I don't know if I'm too biased of the 'lightbulb theory', but aren't we impressed by the lifetime of LED bulbs just because we have gotten used to the heavily manipulated lifetime of incandescent bulbs?
I know how they work so... not impressed or unimpressed. Been using the same bulb in my desk lamp since 2018 or so, but it's a 12V running at exactly 11.4V due to the power supply drop. The bulb itself, the glass, is already becoming a bit dark after so much use. Thermionic emission and all.
There's a bunch of theory but undervolting by about 5% greatly increases the filament's life without reducing the brightness. Soft starting the lamp also greatly increases its life and can be done with simple electronic components.
Is that truly a manipulation? Living in an area with a stable 230V power, I can say that most incandescent bulbs last(ed) very long compared to their stated 1000h lifetime. Meanwhile, I would call LED bulb 10,000-30,000h lifetimes heavily manipulated - about as heavily as compact fluorescent bulb lifetimes.
It's not manipulated but
not entirely true, in an electronic light source only SOME of the components can last for 30K hours under specific conditions, if you look closely at the box it'll say something like 30K hours if you use it 2 hours a day with a single switch-on, in practice that'll never happen, thus it won't last for that much time.
Without taking overvoltage into consideration another issue is design, if you have a ceiling or pendant holder and fit one of these bulbs you'll be constantly overheating the electronics inside, same if you put them inside an enclosed fitting, "ceiling boob" type.
Most of those lamps suck, BUT the ones that don't suck are rarely mentioned, and those are low voltage DC ones, you need a transformer to run them but since they're only a bunch of LEDs inside a glass bulb they *might* last for 10K hours, granted you don't overvolt them.
My 5% rule applies, with low wattage DC bulbs is easier to drop the voltage using a resistor and fit the transformer inside the switch box for easy access.
