucky.
Yeah that is very weird. Personally I even have some LED lights that are going on 15 years old, spent a bit more than I'd like on them at the time, but they <i>were</i> on sale!
Had a ton of issues with the original Cree bulbs. They underglued the glass bulb and it came off with thermal cycling. They also put the LEDs on a metal core PCB they bent into ~10-gon tower. On the bends, the traces apparently would crack which led to overheating and a burn spot.<p>Cree is now no more; the bulbs are just a brand for FEIT who imports the same unreliable Chinese white-label bulbs.
2 of the 4 philips hue I bought in 2019 died a few years back, a bulb and a led stripe, I'm not buying expensive ones next time
> Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?<p>If only that were true. Osram is a well-renowned brand so you'd think their - rather pricey - 'high-wattage' (10W) bulbs meant for outside lights here on the farm would last longer than about a year, all in different armatures, all with plenty of cooling (they're mainly used in autumn/winter/spring when it tends to be rather chilly here in Sweden). You'd think cheap bulbs go bad quickly but the cheap 'Biltema' brand bulbs I bought for some rooms just keep on going without marked loss of output.<p>All in all the average life time of a LED bulb seems to be around 2-3 years before it either has dimmed so much that it is no longer usable or it has failed outright. There are exceptions like the mentioned cheap bulbs which are still going strong after about 9 years of close to daily use or those Osram bulbs which fail in about a year or less or the (not mentioned) 'fluorescent tube replacement fixtures' which last less than a year before one of the 4 LED segment strips fails due to a failed LED. I repair these by replacing the failed chip, they work for a few months and then the things fail again.<p>I've used 'efficient' lighting since I bought my first house starting with jam-jar like Philips SL 'bulbs' (compact fluorescent tubes with all the related gizmos packaged in a single replaceable unit) for which I made fixtures out of birch plywood wood, 90° PVC drain pipe bends and E27 sockets because those things were heavy at about 500 grams. None of those SL bulbs had failed when I moved out 6 years later, I still have some somewhere in storage. Later I moved to the lighter PLC version which also tended to last a long time, some of them are still in use here. Then came LED bulbs which were supposed to last for tens of thousands of hours... and I suddenly started to have to think about replacing failed bulbs again.
I bought a whole bunch of GE LED bulbs figuring big name, probably more reliable. Nope. Diabolically bad. Never again.
I have never had an LED light bulb fail. I'm still using the same 6-pack I bought over a decade ago, bringing them with me from apartment to apartment. I only have 5 remaining because the glue that holds the glass bulb onto the base eventually failed on one and I couldn't be bothered to figure out what the correct adhesive would be for lightbulbs.
Randomly, my Philips Hue E27 bulbs last far longer than any of the China Zigbee clones I've bought, but like all mass produced goods, there are outliers that fail.<p>The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few <i>months</i>, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail <i>ever</i>, so Philips seems to be doing something right.
In mid 2016 I replaced around 25-30 incandescent bulbs (7 x 100 W, a couple or so 40 W, and the rest 60 W) with Walmart Great Value non-dimmable LEDs. Basically every incandescent bulb I could find around the house that was not on a dimmer and was A19 shape with an E26 base (except I forgot the attic and crawlspace).<p>There was some sort of deal between Walmart and Puget Sound Energy that applied an instant rebate automatically so that they simply rang up on checkout for $0.17.<p>They are all still working fine.
Every Philips L-Prize bulb I bought in 2012 is still working. Some have been on about 30% of the time since purchase. A few have been dropped multiple meters onto concrete; oops. Well made LED bulbs last. Cost-optimized ones may not.
My OG gray Philips lasted more than a decade constantly on. It was still working at the end but I noticed the yellow remote phosphor plastic panels were disintegrating with a web of cracks. Underneath, the plastic surrounding the LEDs had turned brown: the polymers had photodegraded.
I had a bunch of Philips Hue LED light bulbs until they started dying within a couple of years or less and the replacement costs were ridiculous. That's when I switched to Lutron Casetas.
I run about 50 Philips Hue lights and I’ve replaced 3 in six years, so definitely not as reliable as the L-Prize lights, but not awful. The L-Prize bulbs are built like tanks… when you drop one you check the floor for damage before the bulb.
I had an LED porch light that lasted ~10 years. The fixture had light and motion sensors, so it wasn't on during the day or all night, and often it was not running at full brightness, but still it was on a lot. I was surprised it lasted that long, especially since it was outdoors.<p>I switched to all LED lighting many years ago. I've had a few that lasted less than a year, but by and large I'd say that nearly all the lights I've had have lasted at least on the order of years.
Enclosed fixtures can kill some LED bulbs quickly if they can't dissipate heat.
I would say most LED bulbs. You need ones specifically rated for enclosures, which are way less common, and most people have the wrong idea of what counts as enclosed (the glass hood around your kitchen chandelier bulbs is an enclosure, as are ceiling cans)
We have several hundred smart led lights from I want to say Lutron? In my home going on year 6 soon and we’ve had to replace only 3-4 so far. 3 of those replacements were on the same circuit as well so I question if the circuit isn’t at fault.<p>Plural of anecdote isn’t data and all that but I think the several hundred quantity adds some weight. Also about 90 of those are in outdoor lamps so there’s a good amount dealing with weather and we’ve not had to replace any of those yet.
That is weird. Mine are basically infinite.
I've run 30w led modules for 10+ years by - using real power conversion components, making sure they have sufficient cooling and running them at 75% of their rated current. they still seem plenty bright.