Really now 50,000 hrs have you or anyone you know run them that long ???? just saying also out of curiosity how would these fair in green house humid area's after time ?????
again know one really knows are these cobs actually designed for high VPD area's or made for actual growing ??? or is it some stoner with knowledge and time figured out hey these will work but actual company cree made them not for green houses but for hall way lighting lol where they will never see high heat or humidity again just saying ..
I think i make valid points in all above
Truth is
The life span which Cree (for example) claims basically means that at that point, their fixture will be emitting at least 70% of the amount of its original brightness.
So yes, they will dim- in varying amounts.
The nice thing is though, for them to make that claim is warranty will be long gone well before the 50k hour time frame, right
But it's a good question. How can we really test the 50k hour claim? The way I figure, I go with the trusted companies-
Even then though, someone can be using Cree's or the best bins etc but if they build a crappy fixture around it, all of Cree's quality will be practically meaningless.
So with that said you know anyone that has pushed there cob units 50 k hrs YET ?? thats 2083 days 6 years
awe yeah shits not been out that long ,,
As i am new to this cob led area Don't claim that you can surely say that you will not see degradation in Cobs That is being ridiculous... even if using them at lower power or dim able cause then again i am no scientist but in theory as spectrums are also referred to kelvin temps your 4000 K so called cob unit running at half power may be infact not 4000 k unit right ????
Many or most of the white LEDs use a phosphor. It is the phosphor that degrades with time and use.
Now to my understanding yes EVEN CREE CHIP ON BOARD or as many call it COB use phos coated Disc's ??????
But all lamps do this to some degree. The phosphors in fluorescent lamps also degrade and their light declines over time. Incandescents' envelopes darken as the tunsten boils off the filament and deposits on the cooler envelope, and this blocks some of the light output. (This effect is reduced but not eliminated in halogen lamps).
Falling light output is inevitable with all lamps, to one degree or another. Perhaps it is more significant in LEDs because of their very long theoretical life.
However, note that the 40k or 50k hour LED life rating is always an average. LED lamps may fail prematurely, just as compact fluorescents do. Other than the outright cr@p that you buy on Ebay and at fly by night online retailers, we are probably not seeing too much of this early failure yet because until recently LEDs have been expensive, limited production items.
As LED production is increased and transferred to China and other low-wage nations, and as price competition heats up, cost cutting will become more common and quality will decline. Then we are likely to see more premature LED failures. Consumers will complain about 50k hour rated LEDs that last only a few thousand hours, even though some of their other LEDs last 100k hours or more. That is the way people are.