LED light bulbs

I think not. Back to square one...blinding even when dimmed. Especially those super high intensity ones. Like looking at a welding arc. I bought a flashlight with a single one of those a while back. Takes 2 AA batteries. Warning on the packaging said "do not look directly into the lens as it may cause eye damage". I thought.."what a joke". First thing I did was look directly into the lens. Big mistake. Just like a welding arc. That spot on my retina took 15min to dissipate and I only glanced at for an instant! I took it out to my back yard at night and shone it at some trees 100yds away. I had it on the sharpest focus. The spread of that beam that far away was about 3ft. Incredible. Laser like.



And don't we just love them blinding us as headlights approaching at night, eh? At least 25% of drivers are driving with their high beams because they're pissed off at being blinded and are punishing everybody in retaliation.


Yea, great technology
 
I detest LED, CFL. Maybe it is the supply in suburban colorado. None last more than 10s of hours. I've tried various brands.


I tell ya, go for the Philips LED bulbs.
They haven't failed me yet... some going a decade and more.
My next door neighbor had bad luck with some LEDs like you did, but when he broke down and got the Philips, he thanked me.
Stay away from those cheap Feit Electrics, they're crap.
 
Any specific Philips models you have tried ? Wow. A Decade !

I agree. The Feit are especially bad. I also tried GE. And a couple more grocery store ones.

Despite the power, I'm currently using halogen. Happy to give it another go.
 
I use the Philips 60W eqiv. teardrop shape () in table lamps.
Candelabra base 40W or 25W in wall sconces, small table lamps and chandelier.
Outside in the garden, I use the 10W, 12V wedge base in the Malibu walkway lamps - they're over 10 years old and still working.
All Philips bulbs.


My thinking is..... buy decent only once, never have to buy again..... for ages.
 
I use the Philips 60W eqiv. teardrop shape () in table lamps.
Candelabra base 40W or 25W in wall sconces, small table lamps and chandelier.
Outside in the garden, I use the 10W, 12V wedge base in the Malibu walkway lamps - they're over 10 years old and still working.
All Philips bulbs.


My thinking is..... buy decent only once, never have to buy again..... for ages.

Thanks !
 
I grow plants and really appreciate that led boards are now using the new samsung 301b or 5050 chips getting over 200 lumens per watt. I use
hlg 96 v2 elite boards and they can be jacked up to 320 watts at 55 volts. More efficient than arc lamps now.
 
Here in Ottawa Canada, the city had a big push for every house hold to replace their porch lights with a led light. I live in a rural part of the city and a light at the end of the laneway is required to illuminate the street address plate in case of emergency. The city was so successful with the program that revenue from hydro rates dropped and the city had to increase the hydro rates to compensate for the decrease in income. They did the same with water consumption. Another big effort to reduce water consumption, ie replace toilets, clothes washers and dishwashers to high efficient ones. Result, reduced income from water taxes and the rates increased.

Almost every fixture in and around our home has either CFL or led lighting. When the CFLs fail I replace them with LED lights.
 
.........Another big effort to reduce water consumption, ie replace toilets, clothes washers and dishwashers to high efficient ones. Result, reduced income from water taxes and the rates increased.


In response to the toilets - people aren't aware that those "newer" water-saver types of toilets will quite possibly cost them much more money down the road.


Because they don't fully "flush" their contents all the way out to the main sewer like the older ones did.
A lousy gallon of water and crap would only travel a short distance, settling in and clogging the horizontal pipe under the house.
Once the sediment sits there and sticks to the pipe, another flush only removes part of it, and eventually any further solids and paper add to the clogging, then requiring an expensive plumber to come out to clear the pipe.


I've seen this happen plenty of times to homeowners on my street.
My older 1970's Kohler toilets work just fine, no need to modernize.
 
I gotta say I hate LEDs. I find them blinding even when dimmed. That's the deal breaker for me. Although you may get used to their unnatural luminosity, you're still missing out on the, imo, welcome atmosphere of incandescents. I wonder how many of us would prefer them without the cost factor. Here in Canada I find it hard to buy into the whole power conservation thing when we regularly pay the US to take our extra overload. And still we're being assessed and charged with peak hour/off hour rate scales. With all the current tech in place for power production, it's ridiculous. Hydro power is not a fossil fuel. At least not here. If we were using coal to make electricity I would have a different perspective.

All of this plus the fact that it seems to me the majority of LED bulbs on the market are complete crap. Lifetime is way over-rated. I feel like I am replacing mine far more often than I should be. I'm almost at the point of writing the installation dates on the bases with a Sharpie so I can confirm my grumpy muttering every time I have to go spend another fortune on *******' light bulbs.

So ya. I am not a fan at all of LED lights and I am certainly not convinced it is saving me any money. CFL, as much as I hate the lighting, at least seem to last a very long time and I do think they saved me some money over incandescent.
 
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I think not. Back to square one...blinding even when dimmed. Especially those super high intensity ones. Like looking at a welding arc. I bought a flashlight with a single one of those a while back. Takes 2 AA batteries. Warning on the packaging said "do not look directly into the lens as it may cause eye damage". I thought.."what a joke". First thing I did was look directly into the lens. Big mistake. Just like a welding arc. That spot on my retina took 15min to dissipate and I only glanced at for an instant! I took it out to my back yard at night and shone it at some trees 100yds away. I had it on the sharpest focus. The spread of that beam that far away was about 3ft. Incredible. Laser like.



And don't we just love them blinding us as headlights approaching at night, eh? At least 25% of drivers are driving with their high beams because they're pissed off at being blinded and are punishing everybody in retaliation.


Yea, great technology

It isn't always a matter of retaliation - rather, safety. I do it because the oncoming LED lights blind me so badly that the only way for me to maintain visibility/control is to turn my high-beams on and divert my view to the shoulder. It is truly unsafe otherwise, as I can't see anything but white light. The result is that my high beams are now blinding the oncoming driver.

Safety standards need to catch up with the technology. It shouldn't be legal for anyone to buy LED bulbs to retrofit into vehicles without having them professionally re-aimed and certified to an official standard, IMO.
 
It isn't always a matter of retaliation - rather, safety. I do it because the oncoming LED lights blind me so badly that the only way for me to maintain visibility/control is to turn my high-beams on and divert my view to the shoulder. It is truly unsafe otherwise, as I can't see anything but white light. The result is that my high beams are now blinding the oncoming driver.

Safety standards need to catch up with the technology. It shouldn't be legal for anyone to buy LED bulbs to retrofit into vehicles without having them professionally re-aimed and certified to an official standard, IMO.
After thinking a bit on your response I must say I don't buy it. I never drive with my high beams and when someone's approaching with them on they never, ever turn them off even when I flick mine on to let them know'. And I don't have LEDs on my vehicle. They can be approaching from far off so plenty of time for them to notice me. The really stupid thing about it is that it's city driving where you can actually drive without any lights and still see just fine. On the highway people are diligent to turn them off. The people with them on have made a decision and make it clear you can go you know where if you don't like it. In my town that's the way it is. Pretty disgusting, actually.
 
There is an upcoming change in regulations about car lights, but that is to basically make headlights and taillights as part of the driving light or always on when engine running. That is because so many are forgetting to turn on their lights at night in the cities. This baffled me until somebody posted the reason why on Facebook: it is people who leave their headlight switch in the automatic position and then have it serviced, where the garage will check lights and leave the switch off.

I'm baffled by the comment that you need your high beams to see forward when oncoming vehicles are blinding you.
 
It is a simple matter of dynamic range. The human eye has limited dynamic range - some more limited than others. When extremely bright light is juxtaposed to a comparatively dark area in the filed of view, it becomes extremely difficult to resolve any detail in the dark area. When "normally" bright, correctly aimed low beams are oncoming, then one's own low beams provide sufficient light to maintain a low dynamic range that is easy for the human eye to resolve.

However, when extraordinarily bright, white, LED low beams (often which have been retrofitted and not re-aimed) are oncoming, the dynamic range can overwhelm the abilities of human vision, especially if one's own vehicle is equipped with conventional headlights. The only way to reduce this dynamic range, in order to resolve enough detail to maintain control, is to increase the light in the dark area = turn on high beams.

Whether you "buy" it or not, I experience it all the time. I am not speaking of city driving. That's a non-issue since ambient light (street lights, etc.) reduce dynamic range dramatically.
 
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