LED Degradation and the Lifespan Electronic Displays
LEDs mostly fail by fading over time. The life expectancy reflects the time passed before the LED fades to half its original brightness. Light emitting diodes fade at a significantly faster rate after they reach their half brightness.
As mentioned in another blog, over time, a digital sign will lose its intensity and its quality will diminish. Known as degradation, it’s a natural phenomenon. It will occur in all electronic signs, but the effects can be worse for some manufactured LED signs than others. After the first 2000 hours of use, a high quality diode will lose about 20% of its initial brightness, and then degrades at a slower rate until its half-life, when the diode fades at a substantially faster rate until its life expectancy is reached, at about 100,000 hours of use (about 10 years).
Red fades the least, then blue, and then green. But some will fade faster when manufacturers overload inexpensive or cheaply made diodes with more power than they were designed to handle, to enable a lower cost display to be manufactured showing extremely bright performance at a lower price. The drawback to this of course, is the faster fade, or degradation, of the diodes, causing earlier replacement and greater expense in the short term and the long term.
Also, these manufacturers have not found ways to engineer their cabinets to compensate for the added power consumption of diode overloading and the additional heat that builds up within the cabinets, causing overheating problems to other components.
Some signs will look patchy because of use of different diode manufacturers, causing uneven colors and shades. Other times they will burnout and have to be replaced because of cheap or inferior diodes and component parts used in the manufacturing process. Others diodes may have been manufactured for different electronic wavelengths that are within tolerances of some countries’ electrical current but not others, and that causes problems.
Ultravision LED has designed its panels with superior diodes within highest and strictest standards. Our diodes are all purchased from the same diode manufacturer to ensure consistant colors. Ultravision LED purchases LED’s that have a matched radiation patternwhich means there is no color shift on different viewing angles.. With its revolutionary panel design, the newest models of LED panels from Ultravision LED do not overheat and are free from the problems inherent in older cabinet technology.
What could be better than a well-built electronic sign that outlasts the others and provides years of hassle-free service?
