Last week I purchased 3 two packs of FEIT BR30 LED bulbs from Costco. I was really happy with them at first, very bright, instant on - not like the florescent bulbs they replaced. However, over the last few days I have become aware that I can not listen to our weather radio, an FM radio, or HF radio with these bulbs on. They totally block out the wx radio, they produce a lot of noise on FM radio, and they increase the noise level on 14m by 5 S units. I am therefore taking these back to Costco for credit. I have also contacted FEIT Electric about this and await a reply. They need to do a much better job of engineering the power supply circuitry so they do NOT cause this harmful interference with radio communications.
BTW, I also tried installing ferret core snap on filters to the power leads in the can lighting, but it had no affect on the noise. .
I have found that CFL bulbs are almost universally worse than the LED bulbs, so I have replaced all the CFLs around my house with LEDs. Sounds like bad luck there with your purchasing choice. I have had good luck with Cree LED bulbs, which Home Depot sells in my neighborhood. You also might want to try Philips bulbs - I don't have RFI data on their products but in my experience Philips makes what are probably the world's highest quality light bulbs in general, so we might conclude that they engineer their products better than other manufacturers.
ReplyDeleteI have found that FEIT brand NON-DIMMABLE medium base LED light bulbs for standard sockets are pretty quiet in terms of RF noise, throughout the Amateur HF bands. Same for Westinghouse NON-DIMMABLE LED flood lamps. Every dimmable bulb I've ever tested emitted RF noise. I don't know if RF noise is generally worse with dimmable LEDs, but I am sticking to non-dimmable LED bulbs.
ReplyDelete