>Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power supply died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves.
I have the exact opposite experience, virtually every single light bulb I have torn down - one LED (all in series) has a black dot, if I shorten it - it will 'work' again. The bulbs I have seen tend to drive the LEDs so hard that some of the latter fail, power supplies might have huge ripple but generally don't fail catastrophically.
Edit: now thinking, it can be a US thing, with the voltage being ~120. Lower AC voltages means worse efficiency for the power supply (and all of them tend to be universal, unless totally cheapen out on the primary capacitor [250V] for the US market). Generally speaking low AC voltages have mostly disadvantages.
It could very well be more of a US problem. In the bulbs that I've torn down, they all have used a capacitive dropper power supply, and it's usually been the capacitor that failed.
I have had lamps that lived long enough to see LED failures (the "black dot of death") but that's not the most usual failure mode that I've personally encountered.
I've been considering following in the footsteps of Big Clive and modifying new LED bulbs to stop them from overdriving the LEDs, but my interest in doing that hasn't yet overcome my inherent laziness.
I have the exact opposite experience, virtually every single light bulb I have torn down - one LED (all in series) has a black dot, if I shorten it - it will 'work' again. The bulbs I have seen tend to drive the LEDs so hard that some of the latter fail, power supplies might have huge ripple but generally don't fail catastrophically.
Edit: now thinking, it can be a US thing, with the voltage being ~120. Lower AC voltages means worse efficiency for the power supply (and all of them tend to be universal, unless totally cheapen out on the primary capacitor [250V] for the US market). Generally speaking low AC voltages have mostly disadvantages.