Reliability CREE LED

[gar]

140722-1151 EDT

I purchased a CREE 9.5 W LED bulb 10-5-2013. Since about January 2014 this has been on about 16 hours per day. It was mounted in a Home Depot socket and reflector, but otherwise not constrained thermally. The reflector has some holes near the socket. I have not measured the heat sink surface temperature.

Two days ago the light became intermittent. On for many minutes, then off for a moderate time. I have not timed the on-off periods yet.

Clearly a thermal intermittent problem wiith a long time constant.

This in not good reliability. Ball park 3000 hours. Around 1/10 of claimed life.

By contrast CFLs of a higher power rating have lasted years in the same socket.

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[petersonra]

140722-1151 EDT

I purchased a CREE 9.5 W LED bulb 10-5-2013. Since about January 2014 this has been on about 16 hours per day. It was mounted in a Home Depot socket and reflector, but otherwise not constrained thermally. The reflector has some holes near the socket. I have not measured the heat sink surface temperature.

Two days ago the light became intermittent. On for many minutes, then off for a moderate time. I have not timed the on-off periods yet.

Clearly a thermal intermittent problem wiith a long time constant.

This in not good reliability. Ball park 3000 hours. Around 1/10 of claimed life.

By contrast CFLs of a higher power rating have lasted years in the same socket.

.

I have no experience with LED light bulbs of this size, but my experience with CFL bulbs of all persuasions has been that they are at best "optimistic" about the life of the bulbs. While I have had a few that have lasted for as many as five years, most failed within 6 months. I write the date on the base of the bulb when I install it.

A fair number of CFLs have failed within a few weeks. very few have made it to a year.

 

[mopowr steve]

We'll it must be noted that hours are based on average, could last 5 seconds or 50 years even though they quote 3 hrs of use a day to approximate the 22 years of life. Although Cree does have a great warranty of I believe 10 years on their LED bulbs so take advantage of it!

 

[gar]

140723-2012 EDT

mopower steve:

I expect near zero infant mortality on good quality electronic products, and probably a minimum of 10 year life of continuous use before significant failures begin.

Today, good quality engineering and quality control shouild achieve that 10 year life. LEDs for illumination are being pushed very hard (high temperature) and that is where the problem probably originates. Keep it cool and it will last longer.

A point of my presenting the failure information is that I would have expected better performance from CREE. Also I would like to hear from others about early failures of LEDs.

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