how far the LED's degrade...

I still have those Lights Of America branded LED bulbs laying around taking up space and decided to compare the one that ran the lumen maintenance test against one that I've never used at all and is still new from the package. They came in a package of 3 after all. I believe I commented in a previous post on a Few LED Lamps to Avoid how poor these lights lasted. I put them into a lamp here and tried to get a picture of just how dim it had become with only a couple weeks of use. The camera did it's best however to make it look much better than it was. The one on the left is the LOA lamp that had been on for the test, the one in the middle is a new one. The one on the left has become less than nightlight output. I still think it's a shame that they are overdriving the LED's or that poor design has let them overheat as the LED's themselves are the perfect color. A warm white LED seems to be a very difficult thing to make. There are no other led bulbs that I've played with that had this good a color temperature. But then I haven't played with the $100 60 watt can replacements yet that I believe may actually be useable because at $100 a piece I just can't make myself imagine they are an option for anybody seriously. But the price is coming down. These sorry bulbs were purchased at SAMS and I've noticed that wallmart has begun to carry some other LED bulbs. There are some offerings from GE that they carry now. On the test bed the last couple of weeks is a $40 GE PAR type bulb that uses 10 watts and has 4 high power LED's in it. It claims a color temperature of 3000k which is usable for high light areas but a life of only 20k hours and in reality I fear it will be much worse. The lamp gets really hot which makes me fear for the life of the LED's inside. LED's dont like to get much hotter than you can hold or it drastically reduces their life. So far just sitting on the desk shining down at my solder station though it doesn't seem to be falling too quickly. I will measure in a few more days and post the results. The bulb has no potential for dimming at all though which is a shame. They also carried a GE branded GUI10 bulb, this is a common type used in track lighting. I am playing with that too and was instantly disappointed by the color temperature, very blue 5000k'ish even though the packaging claims 3050k, there is no way that is accurate to within 2000k. It's a 4 watt bulb and if it weren't for the fact that it flickers horribly and the color temperature is useless it would be a good track light accent light. It also will let you dim it to almost nothing, but again the flickering becomes almost strobe like at lower dim levels. I'll post pictures when I do a review of the GE models soon. I'm not going to bother to do lumen testing of the track light as it's just not a viable lamp in it's current incarnation so whats the point, you wouldn't leave it connected long enough to degrade before you return it for flickering.