The Lamp Room

Has LED life expectancy gone down over the years? I'm sure the earlier LED lights and fitting used to be rated much more than this.

Image of modern led lights life time expectancy:

Now they've "upgraded" the competition they don't need to last 1/2 a billion hours.

It wasn't too long ago that LED fittings and lamps were being advertised as 100,000 hours. Now those same products are being advertised as 25,000 to 30,000 hours. A decent fluorescent tube can last that long!

Basically, they lied to us, other light sources were replaced on mass, now we get figures that are a bit closer to the truth. Even then, a lot of this stuff fails well before it's advertised lifespan is up.

I bet the lumen depreciation and colour stability of LED is far worse than conventional tech.
The car park in an ASDA near me had fluoro weatherpacks and a few years ago they retrofitted them all with LED tubes... most have failed for are so dim that it’s laughable...
The warehouse in my new place of work... I thought they had mercury vapour low bays at first as the light I could see through the bay boors was a horrible greeny colour.... nope, just few-year old LED fittings...

My local Asda (Bp. Aukland) did the same. Working fluorescent lights changed to led and the led ones have gone extremely dim. They must use the same ones in different shops. Yeah your right about most fluorescent lights being able to outlast these. The 11w PL sign light near me has been on the same tube 24/7 for many years. I don't remember exactly, but it must be over 3 years ago since it got replaced.

I had a feeling this would happen with those life times. I see many older LED installations that a failing after just a couple of years such as LED exit sign that have dimmed and led floodlights flashing on and off. Those 100,000 hour ratings are ridiculous

I guess the “these can last up to 25 years” saying was bullshit then. Yea i remember when they said they would last 100,000 hours. 18,000 hours is the lowest ive seen yet! Ive got 3 8w tubes on test which have outlasted that life expectancy 5x over

It's not so much as LED life expectancy going down but the manufacturers being more honest about the very real and disappointing reality that is that the best LEDs can't match the long life fluorescent tubes.
Also as FSB states they fail miserably on lumen maintenance and colour stability.

Decent tubes are not much better though, GEs stated lumen depreciation figures for THEIR OWN tubes, (tri-phosphate GB made ones), was at 80% after just 12,000 hours!
And let’s not forget, no-one is making ‘decent’ tubes anymore, even German made Sylvania have poor lives.
And we all know what the quality of, once great names like Crompton is like now!, but more importantly, we’re all forgetting the ever rising cost of electricity, that greedy energy companies are pushing through the roof, with the age old BS sob stories of, “well, Mr J Public, we’re sorry to have to put your bill up, but it’s not our fault, it the rising cost of wholesale energy you know”
Sadly the average company owner, faced with either running 200 six foot twin fluorescent battens at 140 watts each, (plus gear losses), or 200 six foot twin LED battens at only 60 watts each, resulting in life expectancy being the second thought.

They advertised LEDs as being much better than they are to push them to the mainstream, and most importantly to the consciousness of the people as lamps that actually give that sort of performance

Now when LEDs are everywhere and the other light sources are quietly taken away, LED manufacturers can "oops correct the mistakes in the advertising"

On a side note, 15K hours is not that bad for an E27 screw base lamp, since it can be replaced anytime

18K for the recessed wall fitting, which may be some odd form factor, may require you to cut the wall and cement in a new base when that EOLs and the fittings that will be sold then have a slightly different size. (most of such fittings install into a plastic box that is cemented into the wall during construction, or better, embedded into solid concrete during casting. Of course this is not a problem for a PL fitting that lasts for the lifetime of the building if not vandalised)

It's a shame that when you do the maths, you don't save anything at all in the long run. Ok, so your energy bill is less, but having to spend a fortune on new fittings whenever one fails (plus the cost of the electrician to install said fittings) means in the long run, on average, you're actually worse off.

The same is true for the environment, the pile of LED waste now being created cos these shit things don't last and are harder to recycle - plastics / metals / glass bonded together, means that only a fraction, compared to traditional lighting can be recycled. Add in the environmental impact of transportation from China and it's got to be much worse than traditional fittings which last longer and can actually be repaired or taken apart at the end of their lives.

Maybe it's time we educate the public on what's really going on.....