The Benefits of LED Lights

The benefits of LED lights has come up a few times this week but one posting confused me. Someone suggested that there's no need to carry extra LED bulbs but, instead, to stock extra batteries. I may have misunderstood. I understand that LEDs are a brighter light and last longer than traditional bulbs, and they appear to be more durable but are they indestructible? Wouldn't we want to ere on the side of caution and have extra bulbs just in case?

No They are not indestructible They are little chunks of glass that can easily shatter or chip with just the right bump. What makes them tougher is that they are Solid chunks of glass around the diode instead of a hollow bulb. Stocking a few extra LED bulbs for certain flashlights would be an expensive task and most LED lights are near impossible to replace the bulbs in. LED Maglites are the best bet to stock up on Spare bulbs in either LED or incandescent styles. If I recall the spare bulb in LED Sold Maglites are still Incandescent ones.

EDIT: I Also forgot to mention Trying to find the proper LED bulb for most basic LED based inexpensive flashlights would be a difficult task.

LED bulbs aren't bulbs at all

Apart from units that are ment to replace the incandescent bulb in "old fashioned" lights (example, another example) I have yet to see any LED light where you can exchange the "bulb" without special tools. The LED is rated for 50.000 hours or so, or about 5 - five - years of continuous light. The typical classical incandescent light bulb will give up at the first hard knock, no matter what the life span on the package says.

The LED will die if it gets too hot or if too much current flows through it (usually because it then will overheat).

The most vulnerable part of a LED light isn't typically the LED, but the on-off switch and the electronics that control how much current the LED receives.

MostlyHarmless,

I dont think maglites need and form of tool to replace the LED's and I have come across a few that use a two hole method that the prongs of the LED bulb slip into thus only needing to pull out and slip in a new one. If I recall the Maglites LED's and Nighteyes LED's are the traditional endcap style.

LED technology is a huge step forward in lighting, primarily in dependability. For all practical purposes, you can forget about spare bulbs, and you will get much longer run times from LEDs, compared to incans. This means that batteries, and hence, lights, can be much smaller and still be practical.

When caving back in the days of incandescent lights, I would follow the standard directive and have three separate sources of light, all of which were fairly bulky and not really all that reliable. Nowadays, I often routinely EDC at least three sources of light - a AAA keychain light, a small AA on my belt, and at least one photon style clipped somewhere on my backpack or briefcase. All of them together are less bulky and lighter than just one of the C or D powered incans I used to carry, are more dependable, just as bright, and have longer run time. I wouldn't hesitate to use either the AAA or the AA on an all night hike, if necessary.

There are improvements in batteries and the build qualities of the lights themselves,so that lights now are light years ahead of those available only a few years ago.

LEDs are replaceable with some difficulty. There is a whole section of flahlight "modding" over at candlepower forums, well
worth a visit. There are also retrofit LED modules for upgrading popular incans,like Maglites. These are the ones with the two pin connectors. They are often a practical way to upgrade a favorite old light.

There are several different types of LEDs on the market and it is a rapidly changing technology. The newest offerings are considerably brighter with the same run time than what was available only a few years ago. The candlepower dudes track and discuss these developments endlessly. They are just as compulsive as we are.

My EDC surefire E1e with KL-4 LED head is over 7 years old now and I haven't needed to replace the LED portion yet....and this is a light they gets used almost daily. With that being the case, I haven't found it necessary to carry a spare LED portion, just batteries.

With that being the case, it is still a good idea to have spare complete LED flashlights around. Modern flashlights are getting smaller and smaller for their output, so it's getting easier and easier to misplace them.

It's easier to have multiple levels of output with an LED light, which is handier than you might think. The flashlights I use the most can run for thirty days continuously on the lowest level. I use "moonlight" mode as a nightlight for my kids in their tent, or for moving around without waking my wife in ours.

Other than overheating (which is easy to avoid if you're not modding your light) anything that breaks the emitter will almost certainly destroy the light. I wouldn't bother carrying an extra emitter, even for C and D-cell MagLEDs which are very easy to replace.

Incans tend to have a warmer tint and therefore render color more accurately.

LED assemblies are available for replacement but usually the replacement is designed to do different things.



A cheap P6 drop in Ultrafire WF-502B which can take various drop in modules such as incandescent, Luxeon LEDs (cheap single mode emitters), Cree LED emitter of all various colours such a White, cool White, warm White, RED, BLUE, Infra Red and UV etc. There are also more powerful LED x4 emitters known as MCE and P7s. These are basically 4 LEDs packaged into the same LED housing.

The actual drop in modules consists the Aluminium reflector (which can be removed) the bottom contact spring (which can be removed) to leave the LED and electronic driver circuit housing.

The electronic driver circuit will allow the LED to be driven at various amperages and timings to produce a very flexible flashlight.

For flashlights such as the much larger Maglite C and D models direct LED bulb replacements can be purchased to replace the incandescent bulbs. A backup LED bulb can be held in the base of the Maglite C and D models but not the AA and AAA models. I have a 1 Watt LED in the front of a 4D Maglite and a 3W as a replacement if I need more light.

LEDs are very robust by comparison to incandescent bulbs, the failure for most of the cheaper flashlights such as the one shown above will be due the standards of construction i.e. poor soldering on the bottom clicky switch and within the driver circuit. I will always strip down these cheaper flashlights clean them up and inspect them then reassemble them. I haven't had many problems so far.

In the incan AA Maglites there was bulbs in the screwcap are the LEDs to big for them?

Any possible shortcomings of an LED bulb are easily overcome by redundancy - carry or have access to a few lights. I amused a fire fighter the other day when escorting some fire victims into their darkened house to retrieve stuff. I can't see, do you have a flashlight? Here, take mine. Do you have another, asked the second victim. Sure, here you go, and I pulled out my third light for myself. The fire fighter got a kick out of having so many spares, but LEDs are like potato chips, you can't just stop at one.

New LED Maglite no longer have spare bulbs, that include the C and D lights.

LED's for all practical purposes are pretty close to being physically indestructible. The smaller 5mm ones are a diode encased in a solid chunk of plastic, nothing short of a hammer blow directly on it can break it. The higher power ones are designed a bit differently, but as long a they're contained within a flashlight head I can't see how one could be destroyed under normal use. They are relatively impervious to shock and vibration, the main causes of failures for incandescents.

However, while the LED is physically durable, they're more sensitive to other forms of failure such as thermal or current overload. This is why you might see some LED failures on the cheaper multi-led flashlights, because the LED's are not being powered equally. Also, the electronics needed to drive the them may not be as reliable as the LED's themselves, so that's another consideration

I personally wouldn't bother stocking spare bulbs for and LED flashlight, there really isn't a need. The technology advances so quickly that by the time you need it (if ever) it'll probably be obsolete. I'd carry a complete flashlight as a spare instead, because if your flashlight does fail, chances are it's probably something other than the LED. That's the thing about failure modes, it will always find the weakest link. With the invention of the LED's, the bulb is no longer the weakest link, it's probably the batteries themselves. Back when LED's first started becoming mainstream, people were subjecting them to ridiculous torture testing like throwing them off buildings. The LED's didn't fail, but the batteries would be dented so badly that they wouldn't make the connection inside the flashlight anymore

Your Mag-Lite is better than any of mine! Both of my Surefires smoke all my Mags. My 3 D-cell mag isn't even close to as bright as my E1B even with new batteries, and the spot is total crap. Definitely not worth the size and weight. All of my Mag-lites are essentially doorstops or paperweights now. The only one I have much use for is the mini-mag, and I don't use it much since I got some little Chinese 1-AAA led lights from DealExtreme.

Which Surefire models are you using? I've never actually seen a Fenix in person so I don't know how they are.

I love my upgraded 4D Mag-Lite, it outperforms everything I ever had or tried: http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post208231

Regarding the LED spare - I doubt it's necessary. I have dozens of different LED lights, about 11 years - the oldest one, and all of them are functional still.

Not really a fair comparison, that's like saying a 18 wheeler can haul more stuff and drive longer between refueling than a sport car. Sure it's true, but which would you rather drive to work?

The Maglite 4D is a very useful flashlight when retrofitted with an LED such as the TLE-6EX MiniStar5 (140+ Lumen)

http://www.thetorchsite.co.uk/TerraLUX_TLE-6EX.html

or the TTS-1WP LED (100 Lumen)

http://www.thetorchsite.co.uk/TTS_1_watt_Philips_LED_Upgrade.html

because of the capacity of the newly available LSD NiMH D cells, which are now available @ around 8-10,000 mAhrs. Alkaline D cells are also available at reasonable cost such as the Duracell Procell multi packs.



This charger setup can be powered from a 12V solar PV source such as a 20+ Watt Panel (the input is rated at 1Amp @ 12V) and will charge the 4 8500 mAhr cells in around 5-6 hrs. (this is equivalent to charging 16 AA Eneloops in one go).

The Maglite 4D with the 1W 100 Lumen TTS-1WP LED will give a burn time of around 35+ hours.

Maglite D and C models do still represent good value for money for there intended use. i.e. for home and vehicle use.

I see lots of answers but I'll chip in. Compared to a typical incandescent bulb (including Xeon, Halogen etc.) a LED is essentially indestructible (note that is a comparison, not an absolute). Typical bulbs have very thin glass shells around them and contain a thin wire/filament that gets heated to produce the light. This construction is pretty fragile, at least compared to the rest of the flashlight and has a relatively short service life.

LEDs are basically a fancy transistor and essentially solid all the way through. For a typical LED "bulb" there may also be some additional solid state circuitry for regulating the voltage and current supplied to the LED. For a well made LED the life expectancy is measured in years (say 50,000 hrs) even with bumps and impacts. A well made flash light bulb has a life expectancy of around 5,000 hrs, assuming no rough handling.

In a nutshell anything that physically damages the LED will probably damage the rest of the light to the point that a replacement bulb won't help.

- Eric

Thanks gang!

Eric, I'm going to steal your last paragraph to answer my Scouts question:

>In a nutshell anything that physically damages the LED will probably damage the rest of the light to the point that a replacement bulb won't help.>

LEDs are pretty much immune to impact and vibration, incandescent lamps aren't all that tender either as the majority fail directly after a new set of batteries is installed. LEDs seem to fail either due to poor quality, not burning in the LEDs before using them, or failure to limit current. Most often a little of both.

The good news is that most every LED array keeps individual LEDs in parallel so if one goes the remainder still work. The other good news of LEDs is that if the output and numbers of LEDs is kept low batteries will work so long that spare batteries can be made unnecessary if reasonable precautions are taken. Many flashlight manufacturers have avoided this benefit by increasing light output so you get more light than is needed for less time than is desirable.

+1. That just about covers it. All my lights are LED now. I've bumped my LED lights around without incident too many times to count. Each bump would have killed standard incandescent bulbs.

I have only had one LED light develop problems after a 4' fall. It was a cheapie from Costco. The actual LED is okay, but the voltage-boosting "puck" is now intermittent. It's probably a damaged wire or a bad solder joint. Not worth fixing, but I'll remove the LED for use in a desk lamp or something.

Two comments that are irrefutable.

1) anything that physically damages the LED will probably damage the rest of the light to the point that a replacement bulb won't help.

2)LED's are like potato chips. You can't stop at just one.

Love. It.

LOL @ comms!