> 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.

> Osram

Pay attention to the European efficiency rating for LEDs. Anything above B is practically "Dubai LED" class. The common Osram isn't doing good in this category, their LEDs I have seen in retail are rated like E-F.

To reiterate: the article fell short on the point of LED efficiency. LEDs are semiconductors, do you know when the CPU is at peak efficiency? Before it hits the exponential voltage/frequency curve. Low voltage -> cooler LEDs -> more efficient light conversion -> easier to cool -> tens of thousands hours of practical lifespan.

What does it cost? Like less than a dollar in BOM. What does it cost us? Billions in replaced LEDs worldwide and megatonnes of electric waste, because it is not made to last for "objective reasons": lower price tag in storeshelves aka capitalism and oblivious consumers.