Home Depot-Lithonia LED Lights

[LI LT Owner]

I installed two of these bad boys in my 12x20 garage. Easy install and very powerful. Lights up the whole space very well.

$199 @ Depot = a bit higher than a 2x4 T8 fixture but a very nicely made unit.

 

[4xdog]

I like 'em! Lithonia makes good products from my experience.

Let us know how they do after a few months -- there shouldn't be any temperature effects, should there? Do they have a standard plug on the end or a wall wart? COO?

 

[LI LT Owner]

No, I had to hard wire them in. On the HD site, some people fitted the unit with a three prong plug and simply plugged them in.

 

[Dennis93]

Are the LED's soldered in? I almost bought the recessed LED lights until I found out they were soldered in. I ended up buying just the regular lights and replacing with LED bulbs in them. This was if and when the LED goes, I can just replace the bulb. A big part of me is skeptical about life when the CFL's that used to be the next best thing didn't last me one whole year out of the 7years+ I expected.

 

[Norcal]

Are the LED's soldered in? I almost bought the recessed LED lights until I found out they were soldered in. I ended up buying just the regular lights and replacing with LED bulbs in them. This was if and when the LED goes, I can just replace the bulb. A big part of me is skeptical about life when the CFL's that used to be the next best thing didn't last me one whole year out of the 7years+ I expected.

"Average life" is the point where during testing, 50% of the lamps fail, some will take a dump quickly & others last a long time.

LED's are still a new product & I do not buy the claims, I prefer not to be a beta tester.

 

[Junkman]

LED's have been used in traffic lights for about 4 or 5 years now. In the beginning, I noted that there were failing led's within the bulbs. Now, I noticed that all the ones that had failures have been replaced, and I rarely see any traffic lights that have a failed LED. I believe that the technology has improved greatly over the past few years. Just yesterday, I purchased a bunch of bulbs at Costco that are LED, since they had an instant rebate from the local electric utility company.

 

[2ManyProjects]

Are the LED's soldered in? I almost bought the recessed LED lights until I found out they were soldered in. I ended up buying just the regular lights and replacing with LED bulbs in them. This was if and when the LED goes, I can just replace the bulb. A big part of me is skeptical about life when the CFL's that used to be the next best thing didn't last me one whole year out of the 7years+ I expected.

"Average life" is the point where during testing, 50% of the lamps fail, some will take a dump quickly & others last a long time.

Correct. But the key point in this context is that this is ONLY a "statistical" average.

LEDs, very much like other forms of silicon-based solid-state electronics, tend to either fail very early in life (typically within the first few dozen hours of use), or last halfway to forever. As a result, relatively few units fail at anywhere near those "average" figures.

The manufacturers could virtually eliminate in-field failures, by extending the burn-in test during the production process; but this is not cost-effective for them (particularly now that production rates are ramping up rapidly and economies of scale have kicked in), and would drive the end-user prices up to prohibitive levels.

LED's are still a new product & I do not buy the claims, I prefer not to be a beta tester.

In the overall scheme of things, LEDs are remarkably reliable. The key to success, much like in any other context, is to NOT attempt to get away with THE absolutely cheapest product you can find. Now that LED technology has gotten "popular", there is strong demand for ever-cheaper products; and so at least some manufacturers will cut more corners than they really ought to in order to meet that demand. As always, you get what you pay for.

Case in point: Several years ago, very small small LED-based flashlights, similar to these:

started to appear. They were small enough to keep in your pocket (or even on your keychain), yet still provided an amazing amount of light relative to their size & weight; great to have handy. I bought one immediately after seeing a friend's in action; and I paid something like $12.00 for it, IIRC.

Because the concept was such a good one, everybody and his brother jumped on the bandwagon, and started producing ever-cheaper copycat products, culminating in the "two for three bucks, when on sale" Harbor Freight specials pictured above. Being so cheap, I eventually bought several more to stash anywhere and everywhere I could think of (glove compartments, toolchest drawers, bedside nightstands, etc.). Does it surprise ANYONE that more than one of them has already failed? At one point, I took one of the dead ones apart to investigate. Not surprisingly, it was NOT the LEDs themselves which failed; but rather, it was the very cheaply/poorly-built overall construction of the product which was to blame.

When you try that hard to squeeze the last few cents of production cost out of something, you WILL wind up making a piece of ****. Every time.