Has anyone experience the Cree light bulbs with the 10 year warranties failing? I’ve got 3 that died all at the same time. Trying to decide if I want to bother with it, given that I have to snail mail the light bulbs to them,
LED lightbulbs fail because they overheat. Check to make sure that your installation has PLENTY of ventilation / heat dissipation.
If your lights have fans on them, throw them away and buy better lights… the fans are 1/100 of the total cost of the light and are always the part that fails first… of course resulting in a cascade failure of the light and driver shortly after.
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@Ian_Jaeger Hi Ian. They were in open receptacles. I think they were just poorly made, being Cree’s first consumer batch at less than $20 each. They have huge heat sinks on them.
But back to the original question - has anyone dealt with Cree warranty returns?
I have had bad luck with both Cree & Feit. I haven’t tried the warranty on either though.
I just want my incandescents back.
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I had a 75W first-gen equivalent die. Wasn’t in an enclosed fixture, unlike some cheaper bulbs I’ve abused as such for years without failure. Home Depot didn’t want to help and I didn’t have the receipt so I opted to go for some of the newer, quasi-disposable GEs.
I think that first generation came at an awkward time for Cree. Their pricing was a little too aggressive relative to their cost structure, so they had QC problems. They were on the cusp of the current generation of far more thermally rugged LEDs that don’t demand such massive heatsinks. And like domestic CFL producers, offshore labor costs quickly ate their lunch. A shame the market shops retail price first and foremost since cheap upfront cost usually comes at the expense of far greater backend operating costs, but those electrical bills are far away from that purchase cost and summer AC costs dwarf lighting, so not all that surprising.
Never tried with Cree.
Can say, though, I generally regard “warranties” to be less valuable than the paper they’re written on. Especially if you read them and it requires the consumer to SHIP anything, which they (seemingly) always do.
Just walk away and try to learn from it (what, I’m not sure).
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Just a note about LED lamps. If you read the literature with the bulb, if any, they are normally required to be mounted facing up so the threads are on the bottom. The driver electronics are in the base of the bulb. If you mount them base up, the electronics overheat and fail.
Electrolytic capacitors are the weakness of many a LED bulb. No other type capacitor offers the requisite combination of high capacitance, low volume, and low cost. Their downside is reduced thermal tolerance relative to the temperatures that LED bulbs are likely to see in the wide variety of incandescent fixtures. There are higher grades of electrolytic capacitor that can withstand the heat for longer, but their typical lifespan is still shorter than the expected lifespan of the LEDs themselves.
This weakness is a non-issue in even middling fixtures purpose-built for LED, but homeowners are curiously loathe to perform fixture swaps, thus the Edison socket endures.
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We have a purpose built LED fixture that started shutting off about 10 min after being turned on, about 2 years after being installed.
Be happy they don’t use tantalum caps. Those things burn like matches when they develop internal shorts!
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at least they’d do their job another few moments, AND we’d get a show!
And a house burning down…
Shhh! Nobody tell @uglyknees that will bring the firemen to her house…
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Actually sitting beside a failed Cree I’m going to RMA today. First failure since switching over 3 years ago. Considering the typical burn rate I was seeing with my incandescents plus energy costs, I’ve saved a little over double the price of this bulb so far – assuming I can’t get an RMA, it would still seem to pay for itself. I’ll let you know how it goes.
(Also not sure what generation mine are; they might be later than G1. Copyright/trademark date on it is 2014; that mean anything to anyone?)
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I recall 3 distinct generations of Edison-base products from Cree:
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First/Second Gen : To the consumer these are pretty much the same. Released circa 2014. Heavy metal heatsink base with encapsulated glass globe; went through more than two iterations despite Cree’s designations. Principal differences being beefier heatsinks and varying internals; second-gen product benefited from DFM and automated production with markedly better QC. Followed the general profile of a typical Edison socket bulb but the heatsink exceeded the envelope. “Light tower” internals to vaguely approximate the look of a diffused incandescent lamp with 10-20 individual LED packages depending on wattage equivalence and color temperature (at this point, lower CCTs and higher CRI products required more LED packages). Gone from the market for ~2 years now. If you have a bulb from 2014 this is probably it.
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4Flow : On the tail of the Philips “ping pong paddle” that Cree mocked in some of their advertising while using a similar design concept, this bulb omits external heatsinking altogether utilizing large areas of unetched PCB cladding thermally fused with the LED slugs as heatsink. 8 total LED packages regardless of wattage; likely 4 die per package. Identical profile to Edison socket bulbs with ventilation holes top and bottom. Last I saw of these was the “connected” implementation circa late 2016 / early 2017. Notably, the warranty on this generation was reduced from the 10 years of the first and second generation products, however they were also much cheaper.
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Current Gen : I don’t own any of these but have eyed them at the Home Despot a few times. These appear to have a plastic housing around the base of the bulb with a plastic diffusing globe. Heatsinking likely limited to unetched PCB cladding similar to the 4Flow, only wholly within the envelope. Profile identical to an Edison socket bulb. No apparent ventilation holes. This generation looks to continue the drive towards a lower-cost-of-production product depending on greater LED efficiency and markedly greater thermal tolerance - if the LEDs can cook in isolation of the power electronics then it’s possible to hit design life (25k hours) without large heatsinks or even significant air exchange.
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Any thoughts on 16 Philips bulbs for $21? Price sounds great.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CAL1EMY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
Let’s supposed one of those homeowners was, in fact, too loathe to change said fixture, wherein base-up deployment was a requirement, would you speculate on how might one modify the fixture, if one were willing, to better achieve expected electronic lifetimes?
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It’s been a while since I’ve seen literature from manufacturers specifically advising against base-up installation. Some of the second-tier brands - Feit, Commercial Electric, Utilitech, Sylvania - still recommend against enclosed fixtures.
At a pre-tax price of less than two bucks per bulb from Philips, is it really important to maximize lifespan? Even Cree has dropped to the five dollar mark.
However, were one interested in fixture modification, the fixture itself would dictate the approach:
- Airflow - no matter how modest - is beneficial for solid-state electronics. If there’s a diffuser, globe, jelly jar over the bulb that’s not particularly necessary or you can live without, remove it. If it’s somehow possible to introduce ventilation - particularly vertical ventilation - consider that as well. I’ve got a porch light in one of these; I would be advised to remove the glass globe rather than torturing the poor Feit/Utilitech/Ecosmart/whatnot (got it for free, unmarked) bulb to a slow hot death rather than blithely assuming that because it’s got a big heatsink base and a similar bulb has survived ~6 years continuous operation in a nearly-enclosed fixture that it’s going to be fine.
- Orientation as we’ve been discussing can also help with some models of bulb. If it’s possible to re-orient the bulb, do so. Inversion would be preferable, but horizontal is also an improvement. Not always an option, and as I discovered with a massive (visibly deflected the metal bracket holding the socket!), pricey 3M bulb a few years back mounted horizontally it still doesn’t prevent some failures.
- Better bulbs (admittedly a bit out of scope) avoiding the cheap store brands (Feit, Commercial Electric, Utilitech, EcoSmart, Lighting Science Group, Sylvania, Great Value, etc) and ~6-month halflife brands on the 'bay and the 'zon that compete on price while offering miraculous performance is usually a good idea. Some LED bulbs are specifically designed for use in recessed fixtures such as the various can lights; they cost upwards of $20 each but have been engineered to both withstand the heat and channel them out via the decorative trim as best they can.
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I have a bathroom fixture that I believe still has two bulbs in it from the 70s. The fixture takes six bulbs total. I cannot tell you how many LEDs and CFLs that I have replaced in the last few years in that fixture but those two 40 year old bulbs are still kicking. So glad we as a society went with a better alternative…
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Bought a four pack of Crees once. 3 were dead within a month. Never again.
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