Today's "What Gets My Goat" - NO POLITICS!

[Fazerider]

[... The LED fluorescent replacement tubes are not very bright and they don’t seem to last any longer than fluorescents, though at least the fittings last almost forever as it’s 240 straight onto the LED tube.  But what I notice at work is when they try to save on price by buying cheap, the reality is it costs them a fortune.

That’s surprising. I replaced the two 4’ fluorescents in my kitchen with LED tubes a few weeks ago and feel like I need sunglasses in there.


The cheap bulbs are downright dangerous as well as short-lived. Some I got off ebay had fake CE markings (spacing between the letters wrong) so I took a look at the circuit and realised that if one of the LEDs went open-circuit the capacitor which was rated at 35V would have about 10x that across it. Sure enough, a few months later the lamp died and a minute later there was a bang which blew the top off leaving exposed mains dangling out.