Why does every small appliance or useful home electronics item have the BRIGHTEST LEDs in them?
I bought a new fan for our bedroom Sunday. It has 4 speed settings, and LEDs to display which setting you’re on.
Just like every other electrical device in our bedroom, I had to cover the LEDs with electrical tape because they are TOO DAMM BRIGHT. That one light was more than bright enough for me to see in the room with all the lights off.
I can’t sleep well if there’s a lot of light like that, especially blue light, and it’s like every fucking electronics manufacturer used the same extra bright blue LEDs.
All of our power strips have them. Same brightness.
The fans have them.
Don’t even get me started on digital clocks and the plague of bright LEDs that they bring about
Many charging plugs have them built into the plug itself.
Even some fucking light switches have them now!
I have about 6 different things in our bedroom that have electrical tape over their completely unnecessary LEDs.
Why has this become such a common thing? Is this really something most people want? To have a room that is never actually dark even with the lights turned off?
I think it’s a cost thing. It’s cheaper to get these blue LEDs than the old, dimmer green ones, so they buy these instead and change nothing else. It would cost money to change the resistor value, so they don’t bother. Instead they take the same boad, stick the new LED on it, and ship it that way.
I could see that being the case for some things, at least in cases where it is an older design being updated or VE’d. Perhaps some sourcing person changes the LED part number on the AVL and forgets to check with engineering whether the resistor value which goes with it is a sane level of brightness still.