Well, it's almost a year and as Sam's started a thread on a similar subject I thought I'd give an update.steve_earwig wrote:...these were so cheap I thought it was worth a punt to find out if they were rubbish or not. Not, as it turns out, but I'll only really be happy with them if they're still going in a year's time...
I've switched over almost all the bulbs in this house to these leds, I have some up at my house, there are some at my mate's, I sent some back with my bro last year and I took a couple to my dad when I was there earlier in the year. I've had one failure, which was the 7 watter in my bedroom which died after 6 months, no explosion or anything, it just flashed on and died. This beats the incandescents (which 1 in 4 seems to die straight away) and the cfls that I've bought here hands down.
These are the ones I originally bought for the kitchen http://www.banggood.com/Wholesale-GU10- ... 50082.html (x6)
Bedrooms, hallway and lounge http://www.banggood.com/E27-7W-560LM-Pu ... 78704.html (x7)
Terraces & stand lamp in the lounge here http://www.banggood.com/E27-12W-Warm-Wh ... 74325.html ( x5)
You'll notice that, other than the GU10s, they're al Edison screws, obviously I had to take fittings with me to GB but I have loads of them and they're cheap here. I didn't want to steer away from the 5630 leds (which I'm pretty sure are Cree) as I know they're good, they don't flicker (which I've seen others do) or anything.
The only downside to some of these is on double-switched circuits they pick up a bit of current on the return circuit, so the ones in the hallway and in the bedrooms glow very slightly when they're off, in my room it's no brighter than the run leds on the laptop so it doesn't bother me. I did have a Google and it seems a common problem, I found an easy fix somewhere, just some small component, but with the postage from the US it worked out prohibitive so I've decided to put up with it. What gets me that it'll also have been doing it with the incandescents, just they didn't get hot enough to make any light.
Hmm, speaking of cfls, I had one die on me up at my house t'other day. Out with the hazmat suit again
