I guess this is not bad enough for a pitting, but here goes.
I am not a Luddite, I embraced the compact florescent wave as it hit years ago, but those bulbs are now starting to burn out and I am having a heck of a time replacing them with new ones. My LED experiences.
Renovated kitchen. Electrician put in all-in-one-piece LED lights that go into the ceiling. 9 Months after installation, they start buzzing. It gets louder. I order replacements from home depot and replace thee buzzers. 5 months later, more start buzzing. The electrician comes and replaces the dimmer switch for free (it is pricey and is made for LED dimming). The buzzing continues. I order replacements again (keep in mind these cost $25 for 3 lights). Those are OK for about 5 months, but then start getting dimmer, others buzz more, one flashes. I replace the dimmer switch with a straight light switch. No better. I order a complete set of new LEDs from a different manufacturer. It is has been 2 months so far, so check back soon. So far I have spent like $150 on my kitchen lights and it has only been 1.5 years. So much for saving me money! Not to mention the time.
I need regular bulbs to replace some burned out CFLs around the house. I buy a packet of 6 LED bulbs online. They all look good. 9 months later, 3 are burned out. No dimmer switches involved. The previous CFLs lasted for years and years.
Last week I ordered 4 bulbs from a different manufacturer online for a bathroom. They were not the cheapest, and they definitely came in a nice box. Flicker free they said. Hm, I can’t put my finger on it, but I don’t like it. If you just stare at an object, it is fine, but whenever I move my eyes or see any object move quickly they turn ghosty or look like a super fast strobe light movements. After some research I find out they have stroboscopic effects. It is very disturbing for me, but my wife doesn’t seem to notice or care.
Why the heck can I not just buy a friggin light bulb that works? I have gone back to buying CFLs on specialty sites just to get decent light. It is crazy. Am I the only one?
Overall I have had great luck with LEDs. They work great and give better light than CFLs and use a little less electric. However they’re are some crappier ones out there.
I hate the integrated LED fixtures, it is a dumb idea. I want fixtures where it is easy and fairly cheap to change out the bulb.
Reliable LED brands: Cree, Feit, Maxxima, Sansun
I’m sure there are more.
Great Eagle & PacLights have not been as reliable.
I have LED bulbs all over my apartment. I paid for them myself and like them, even though I don’t pay the electric bill so I don’t care if they’re cheaper to operate. I prefer daylight temperature bulbs and all of the ones I have were bought at Home Depot. I think they’re all Philips or Cree brand. All have been in place for over a year (some for several years) and I have only replaced the two above the kitchen sink. And no buzzing issues, although I suspect your issues are related to the dimmer.
I thought incandescent bulbs were banned but they are still for sale. I think they have to be more efficient now which allows them to stay on the market. Turns out they were going away in the US but Trump cancelled that .
I am fairly pleased with the LED lamps I’ve been using in outdoor fixtures. The automatic dawn-dusk bulbs have worked well.
I have a few LED fixtures for plant growing (brighter light than fluorescent shop lights and somewhat cheaper to run). After the premature death of one such fixture I learned to only get the cheap ones, as their ultimate demise is much less painful.
I’ve been experimenting with LED bulbs, and keeping track of how long they last. I’ve had BAD experiences with both Cree and Feit. I have had only EXCELLENT experiences with Philips. No buzzing, and they last for years (even my outdoor ones that burn 24/7).
It might be the warmth of the light. Like CFLs, they come in different “temperatures”. I bought a bunch of LEDs for my kitchen. They were 5000K bulbs and they were harsh. Swapped them for 2700K bulbs. They were just as bright, but the light wasn’t as harsh.
Yes, I am well aware of temperature. I actually had a hard time finding these because I specifically wanted 3000K as 2700K is just too yellow for my taste.
The first thing I heard was that 100-watt incandescents were going to be banned, but the uproar from home poultry breeders and the Easy-Bake Oven lobby (LOL) put the kibosh on that, because the heat from those bulbs are what they use.
‘CFL’ and ‘good light quality’ are a chose 1 out of 2 option. CFL’s only redeeming quality (besides power consumption) is it works great for gradual illumination like a bathroom light that won’t wake you up too much having to use it in the middle of the night. Simple test read a book with CFL lighting, then switch to IC and continue to read, switch back, same brightness. You may cry when you see what your missing.
LED’s are all over the place. Some are really nice and give good light others suck balls. Research is needed to get the good ones.
IC lighting and to a slightly lesser extent halogen is the gold standard in light quality, though more costly to run.
Problem is that consumers wanted cheap bulbs, not good bulbs. So it became the race to the bottom rather than to make an LED bulb as good as an incandescent as far as light quality, working with dimmers, and being able to tolerate enclosed fixtures.
I have a SORAA Radiant bulb that comes pretty close to incandescent light quality, it use violet emitters rather than blue. But it’s not cheap.
I’ve had good results with the GE Reveal branded LED Edison base bulbs. I’ve got them in most of my lamps and fixtures that fit that type. They have a slight blue tint to the envelope with makes a color temp that we find pleasant.
When I build my house I installed several “Cloud” 4 tube florescent fixtures in kitchen and mud room areas. When the ballasts went bad I rewired and installed LED replacements for those 48" tubes. They’ve recently been replaced with flush mount LED panels. Not because the LED tubes were bad, but we suffer from Asian ladybugs and they’d get into the fixture and require constant cleaning.
The 2 tube hanging lights I had in my garage have been replaced with tube LED shop lights from COSTCO. Instant on winter and summer.
We have replaced the bulbs in the can lights in our kitchen with LEDs as the old bulbs burn out, and the only problem with the LEDs is that the lights don’t go completely dark when they’re turned off. No biggie. They’ve been in for years with no replacements needed yet.
The only curly bulbs I will ever voluntarily have are full-spectrum OTT Light bulbs.
We’re still using up the incandescents we stocked up on when LEDs weren’t affordable. We have a few LED bulbs, but we’ve never had problems with them. They aren’t for reading, they’re to keep us from walking around in the dark.
Our apartment has no installed lights in the living room or the bedrooms, so we have many lamps that require no greater than 60 watts. I don’t know who designs apartment buildings, but lack of a light you can switch on upon entering is one example of the idiocy of apartment design. It’s not nearly as stupid or hazardous as keeping the circuit breaker box locked in the neighbor’s fenced-in (6-ft high) backyard, but it’s still stupid.
Sorry for the rant.
The secret is: Don’t buy cheap crap.
Buy Cree.
I have only had one Cree lamp fail in 7 years, and they replaced it for free. I have one that’s on 24/7/365, and it will hit 61,000 hours next month. If’s a 9w (60w equivalent). If it was a incandescent, it would have cost $475 in electricity, plus 30 lamp changes, vs. $71 in electricity and NO lamp changes. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
You do know that the 60 watt requirement relates to incandescent bulbs, not LEDs, right? It’s because of heat generated by incandescent bulbs that LEDs do not generate. Yes, they generate some heat, but only a small fraction or what incandescent do. A LED marked as a 60 watt equivalent might only generate 13 watts of heat.
As for no switches to turn on lights as you enter, all the smart assistants like Echo or Google assistant work with modules you plug into the receptacle and then plug in your lamp.