At the limits of their ratings. They could make LED bulbs last many orders of magnitude longer and be more efficient, but they don't (unless forced to[1]) because they prefer planned obsolescence.
Or because, as with many products and services, many people go into Home Depot or wherever and buy whatever is cheapest--especially in a world where higher price does not necessarily equate to higher quality or longer life.
> especially in a world where higher price does not necessarily equate to higher quality or longer life.
There's the kicker; how can you tell when something is better quality anymore? Qualifiers like "is this device run at max capacity or is there leeway" are never listed on packaging or product features.
It's often hard to know, especially for items you're not going to individually research in great depth, whether you're actually paying for quality or for a name on the package even though it actually came off the same assembly line in China as any number of knock-offs. And, even if it is higher quality by some standard, does that really affect consumer outcomes?
I do not, nor will I ever, excuse penny-pinching by companies by agreeing that they’re forced to do it because people will always buy the cheapest thing they can. It’s trotted out as the lame excuse for bag check fees and other declining flying services, cheap consumer goods, cheap electronics, you name it.
To accept the premise is to believe that anything made of quality will never get bought/used which is manifestly not the case. And it strangely completely ignores the incentives companies have to make things as shitty as possible, namely lower expenses and planned obsolescence.
>To accept the premise is to believe that anything made of quality will never get bought/used which is manifestly not the case.
I disagree. It is a ratio of quality to price. People have different opinions about what the acceptable minimum ratio is, and it varies by product, and by time. For example, many people find Costco to hit the right ratio most of the time.
For example, I have been using LEDs and dimmable LEDs from soft white (~2700K) to cool white (~4000K) with no problem, all purchased at Home Depot/Lowes/Costco. Some have failed earlier than anticipated, but nowhere near enough to cancel out the cost savings.
And it's a matter of individual consumer priorities.
Some consumers will happily pay for business class seating on planes. Others will generally overlook inconvenience and less comfort if they can save $50.
Yes, another example is clothing. I have no interest in buying high quality clothing that I have to spend time taking care of. I want whatever lasts longest, while still being able to throw in the washer and dryer on default settings without having to separate colors.
The problem is evaluating quality before purchase. There's not a great way of expressing the sorts of factors that differentiate between good and bad LED bulbs that consumers can easily understand, let alone anything to encourage different manufacturers to use the same measurements. If the consumer can't tell what is quality, what's to get them to spend the money for it?
More recently Philips has started selling the Dubai-style bulbs worldwide, branded as the "Ultra Efficient" range. They're expensive though, as you'd expect.
I believe BigClive did a video on those, and while they did indeed use more LEDs for improved efficiency, they also had a more complex and thus failure-prone driver than the original Dubai ones.
In other words, more efficient, but not longer lifespan.
Are you sure those are the same bulbs? The ultra efficient versions sold on Amazon have reviews going back to 2017. Supposedly the Dubai-style bulbs were only available in Dubai even a few years ago.
I've been installing Kauf brand smart-bulbs, which come pre-flashed with ESPHome for integration with Home Assistant. Some of my earlier bulbs failed, and I recently noticed that the founder of the company commented on the issue and said he specced a more robust capacitor after early failures: https://github.com/KaufHA/kauf-rgbww-bulbs/issues/31#issueco...
I haven't contacted them for replacements yet, but seeing their comment makes me much more likely to purchase them in the future, despite my early issues.
Thank you for making me aware those exist. I have a mix of Hue & cheap Walmart color wifi bulbs. The Hue bulbs are undoubtedly much high quality (in both output & reliability) but you pay for it. The Walmart ones are 1/5 the cost, but very hit & miss on whether you can easily flash tasmota/esphome - and there is no way of knowing until you try because of newer firmwares being shipped in the same packaging.
Placed under operating conditions very close to their specified limits.
Like if you were to drive your car in 2nd gear on the freeway, at 6000rpm.
The engine would wear out much quicker than if you drove in 5th gear, at 1500rpm.
100 years of training make most people think of light bulbs as a trivial purchase. And now a product that cost $0.50 20 years ago is $10, and often performs worse for its purpose.
So the economics just drive cost down no matter what. And even a picky consumer is hard pressed to get what he wants when you go to the bulb aisle at Lowe’s. They literally went from 10 SKUs to 250, with no meaningful standards.
This is my biggest barrier to finding decent bulbs. The search engines on sites like homedepot.com offer very little help, especially since they always show promoted items higher in the results, even if they don't match any keywords I put in my search. Then, if I do find what looks like the right thing, they're invariably out of stock everywhere.
> Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons
Can you elaborate? What does "hard" mean here, I don't understand.