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?

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    171 year ago

    I work in IT, LEDs are useful for diagnostics.

    Why blue? No idea.

    Who asked for this? Nobody, as far as I can tell… They just switched, and didn’t ask anyone for an opinion on it.

    Why so bright? Because modern LEDs are generally pretty darn bright… When these are used as an indicator instead of an actual light source, I’m scratching my head just as much as you are. I’m immune to the light problem when sleeping; I understand some have that problem, but it’s not me. Generally I’m unbothered by device LEDs, but I’m not the majority. I’d rather go back to the old, barely visible LEDs used on 386 computers, they did the job and didn’t burn a hole in your retina doing it.

    • @kroy
      link
      English
      111 year ago

      Blue LEDs used to be super expensive. Therefore, only high end electronics had them. So once LEDs got dirt cheap, everybody started dropping blue LEDs on everything to capture that “premium” feel.

      Now of course, it’s just obnoxious

    • @dustojnikhummer
      link
      English
      21 year ago

      I mean green means good, red means bad. So a blue LED might be “something is happening” thing