How come LED Light Bulbs only last for about 2-3 Years?

I’ve bought and replaced a lot of light bulbs, and I noticed that all of them said “up to 20,000 hours” which would be about 5 years given 12 hours of daily use (which we definitely don’t).

  • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Just Google “how to increase my fire risk to save $2 on a new LED”. Should be a how to guide or two out there.

    • beastlykings@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Some people like tinkering. Big Clive has a series of videos on Dubai led bulbs. The government mandates that the bulbs be extra efficient and last extra long, so they are built with more filaments driven at a lower current. They run cooler and last longer. You can do a similar thing with American bulbs if you’re handy with a soldering iron.

      Honestly, with how poor many of these things are mass produced, opening them up yourself is practically a personal form of quality control. Whether you modify it or not I bet it’s less likely to die prematurely or burn your house down than those of a regular person who doesn’t open them 🤷‍♂️

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      No, shorting a dead LED in a series chain of 10-20 will NOT burn your house down, it’s barely a difference to the driving circuit. Unless you’re buying knockoffs, there is a fuse in the base that will blow at like 0.5 A, no matter what you do to the circuitry. However, the other chips will likely not last much longer than the first dead one, so it’s not worth doing, and the reattached plastic globe can come off and expose mains voltage. If all chips are OK, you can cut it open to check the inductor between smoothing capacitors and replace it if it has failed open circuit, or short it if you accept a little extra flicker and/or electrical noise.

      In many bulbs, you can adjust the value of a current-sensing resistor (usually one or two in parallel, about 2-30 Ω) to make your own “Dooby” lamp with lower power and way longer life. Of course, you need to know something about electronics.