Lasts 50,000 hours! it says on the box.
Guys...when was the last time you saw anything made, especially in the US, that lasts 50,000 hours?
The light emitting diode..yeah, it will last 50,000 hours. There's really no extra manufacturing to make them do that it's just what they are.
But there's no way in hell the manufacturer is gonna make the driver (power converter for the bulb) last that long. Like everything, it's manufactured to fail at a certain point. I'm gonna sell you a light bulb that lasts the rest of your life? Quick way to go out of business. Oh no sir, you're gonna come back and buy some more.
You wanna make bulbs last?
Dimmer switches.
When you turn on a light, or anything electrical, there's an inrush of current that far exceeds what the product is rated for. It only lasts for a brief moment, so quick that most electrical meters won't even register that.
But it happens.
For easy math, lets say you have a bulb rated at 120 watts. That's 1 amp of power. When you flip the switch, that bulb is gonna see 10,12,15 amps of inrush current for just a brief millisecond or two. Compare it to starting your car every morning and it redlines for a second before it comes back to idle.
You ever notice that the bulb always fails when you turn the light
on? POP...and shes done. That was the time it got tired of dealing with the inrush current and it finally let go.
A dimmer switch, when used to gently turn on a light from dim to bright, prevents that large shock of inrush current. I have regular old-timey incandescent bulbs going on 15 years in my house.
I have dimmer switches on every fixed light in the house.
If you wanna go with some dimmer switches, the bulb and switch have to be compatible to work with each other. You just can't slap any ol' dimmer switch in there or use any bulb with it, especially with newer cfl's and led's. So read the box and be sure the product will do what you want it to do.
And if you wanna dim a bunch of lights with one switch, the switch has to be rated to carry the total ampacity of all the lights.
So there ya go. Now get back to work you homo's.