Have a small spotlight which takes an R50 lamp and happened upon an LED replacement for it in Lidl about a year ago. So decided to try it - despite the rather high price. Colour rather blue, but decided to live with it. And it blew up tonight - rather spectacularly, and took the breaker. It's on with other incandescent lamps non of which has blown in the time I've had it. So much for the wonderful new technology.
Like I've said, the consumer LED products are currently complete crap, particularly retrofit products, where LEDs just aren't viable. I'm guessing it was of the type with 10-15 5mm clear LEDs in it, and a capacitive dropper/current limiter. Probably cost less than £1 to manufacture, and there was nothing much in it you might describe as a wonderful new technology. How much was it, out of curiosity?
New technology LED components are not that expensive, but all the products I've seen which use them are way above the prices consumers will pay in the likes of B&Q, Homebase, etc, and are currently high margin low volume products. Furthermore, for the most part, they are not retrofit items because that sort of lamp holder technology is designed to dissipate heat by getting very hot, which would be instant death to LEDs.
I've got some reasonable GU10 LED replacements. Very expensive though but SWMBO wants them.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.