It has been noticed that LED bulbs last longer than any other old school whether it is CFL or halogen. My personal experience is no different, and LED bulbs lasted 4 times longer than a CFL bulb. What’s your take experience about it?
CFL is dead.
That said CFL in my experience was about how many on/off cycles it had. In a bathroom it might last a few months to a year or two, in the living room/kitchen light i could double their 10,000hour life for high end bulbs.
That said i only install LED for years now.
I have seen two dead LED lights (not mine). One IKEA bulb died silently, one complete ceiling light released its magic smoke. Both with defect drivers, probably overheating or components driven out of specs, dunno. LEDs were still good.
I lived here for 11 years now, all halogen lights are still ok. Bought six dimmable (three modes via UI) Philips LED bulbs 5 years ago when there was a good sale, all still good, but they rarely run on max.
I’d always look for multi-mode bulbs in the future. Better on the eyes and on the electronics.
Much earlier we (my parents, later myself) tried CFL to replace incans but never saved any money with them. Most of them died early. Terrible technology.
My utility company gave away copious numbers of CFL's to their customers in the day. Just started sending them in the mail for a few years. Everything from 25 watt equivalents through 100 watt equivalents, plus a few 3-ways. All are in the 2,800K ~ 3,000K temp range. And I do mean copious numbers. I replaced all the incans in the house, 25 or so, as they arrived. And they just kept arriving. A few, maybe 5, have died over time, but I still have a very large drawer full of all sizes. Considering my age (late 60's) & the historical longevity of the CFL's I've installed, I almost certainly have more than I'll need for the rest of my life.
Tried one CFL in the fridge. Didn't last long. Cold & very short cycle times killed it.
I've installed a few LED's in four select fixtures for style purposes, but for the most part have 20 or more CFL's still in service, so I have no reliable service life comparison CFL vs LED.
An outdoor security light at my basement entry door is an old (25+ yr.) high pressure sodium unit that'll give the Energizer Bunny a run for it's money. Photocell controls it. Had to replace the photocell once. Bought a replacement HPS bulb on closeout at HD for six bucks a few months ago for the eventuality that the bulb gives up.
I like a good LED bulb but, as long as I have a drawer full of NOS CFL's won't incur the cost of replacement just to do it.
slmjim
There seems to be an obsession with tint among users of LED lighting here. I’m surprised nobody remarked on color rendition for CFLs. Our local utility subsidized the sale of CFL bulbs at one of our local charity stores where they eventually ended up selling them for 25 cents each. I replaced many of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs only to find I really hated them. Eventually I converted every bulb and fixture in my home with the exception of the oven bulb with LEDs. That was 3 years ago and I have only had two bulbs fail since then. All of the LED fixtures continue to work as new. The sellers mostly rate the LEDs at 50,000 hours but the weak link is the AC to DC converters that are in each bulb and fixture. For most lights 50K hours amounts to years of use but I doubt the electronics will last that long.
if an LED lasts a month, then it usually goes 10 more years
(infant mortality kills them usually)
I’ll kindly hint at the lamps you’re not allowed to have
also CFLs last a lot longer if the fixture allows them to cool well (the driver electronics usually fails)
also, there were lots of CFLs that had 80+ CRI, long before any LEDs had that
Agreed x100, have always hated fluorescents. More ability to tune CCT for the space (vs earlier fluorescent) and usually overall better light quality is a huge advantage of LED and I’m happy to see them becoming more common for public space lighting.
I find the fixtures I had that killed CFLs tend to kill LEDs as well. For the most part it seems like LEDs maintain quality light for far longer, CFLs start out terrible and degrade from there.
theoretically led should outlast cfl, but in reality, there are plenty crappy made led bulbs that die before a halogen would. same with cfl,
I always hated the tint, but I was willing to put up with it for the energy savings.
As soon as LED’s started to get close in price, I started swapping them out, and shifting the CFL’s to less frequently used locations.
I have had mostly long lives with both CFL’s and LED’s, but there have been a few failures here and there. One whole box of Feit brand LED bulbs failed within months, but were replaced in warranty and have been running for several years since then. A few free bulbs from my power company have mostly failed, but I can’t complain much for the price.
Thus far I think the failure rate I see in my slice of the world with LEDs is nearly as high as with CFLs, which isn't too bad really. So much depends on quality components and heat, just like with flashlights. CFLs are nowhere near dead in the market - you may see them disappearing from homeowner store shelves and such but they are very much alive and will be for a long time in the commercial lighting market. As long as the bulbs are made many businesses will just keep buying them because it's cheap and it works and replacing or retrofitting many fixtures is more expense/time than they want to deal with. At our office, which I mostly maintain, we have hundreds of lights in at least a dozen different types. The Par bulbs in track lighting...CFL's seem to always reliably go for years, maybe 4-5 on average but of course they start to go pink after awhile and lumen output is vastly reduced. But they don't fail that often. Some smaller bi-pin CFLs and such go for a year or two on magnetic ballasts (but the bulb quality and potential rough handling in freight transit always makes those suspect anyway, every time, any brand). We've replaced a lot of the CFLs Par bulbs with LEDs over the last few years and I've only had two of them fail (Satco brand). Now small bulbs with normal screw-in Edison bases...frankly about 95% of those are just crap, poorly made in one or more ways, and they fail a lot, no matter their wattage or fixturing. I get the pleasure of disassembling a lot of these if I want to, and after you see what's in most of these, it's just kind of sad that cheap engineering and/or shoddy construction is giving a less than stellar name to LEDs in the general market because the technology, as we know, is awesome. There are some brands who try to do their bulbs better but generally those are priced so high that they are a very poor value (good for places where easy access for replacement a big hassle or requires you to hire someone, however).
Bulbs that are rated for dimming are sometimes slightly better quality but not always. Brands that pot their electronics board aren't necessarily any better than ones that don't and don't necessarily survive as they should. Even the Cree-branded bulbs don't last long. I guess if the usage is typical homeowner where they may only be on for short periods, most do ok (at my home I have no problems and none dead yet over several years).
So it just comes down to application and engineering, like everything. If they made the bulbs better it would be much longer lived than CFL and at this point there's no reason not to...but they don't. It's good to see some recent efforts at making different color temperatures available more widely and thank goodness cold white 6500K never took hold in the general lighting market. We're currently deciding whether to replace some HID metal halide fixtures with the same thing or going to LED....honestly I am not sure that LED is an upgrade there, considering what I am seeing in the available units and all things involved (power savings would be nice, though, along with utility rebates for the costs of the new units). I think LED should be a lot further along and better than it is, but it was a monumental change to move away from incandescents and other technologies. Basically, buy them in good faith from someone who will be around to honor a warranty replacement because you'll likely need it no matter the brand or bulb style. Your emitters will likely never see their theoretical 50,000 hour lifespan because the electronics will fail far sooner.
I’ve had many LED bulbs fail over the last several years - very frustrating. Seems kind of random where 1 in a batch will stop working while the rest keep shining on even though they are in the same fixture. I’ve had the same experience with CFLs. But years ago with with the cheap incandescent bulbs, the failure rate was very predictable based on age.
I had hoped that the LED bulbs were going to be more dependable than CFLs, but I haven’t seen it yet. Regardless, the electricity savings is even better, they have better CRI, are more durable (my son broke a CFL just last week), and they no longer sell CFLs at the hardware store. Now I need to decide what to do with all the CFLs that I stocked up with when they were on sale years ago.
yep, I’ve had a few LED’s fail over the years including flood lights. Seems the weakest link is the electronics. ie: the bulb will last for 50,000+ hours but who knows how long the electronics will last for.
Mate had 50% of his LED downlights fail within 2 years. If your looking for cost efficiency, then the cost of a normal old fashioned filimant globe would be far cheaper in this example…even from a birth to grave scenario - manufacture, cost of installing, cost of running, cost of replacement. 
Corn bulbs haven’t caught on well here in the US. Americans seem stuck with the A19 envelope that mimics the old Edison bulb design. That means the LEDs must be crowded on a circular plate near the base of the bulb with the electronics beneath the plate. It severely limits how bright a bulb you can make. Most of the bulbs used in my home conversion are corn bulbs ordered directly from China. Ranpo, one of the major Chinese producers, does sell corn bulbs on eBay with shipping from the US. The are also available using chip-on-board arrays in the bulb. I like those even better even though a bit more expensive.
Depends. Some last under 2 years. A higher quality high CRI one I had lasted about 5. Manufacturers push the LEDs too hard which causes them to be less efficient resulting in a lot more heat. Most of the time it’s not the LEDs which fail but the driver. If they use double the amount of LEDs they could half the power usage but this will make the bulb lasts a lot longer and means they’ll make less money as they won’t be able to sell as many. Currently I have a Yeelight WiFi bulb in my room but it’s more powerful than I need so I have it set to 60%. It should last longer this way. I hope so anyway. This is why we can't have nice things - YouTube
i had a cree bulb e27 base, it was 75 or 100w equivalent, first few month it was working awesome, however after 6 mo, it was about half as bright, in a year it was barely making any light, its heatsink was getting too hot to touch, you’d literally have burns if you touched it, i measured 90c. i did not believe it at first, i remeasured several times, same results around 90c. electronic was fine, when i took the bulb apart some leds were brown, they literally cooked themselves, they looked like xte leds, or similar, about 2 dozen of them