Ebay / Amazon LED bulbs tubes safety and quality

It's a pleasure to plan for your house for the next 20 years. I put it off again and again using the cheapest replacement stuff and hope that they will rot soon so I can do a proper job when come round to it.

I hate CFL, and much more when I notice that they contains mercury. For the 4 ft fluorescent tubes in the kitchen, they are hard to reach inside the ceiling. But CFL bulbs will be everywhere, many near the switch in lamps.

I brought a lot of good stuff online and particularly cheap from eBay. Then I worry about their safety. Here's my research after the fact. So I may be biased to make myself feel better.

LED can generate high energy beam a bit like laser (!). So if you are replacing over 100 watt bulbs, don't look at the tiny bright squares, or make sure they are well diffused by shade. The new squares are higher power and smaller. It's not more dangerous than looking at bright spots, and the sun is the extreme case. And for high power new round bulbs, they don't use tiny squares anymore but have a continuous coating on the bulb, which distributes light more even.

LED use semiconductor to generate blue light, then the yellow phosphorous coating turns the blue light into white light. There's no UV generated at any stage, or there's no significant source. CFL is basically a mercury lamp that generates UV. The white coating of a CFL turns the UV into white light. The problem is that the coating are seldom perfect, leaking UV.

The tiny square chips are probably made in Taiwan or S Korea. You can measure the size and know the chip model. They are made in huge lots and if there are problems you will hear about it in many different products.

The chips aren't that hot but they are tiny so they need huge heat sinks to draw the heat away to prevent the chip from frying. So I would think there's virtually no fire risk, just the risk of malfunction even if you seal off the bulb.

LEDs work on DC so there's a voltage adaptor inside each bulb or tube, like those of portable computers or many other electronics. Because the circuit is simple, cowboy factories in China could produce a finished product totally via trial and error without proper design. (I have used a battery charger with just a resistor inside.) However, I would think it's really hard to create a potential fault to generate a fire. And anybody with any common sense will put together something with popular chips and standard circuits.So I would test the bulbs extensively for the 1st few days and would not worry about it anymore, unless you have something high power that you have to leave unsupervised sometimes.

Also, bulbs and tubes are naturally well insulated, and they are out of touch. And most lamps have grounds.

Well, as for the quality, you can always return it if you "know" that it's not satisfactory. So avoid buying something from the far east when you have to pay for the return shipping, unless if you have to, and that you can tell if the device is good or bad right away. These merchants aren't trying to rip everybody off. I brought a few silent clock mechanism. One doesn't work after a couple of months and the seller just refunded me without needing to return the faulty one. One seller asked me for a picture of the faulty inkjet cartridge and then replace it without return. I also got free batteries because I complained that the battery is faulty but later I found out in fact it's my flashlight. The seller replaced it without me returning it.

First of all, many LEDs are not instant on, but they call it instant on even with a power on delay for a fraction of a sec to a sec. "Instant on" is a comparison to good old fluorescent tubes that flickers a bit before steady. I have a quick electronic starter so my old fluorescent tubes are almost instant on, faster than it's LED replacement.

Power on delay is probably due to the voltage adaptors. LEDs are instant. I also think that energy efficient bulbs are more likely to have a delay. I have very cheap energy star rated CFLs from IKEA that are almost instant start, but you can barely see anything until a minute later.

Power on delay is something you can get use to it, especially if the bulb is half the price and it saves more energy. But imagine that you rush to the bathroom in the middle of the night, flip the switch and shoot, only to find out that you did it too soon before you see the target.

The previous owner of the house (or the builder) put an energy saving compact fluorescent tube in the bathroom inside the master bedroom. It was at least a decade old CFL. It flickers a lot before it lights up. I swear I will open up that odd thing in the bathroom ceiling when it stops working. I don't even know that it's a CFL. It never stopped working.

I gave up on flipping the switch. When I can see something after the flickering, I would have finished or I couldn't afford to wait. So I often shoot in the dark.  That's only half the bathroom with only the toilet in it.

As for the brightness, you can tell if you put the old bulb side by side. The color temperature is a big deal but only in reviews to persuade you to buy more expensive bulbs. If you want to match your other incandescent bulbs you need the same color temperature range and CRI of near 100%. If you replace everything with LEDs, they will probably match if you buy the same brand, use the same technology (eg, yellow square) and at the same color temp range.

Honestly I don't give a fuss about the color temperature. For the kitchen or workspace you may want anything daylight (with sun) or cool white (cool than sunny daylight with overcast). It's also best for makeup since one need to look good at least when going out under the sun. In other case warm white is more relaxed but how warm doesn't make a lot of difference to the eye comfort. I know your million dollar home is designed to look best for incandescent lighting. But then it have to look at daytime right? So the CRI is really a fuss for nothing.

The power used and the efficient really doesn't matter that much. If the running cost is $1 a year, what's the difference can it made? Especially when the bulb is half the price? I know it's not as green as it can be but you have done your part by looking at the specs. There's nothing you can do if the seller misreport by 10%. Also, if the bulb is affordable, doesn't need 20 years to break even, you are already doing something good by buying it now.

I hate CFL's. I only brought them when my old bulbs went out. I discovered that I can hear them, everyone of them.

But I hate my 4 ft fluorescent tubes more, there are four of them in the kitchen.  Seldom all 4 of them works. I have a quick starter so they are almost instant on and seldom flickers. But only if they works. I suspect that the quick starter reduced the life of tubes a lot. I can see black burnt marks every where near the connectors. And that the paint on the metal housing directly above the tubes have some sort of heat pattern.

When the tubes are near fail, it takes minutes for any tube to become bright, if only at all. At those times I never know if I should replace the decade old starter or just new cheap tubes, or new expensive tubes. Until I saw affordable LED replacements. Now I don't hear the tubes at all and I hope I don't need to open the ceiling anymore for the next 20 years.

Now, if only they can make the fridge shut up.