Hey all,

Since the demise of the halogen lamp for general use here in the states 3 years ago, I've been using led filament bulbs to try and replicate that feeling of incandescent lamps and chase that high I can no longer get. Problem is, the damn things fail after about a years worth of time. They all tend to go out the same way, slight flickering at first before they fully resort to a failed state wherein they glow dimly and have a 2-3 second period of continuing to glow after being shut off. I've tried 2 different kinds of ecosmart lamps and some 2025 vintage Philips warm glows all failing like this well before their allotted 13-15 year lifespans. Is there any brand that actually lasts or am I out of luck? At least it isn't all integraded led stuff I use.

You could hunt for bulk NOS lamps on ebay. Otherwise I am not sure.

Problem is, the "screw in bulb" is maybe the most LED-hostile format in existence. Rather high intensity on small space, light emission in all directions, means there is not much space where to dissipate the heat. Filament concept works well, but only limited power, like up to 8W for really largeR SIZE bulb. And only when the fixture really allows free cooling air movement around the bulb, so open fixtures only.
With enclosed fixtures the limit is at about 4W, so we are at barely 600lm with the most efficient LEDs on the market (the power figure includes the driver losses), so not that much of light output.

Way better performance you get from purpose built LED lanterns (assume decent design and build quality, so likely not the cheapest trash on the market), but these tend to use propriatery parts, so hard to fix once fails, so you need a completely new lantern.
So more of a "creating a new installation", not a "what to put into existing fixture" thing.

I’m not sure either. Not sure if this helps, but I have been using Ecosmart lamps as of late, though they are just regular ones, most being 2700K, one 3000K, and two 5000K.

I have a 2700K snowcone from 2020 that is has just about five years of use in a table lamp, used about three hours a day, but after that generation they made them even lighter, which I don’t like. They still had weight then that gave somewhat of an assurance on how quality would be but now they feel light as a feather unfortunately. I have two other snowcones in use, a 2700K in a closet light (installed in 2023 I think), and 5000K in a garage light (installed in 2022 I think) and those have been working good.

Their filament lamps have been good to me as well. I know you said you tried them but I’m not sure if you tried the ones I used (regular ones). I have some 2700K 60w (closet light) and 100w equivs (floor lamp) installed in December of 2023 and they have been going strong no issues. Along with a 100w equiv 3000K (installed in mid 2023 I believe, room light) and a pair of 5000K versions (outside lights that are D2D, Oct 2023 and Aug 2025). The October 2023 one is a notable one as before that, I was installing Feit filament LEDs and literally the longest I got one of those in those outside lights was a year and a half, no joke, and started getting those in 2018 (dumb I know).

As @HomeBrewLamps says, sourcing older LED lamps might be your way to go. I have 2700K 65w equiv GE BR30s and Feit BR30s from 2018 (kitchen), another from 2021 (kitchen sink), and Feit G25 40w and Great Value 40w equiv (2018, most of the GVs had failed over the years except two, bathroom), and the best ones, a pair of Feit Electric 85w equiv BR30s in 5000K, that have run D2D since January 2019 with no issues. I haven’t had failures from the lamps mentioned above except for the GVs. The only mass failures I had were with the Feit A19 60w and 100w equiv filament LEDs. The longest I got from one of those was I think three years, in a garage opener light out of all places. People trash on Feit but I have great experiences with some of their older LED lamps.

Home Depot is closer to where I live so that’s been where I’ve been getting my LED lamps lol. Can’t say anything about the other brands.

With halogen lamps like any incandescents, small variation in power leads to huge variation in life. (Near the rated power, not in very dimmed states where the halogen cycle may do some villekulla). So just a little not too noticable dimming may resolve your lamp life problem



Failing other lamp formats, car headlights (H7 etc) are also halogen, fairly good performance and quality for what they are, and i dont think are banned anywhere

They have shorter rated life than "home" halogens, but if the other halogens you can use are of bad quality, a car lamp may outlast them even at full power

Same dimming vs. life consideration applies. You could run the lamps with a plain transformer or a switching power supply. The "metal mesh box" type ones have a small pot to calibrate the voltage, essentially a dimmer for your application

24V (truck) lamps are a little higher power than 12V ones for the same lamp format



With LEDs i have not seen any integrated luminaires that are even remotely acceptable

With screw in lamps there are 2000K-ish filaments (probably ordinary 2700K filaments inside, but the glass has a golden color to it). Those do reduce the blue light content to nearly none, they have fairly pleasant light, but fairly dim

Lamp life : The big names are not really avaliable in my area. I have had mostly good life with Eurolux (a local brand name which you probably dont have there anyway, they are "the better ones of the made in China" sort of lot), but not without some hit and miss too

In one case i have replaced the same lamp in the same socket 4 times in 4 successive days (each one of the first three lasted less than an hour cumulatively), the 4th one (which looks identical) lasted 7 years so far and keeps going...

The problem is that the vast majority of home users seem to be entirely satisfied with this extreme short life. LED filament lamps became so cheap as a throwaway item, like old incandescent bulbs.  Almost nobody keeps the receipts and files a complaint when they fail after more than about 3 months - so the manufacturers seem to be cutting costs further and further to identify the sweet spot where profits are highest, before the cost of poor quality begins to grow too high.

A few years ago one big brand became famous in Europe for its basic range sold in cheap stores - these barely lasted 500-1000 hours despite their reduced 6000h claim.  That really was too short, and presumably attracted a lot of criticism because they seem to have been dropped now, only the claimed 15,000 hour range continues.

The only way this will change is if consumers start sending a signal to manufacturers that life is too short, by making formal complaints.  So I would urge you to take back all your failed lamps to wherever you bought them and demand free replacements.  Only a relatively small number of people have to do this before it is noted, and this really does make a difference.

In terms of finding a better lamp, I am not so familiar with the USA ranges but suspect you would do better to try a brand that serves mainly the wholesale and professional markets than retail-focussed.  Here in Europe I can genuinely say that the lamps from my company Sylvania do genuinely achieve their full rated life, I see the actual lifetest results both free-burning as well as at maximum rated ambient temperature.  We have to, because our focus is mainly on lamps for industrial and commercial applications with only a very small retail presence, and the big customers really do complain as soon as they detect early failures.  We also rate the life not only at 25C, but have a tough internal requirement that a certain minimum life must also be achieved at maximum rated ambient temperature, because that’s how lamps are so often used.

In all these designs I hardly ever come across actual filament failures these days, it is almost always the driver or the connection points that fail.  The drivers were radically simplified a couple of years ago with just 3-4 components, and so much power in the control IC’s that they simply run too close to their thermal limits.  It is very common now for the IC junction temperature to be running close to 150C even before you install the lamp in a fixture.  We try to leave a little more headroom to compensate for that.  In the 120V lamps I can imagine the problems are worse because current is doubled for a given power rating, and driver heat losses increase with the square of the current.

What you could also try is to buy the more efficient ~200lm/W 50k hour lamps.  These achieve their high efficacy partly due to the drivers which are typically over 99% efficient.  Those run considerably cooler, and naturally have longer life. 

I only have a single ultra efficient 200lm/w lamp (Philips, 230v) and it runs very cool. But the light it produces is color-wise comparable to a 29/530 fluorescent lamp. A very dirty greenish yellow. The shift away from the white point is visible in their own data sheets' color coordinate information. 
Technically better color rendering but the hue is somewhat similar. I don't know if they're all like that from all brands, but these things are only usable as security or utility light in non-living spaces.

So far i've had good experiences with Osram/Ledvance/Philips LED lamps. But because they last so long, the experience i have is with lamps of many years ago. In the 5 years since i bought them, the design might have changed multiple times already.

The current LED lamps i run are only a year old by now. No failures. But it'll be a few more years before i can say anything about the 2024-2025 generation of their LED lamps.

K-lite (Philips) has been horrible to me. Once Philips switched away from their purple-and-white toned packaging, quality turned to crap. Any modern glass K-lite product WILL fail within a year.

For example, I installed 6 Philips high-CRI, high-efficiency WarmGlo glass LEDs. Lo and behold, 5/6 examples failed within a 6 month span. The previous Ledvance 8.5W Snowcones? 6 years. And I only replaced them because they were starting to dim out.

My advice is to source NOS products from the likes of Philips, Osram-Sylvania, Feit, and even TCP. Because the modern stuff is simply not good. The best luck I've had with modern LED products are Ledvance's line of A19 glass and snowcone LEDs.

All of our "legacy" LEDs are still lighting, 10 years later at this point. FEIT 11.5-13.5W BR30s in the white-and-gold 4pks are in every recessed can in the house and REFUSE to fail. Etc.

I would go for something old enough to still be built to a good standard, and something new enough so it at least makes ~70lm/W.

Oh, and right as I was typing this out, the middle Philips SceneSwitch flickered wildly and then went out. Quite poetic.

Last year i bought (for a bulk price of 1 ILS/lamp) the entire remaining stock of REALLY old MR16 LED lamps from my wholesaler. Anything from a bunch of 5mm LEDs in an MR16 housing (some are in fact glass ones from Halogen production), to the somewhat later ones with finned aluminum body and 3..4 "1W" LEDs in the front. I have not put any of them to a life test (and dont plan to)

Back in the day those and similar lamps had lifespans in the order of 3..8 years. Faiure modes were usually due to capacitors :

The lamps with many 5mm LEDs were virtually all powered by an X capacitor ballast. The most common failure was EOL of that capacitor by repeated fault clearing, which would make the lamp go dim as it ages. Some had also single LEDs fail (possibly due to current spikes during the capacitor faults ?)

The ones with higher power LEDs do have a small switching power supply inside. Most of those would fail from failing electrolytic capacitors and sometimes from LED failures as well

Virtually all new LED lamps i see fail are LED failures - Be it in filament lamps, snow cones, tubes, or the lower end of integrated luminaires

Snow cones i haven't seen any that last for a reasonable time OR put out good light. To me they are as good as "a lamp for temporary use without risk of glass to smash". With this said, i have some stock of snow cones i got for this exact use in a festoon string. (Globalux, the cheapened down version of Eurolux from the same company, but still a whole lot better than the $1-grade ones)

On the good side - i have a 4W E14 golfball filament, that had been running for its 5th year of 24*365 in a large enclosed globe. (recently taken out of service due to moving things around and intentions to repurpose the globe for something else, the lamp is still good)

I've had really good luck with MaxLite. Their LED offerings seem to be quite good. I installed three of the 75W equivalent A19s in my aunt's ceiling fan about 5 years ago, and they've been holding up extremely well despite extremely heavy use. GE's Classic line of filament lamps are decent too. Stay away from Feit.