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).

  • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    It’s the circuitry that burns out, and many of these filament-style LED lights literally only have a resistor as their main component.

    Not true. I’ve been dumpster-diving for LED bulbs for 5 years and in the majority of cases, it’s one LED in a series chain that burns out (fails open circuit). As for the circuitry, the most common failure point is the inductor between the capacitors smoothing out the rectified mains voltage.

    Mains filament bulbs with nothing but a resistor exist but they flicker between 0 and 100% at 100 or 120 Hz, which is not very pleasant. Good filament ones have circuitry very similar to the plastic ones. The reason filament bulbs last longer is better heat dissipation from the LEDs, and the circuitry does not get too hot either.