CFL lifetime

When the ban of incandescent light bulbs came into effect, common argument against that was the lifetime if CFLs (and later, LEDs) that were to replace them were as short as incandescents, or even shorter.

It took a while (a long while), but now I got some anecdotal evidence on that argument.

We've lived in this house for over 10 years now, and we have never changed the outside lights (four of them in total). Until now. One of them had gone bad. A 11-watt CFL. The glass tube seems that have neatly broken at one point and let magic smoke out, or something to that effect. Other three identical CFLs are still going strong.

So these things have been out there for at least 10 years, in varying weather from -40 degrees C to +30 degrees C. Possibly over 20 years, even. During that time we've had some half dozen other CFLs in the house that, granted, have been used more, but so far none of them has broken.

Going back even more, I got my first larger apartment around 2003 or so. At that time I bought a light fixture to kitchen that I still have (some plastic parts have gone bad since, though). For that fixture I bought a CFL bulb that is still in use. So that would be 15 years, and that one has been used a lot during that time, considering that is has been in the kitchen, and lately, in my office kitchen/break room where it gets easily 6+ hours of use a day in winter (much less in summer, of course). I'd say that I've gotten far more "bang for a buck" out of CFLs, all in all, than ever from incandescents.

Now, that being said, CFLs have other issues, like some brightening very slowly, but lifetime certainly isn't one of their weak aspects.

Now, LEDs, so far, seem to be be falling in middle. At the moment we have maybe 10 LED bulbs around here, with maybe half being dimmable and oldest being somewhere between 5 and 8 years old (no firm anchor point on time for those like for CFL examples above, you see). So far one has failed (and I did open it and post here too, and once again semi-clever topic names bite me in the back as I can't find the post right now). Still, quite many hours of use we've gotten out of those, too.

I, for one, won't be missing incandescent lights, except maybe in color rendering purposes for photography. For that I'll keep some in spare. But I wouldn't be surprised even if that situation were to change in near future too.