I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad. Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

A 100 out of 100 success rate after 8 years.

A recent rewire saw the electrician fit LED bulbs throughout the house. Modern fire safe housings etc, plenty of ventilation.

These were not cheap off the shelf bulbs from the local store.

3 in the kitchen went after less than a year.

I contacted the manufacturer directly. Turns out they had a "bad batch". How many bulbs did I fit?

About 50..

A box of 48 bulbs turned up 2 days later.

Not a single other bulb has gone 4 years later.

Not sure what the lesson there is. You win some you lose some? It's not always down to cheap bulbs?

They have become cheaper and cut costs over time. LED bulbs bought around the l-prize time when the technology was new are heavy, you can feel their metal heatsink. New LEDs from the same reputable brand are comparatively cheap.

Same here, around 40 Philips Hue lights, 8 years old. All but one are still working fine. In the broken one the electronics went bad after about 4 years, the light was still working but would occasionally turn off or change color for no reason. Got a new one for free.

Yeah, same. I have probably around 60 Philips Hue bulbs or lamps, I bought the first one over a decade ago, and so far, one lamp has failed (a Signe that has started flickering).

Same for me, have Philips Hue bulbs for the past 10 years, some 50 of them and only had one failure unrelated to the LEDs themselves.

No, I started with Philips Hues but then gave up and migrated to Cree light bulbs with Lutron Casetas because the Hues kept dying. These are over 2 different houses as well. I wonder what is going on if it's just me

The bulbs from about 7 to 10 years ago were far more long lasting than the new ones

Can second this. Did my whole house in Hue and have only had one failure (early on) in 5 years.

> I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad.

I had a bulb go bad once (out of almost 50 bulbs), but I called their support number and they shipped me a new one for free without any hassle.

2 of the 4 philips hue I bought in 2019 died a few years back, a bulb and a led stripe, I'm not buying expensive ones next time

I bought a whole bunch of GE LED bulbs figuring big name, probably more reliable. Nope. Diabolically bad. Never again.

> Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

If only that were true. Osram is a well-renowned brand so you'd think their - rather pricey - 'high-wattage' (10W) bulbs meant for outside lights here on the farm would last longer than about a year, all in different armatures, all with plenty of cooling (they're mainly used in autumn/winter/spring when it tends to be rather chilly here in Sweden). You'd think cheap bulbs go bad quickly but the cheap 'Biltema' brand bulbs I bought for some rooms just keep on going without marked loss of output.

All in all the average life time of a LED bulb seems to be around 2-3 years before it either has dimmed so much that it is no longer usable or it has failed outright. There are exceptions like the mentioned cheap bulbs which are still going strong after about 9 years of close to daily use or those Osram bulbs which fail in about a year or less or the (not mentioned) 'fluorescent tube replacement fixtures' which last less than a year before one of the 4 LED segment strips fails due to a failed LED. I repair these by replacing the failed chip, they work for a few months and then the things fail again.

I've used 'efficient' lighting since I bought my first house starting with jam-jar like Philips SL 'bulbs' (compact fluorescent tubes with all the related gizmos packaged in a single replaceable unit) for which I made fixtures out of birch plywood wood, 90° PVC drain pipe bends and E27 sockets because those things were heavy at about 500 grams. None of those SL bulbs had failed when I moved out 6 years later, I still have some somewhere in storage. Later I moved to the lighter PLC version which also tended to last a long time, some of them are still in use here. Then came LED bulbs which were supposed to last for tens of thousands of hours... and I suddenly started to have to think about replacing failed bulbs again.