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).

  • hydroxycotton@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    This sounds like an interesting hobby? Care to share more about how/why you are into dumpster diving for lightbulbs?

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      I saw Big Clive and DiodeGoneWild take some apart, and we had been using halogen or fluorescent ones at home because LED bulbs were over $10 back then. I thought I would learn something about electronics but not really, the failure modes are always the same: about 50% of the time, an LED burns out. 25% of the time, it’s the smoothing inductor gone open circuit. 10% of the time, a bad contact somewhere (usually solder joints on linearly-regulated ones). 5 % work out of the box for some reason. I remain adamant about not paying for LEDs even though dumpster diving is objectively not worth the trouble anymore.