LED bulbs are coming down in price - do i want warm white or cool white, and why?

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Sure, and some cheap cfl's...

never make it to the advertised life. May not even make it to next week.

But, the whole lifespan thing makes little sense. Leaving a lamp on for 12 hours a day means it will take close to 12 years to get to 50,000 hours. You'll move, break the thing or get tired of it before then. It only makes sense in a commercial space where you pay a guy 15 bucks an hour to get to those 30' ceilings. And, yeah, in that timeframe all sorts of new things will come out and it's easier to decide to get new if your old one burned out. Note that if an equivalent cfl costs a buck and lasts a year while the led cost $12 and lasts 12, it's a wash.

And, yes, lifespan is median lifespan, meaning half will last longer and half less. To get that 50,000 hours now, you can torture the things, take them apart and examine them under a microscope, compare them to similar installations, and apply sophisticated statistical formulae to guess how long they'll last. But, it's still a guess.

LEDs are unquestionably the future and there's no good reason, except maybe initial cost, not to buy them now. I just don't like to overstate the case.