Christmas Lights - LED vs Incandescent

[LegendKiller]

So the marginal savings for LED lights isn't huge, maybe ~$12/mo for 6 hours with 700-1k lights. However, the cost for the lights is huge, LEDs cost 2-3x as much and, for such a short usage period, seem to make no sense, agree???

If they do make sense, which lights are best?

If they don't make sense, which incandescent lights are best?

I would prefer icicle lights and parallel lights so I'm not Clark Griswold.

Need some suggestions.

 

[Drako]

I started using LED lights outside about 5 years ago. The LED lights use 1/4 the power so I can string a lot more lights together on one circuit, and they last a lot longer and are more durable than the incandescent counterparts.

 

[BoomerD]

Some of the LED lights look good...others...not so much. Either they're too "intense looking," or the colors are just off.
Some of the blue ones are very nice though.

I look at them in the stores every year...and stick with my old incandescent lights.

 

[Nintendesert]

I have a mix, for the Christmas tree is use the LEDs since it's on the most. The colors though are ok, but not nearly as warm looking as the incandescent lights. I'm sure there are LED brands that have a warmer color to them, but that's really my only complaint. Being able to string a ton together is pretty nice.

The initial cost though is pretty bad, but long term it should work out since they are supposed to last longer and do use less power.

 

[LegendKiller]

I started using LED lights outside about 5 years ago. The LED lights use 1/4 the power so I can string a lot more lights together on one circuit, and they last a lot longer and are more durable than the incandescent counterparts.

The durability issue doesn't seem to be a big deal, mainly because you are only going to use them for a few hours a day for a month or two at most, per year.

Same issues with power, but the stringing idea is interesting, I didn't think of that.

What about the durability?

 

[Drako]

The durability issue doesn't seem to be a big deal, mainly because you are only going to use them for a few hours a day for a month or two at most, per year.

Same issues with power, but the stringing idea is interesting, I didn't think of that.

What about the durability?

The durability issue has more to do with the putting up and taking down, and dragging on the ground

The LED bulbs are not glass, so they don't break nearly as easly.

 

[Red Squirrel]

LED is way cheaper to run (a fraction of a watt per bulb vs like 7) but I find they arn't as bright, and have crappy rectifiers. One of these days I want to experiment though, I think you can feed them with DC, not only will it stop the 60hz flash that causes anyone with epilepsy within a 5 mile radius to have a seizure, but it will make them brighter as they are on constantly instead of half the time.

LED itself has improved a lot and there are some pretty bright LEDs out there (ex: phone camera flashes) but it seems the Christmas light manufacturers use the lowest quality ones.

I'm still a fan of C9's, though the bulbs burn out so fast and arn't all that cheap when you have like 10+ to replace.

Once LED lights improve I want to buy a whole bunch and go all out though. My outside circuit is 15 amps, may as well make good use of it.

I actually do use LEDs in my Christmas tree though, someone gave me a whole pile of the indoor mini lights, and figured what the hell. The flicker on them is actually not that bad either. I can live with it.

 

[SSSnail]

I like LCDs because I don't have to worry about which bulb burned out, like, ever.

 

[Drako]

I like LCDs because I don't have to worry about which bulb burned out, like, ever.

LCDs? Tell us more! :hmm:

 

[lupi]

LED strings that have no way of identifying a single bad bulb suck.

 

[LagunaX]

I recall my Dec power bill in California dropping from $300+ to less than $200 since swapping to LED's.

Less circuit shortages too since they use a lot less power.

Look less warm though...more of a cold white than warm white.

 

[SSSnail]

LCDs? Tell us more! :hmm:

In my countetree...

 

[Rubycon]

LED is way cheaper to run (a fraction of a watt per bulb vs like 7) but I find they arn't as bright, and have crappy rectifiers. One of these days I want to experiment though, I think you can feed them with DC, not only will it stop the 60hz flash that causes anyone with epilepsy within a 5 mile radius to have a seizure, but it will make them brighter as they are on constantly instead of half the time.

LED itself has improved a lot and there are some pretty bright LEDs out there (ex: phone camera flashes) but it seems the Christmas light manufacturers use the lowest quality ones.

I'm still a fan of C9's, though the bulbs burn out so fast and arn't all that cheap when you have like 10+ to replace.

Once LED lights improve I want to buy a whole bunch and go all out though. My outside circuit is 15 amps, may as well make good use of it.

I actually do use LEDs in my Christmas tree though, someone gave me a whole pile of the indoor mini lights, and figured what the hell. The flicker on them is actually not that bad either. I can live with it.

A Cree XML in a C9 drop in replacement would be nice. Use a good PWM so they can be dimmed, flashed, whatever. It would be expensive but they could be strobed super bright, visible for many miles!

 

[Mixolydian]

The main advantage IMO is reliability.

While I only have anecdotal evidence to support this, I used to have to replace incandescent Christmas lights ever single year - because they simply didn't work the next year. I've never had to replace a set of LED Christmas lights. They work year after year. They seem to be much less fragile than the classic light sets.

I use the Philips light sets. Never had a problem with them.

But yes they are much more expensive than incandescent light sets.

 

[Red Squirrel]

A Cree XML in a C9 drop in replacement would be nice. Use a good PWM so they can be dimmed, flashed, whatever. It would be expensive but they could be strobed super bright, visible for many miles!

One of these days I want to do some PWM stuff, with RGB strings so I can do any colour I want. Need to read up more on that, but I've seen pretty cool displays. Perhaps put some permanent LED strips all over the house then have different schemes for the seasons. :biggrin:

Would be awesome to have a bunch hanging in single strands from the tree too, like in Avatar. Mix them up into several channels, could be really fun to mess with.

 

[trmiv]

I prefer the way incandescents look by far. But I use LEDs in some areas where I need to string a ton of lights together. That's the biggest advantage of the LEDs for me.

 

[LegendKiller]

I need to string ~100' of icicle lights. My wife doesn't care which kind, but I was looking at a 300ct string of incandescents at 24'. I'd need ~4 of those, not even sure if I can string that much together in one string.

 

[Leros]

Don't get the cheap LEDs, they flicker which gives me a headache.

 

[Jeff7]

A Cree XML in a C9 drop in replacement would be nice. Use a good PWM so they can be dimmed, flashed, whatever. It would be expensive but they could be strobed super bright, visible for many miles!

And I suppose a string of those could double as landing lights for Santa.

 

[Doppel]

Cost savings of LED are a complete waste of time vs up front cost, particularly indoors where incandescent waste heat warms the living space.

I get LED for indoors now because they seem more reliable and incandescent cheap China crap never last long at all.

I bought some old school large lights for outdoors last year and incandescent were much cheaper, plus the LED probably wouldn't have been bright or as impressive anyway.

 

[Paperdoc]

To me, reliability - lifetime of the bulbs - is the real issue. We have a retail store and put a tree in the display window starting about now. The lights are on about 8 hours per day, 6 days per week, for maybe 6 weeks. It's small, but has about 4 or 5 50-lamp strings on it. Each year I go through them all and replace the burned-out ones, which takes a couple hours. I have found failure rates of about 40%! Over the Christmas season each year some bulbs burn out and, if I'm energetic, I'll search them out and replace. But it's awkward getting to them all in a tight window space. So by the end of the season, at least a couple of strings are not working.

At a 40% failure rate per year for 200 lamps, I was replacing 80 lamps each year (or more) and spending a couple hours at least fixing them all at the start of the season. (It is cheaper to buy new strings of lamps and just use them for spare bulbs than to buy packages of bulbs.) We are in the process of switching to LED strings instead. In another area we installed 2 strings of 50 LEDs along the top of a display wall and have left them on 24 / 7 since last year (except for power failures!). They are all working!

For my outdoor icicle lights on the front porch eaves, I switched to LEDs last year, saving the trouble and cold fingers it takes to find and replace burned-out bulbs all season. To me, that's a bigger issue than the savings on energy. But in the long run, they will save money there, too.

 

[rockyct]

Basically, it depends.

I've taken the last couple years off, but I typically have 30,000 lights on our house every Christmas synchronized to music. For my situation, LEDs have a lot of issues. A lot of Christmas lights enthusists use LEDs because they have much richer colors that don't fade and they can put 4 to 10 time the amount of lights on a circuit. However, they buy professional grade LED strings that have real rectifiers in them (strings you buy at the store almost never have them) and without a rectifier the lights have a really annoying 60 Hz flicker and aren't nearly as bright.

Most LED strings you buy at the store are garbage. LEDs don't burn out, they rust out on these strings. A properly driven LED will last 10k hours but of course they probably aren't probably driven either. You actually want to avoid strings of replaceable LEDs because if the bulb is not sealed, it will eventually rust. The desire for replaceable LEDs causes more issues than if they were sealed. You also have to take account the wear on the wire. Often times the wire itself comes loose in the socket and no longer makes contact with the bulb.

If you want solid colors, then LEDs are amazing. They don't fade and are only emitting color in that color spectrum. However, white or "clear" LEDs are a completely different issue. White LEDs are basically blue light with a pinch of yellow mixed in. As a result, the default white LED is actually quite blue. Warm or soft white LEDs are better as they try to mix in more yellow, but it's really hard to match the warmth of clear incandescent light. Another caveat, I'd avoid multi color LED strands because they mostly turn into just blue light. The blue LEDs usually end up being brighter and outshining the other colors, especially red.

You probably will never make up the cost of LEDs unless you live in an area with expensive power or leave them on all night. Incandescent strings are about $3-5 for 100 bulbs and LED strings are somewhere around $10 for 50 bulbs. I typically would get about three years per incandescent string, and much longer if I bothered to trouble shoot strings with this ( http://lightkeeperpro.com/ ).

 

[Old Hippie]

I've taken the last couple years off, but I typically have 30,000 lights on our house every Christmas synchronized to music

WoW! Color me impressed!

There's no way I would have the energy to put those up and take them down.

 

[slag]

So the marginal savings for LED lights isn't huge, maybe ~$12/mo for 6 hours with 700-1k lights. However, the cost for the lights is huge, LEDs cost 2-3x as much and, for such a short usage period, seem to make no sense, agree???

If they do make sense, which lights are best?

If they don't make sense, which incandescent lights are best?

I would prefer icicle lights and parallel lights so I'm not Clark Griswold.

Need some suggestions.

And that is the first, and hopefully last time I've ever heard anyone say they didn't want to be Clark Griswold. That man makes Ron Burgandy look like childs play.

 

[Exterous]

I like the LEDs for their bright colors and how they don't fade. We used to spend time matching up new incandescent strings with other new strings because the colors would be off from even 1 yr old lights. (That might not be the case with commercial lights)

The downside - that others have mentioned - is that they have a very cool or blue coloring to them. Some of the cheap ones are really (really) bad about this

LED is way cheaper to run (a fraction of a watt per bulb vs like 7) but I find they arn't as bright,

The first year we got ours we had several planes land in our yard thinking we were an airport runway