2012-03-15 Almost Dead White LED Pic

This is a picture of an almost dead white three chip LED.  The white phosphor has mostly disappeared, leaving the blue LED chips showing through.

This has thousands of hours on it, but nowhere near the 100,000 hours that they are claiming LEDs last.  I have tested a few dozen white LEDs and all of the ones from Hong Kong or China have a huge loss of light output after the first thousand hours or so.  Not long thereafter they are worthless for illumination, their light output is less than 1/10 of what it was when they were new.