The Lamp Room

Spotted in the United states on the last job I did. Yeah, seems the latest LED 15,000 hour lifespan quotes aren't quite as good as this GLS filament bulb. I spoke to the owner and they confirmed it is years in between lamp changes.

Just like LED lifespan claims being constantly reduced, GLS lifespans went down to just 1k hours in the end. I remember 5,000 and 10,000 hour lifespans stamped on bulbs in the UK when I was a kid back in the 80's.

As usual, we are lied to and its just ignored

Agree 100% and the last of the lines I don’t think even did 1000 hours

It's not anything new mind....

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

I can remember when the filament candle lamps were being phased out in favour of the "eco halogens". In the last few years when they were still selling the filament ones, the lamp lives of those were absolutely terrible. They were lasting just months with few hours on a night use. They were going out so often and the chandelier took 5 lamps so we were going through loads. The eco halogens were better but eventually in 2016, I got 5 Diall LED lamps and they have been amazing. This is one case where LED was better.

Also, yeah I remember when LED first came out and it was common to see these massive lifetime rating and eventually they were less generous and I've seen ones with 15,000 hours ratings which is more realistic. That's less than fluorescent - Osram Lumilux tubes were rated 20,000 hours. I suspect this was done to make people go over to LED and those huge over exaggerated lifetimes convinced people.

I have had 2 LED lights fail in this house so far. One was a Philips that went EOL after about 1 year of nightly use. The other was a Wilko filament that went EOL after less than 2 months of little use The last of the Wilko CFLs were also terrible, just lasting months since the capacitors were failing eaily.

The old CFLs were excellent compared to these. Yes.. they started off dim but at least they lasted. The old Osram, Philips, Megaman CFLs lasted years.

My Grandparents still have a few filament lamps in use. They don't use them much but they are still there.

As you can see I'm not often online - I don't mean this website but online in general - I'm an old Fart! Interesting reading your reply. Yes it's all a con really with lighting but you have to hand it to the lighting industry - they pulled off an incredible con with all of this and made a fortune out of it! Just amazing really, and yes - as you say, the "evolution" of lamps has been going backwards. Crazy the way we accept stuff that doesn't last as long nowadays

I think most people agree that they “don’t build them like they used to!”. That can be applied to almost anything now such as: lighting, tools, cars, appliances, you name it.

I’ve just had a Philips SMT LED fail tonight on the landing, at just over 3 years, it’s run for about 6678 hours in total.

Less than a decent CFL then!

I had a Philips LED go EOL after about a year on the landing which is basically dusk to dawn.

I've just replaced the LED on our lower landing for the second time in three years. First was a Crompton second was a TCP. The T8s & T12s in the garage do more hours and all bar 1 of the tubes are older than 3 years.
Even the 'Toplite' PLS lamps in the kitchen do better that that.
Just for an accurate comparison the 28W 2D that used to be there had 1 lamp change in 25 years.