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LED Christmas lights are still terrible

I'm glad you can still buy incandescent Christmas lights.

Recently, I watched a video from a YouTube channel called Technology Connections, and the guy described these Christmas lights a.k.a. fairy lights that are absolutely the best kind to have. They're called twinkling lights, and they're wonderful...

...but only if you get the incandescent kind and not LED.

The video above I made is of the incandescent style.

I was fortunate enough to locate two 100-count of these in an Ace Hardware here in Texas where I live. It was the last two boxes the store had, so I was lucky to get them at all. And yes, they are wonderful and have that perfect warm glow for what Christmas lights are supposed to look like.

This is the exact set I bought. The online price for these things is a few bucks higher compared to the in-store price. My price was $7.99 a box locally, online price is about 5 bucks higher.

Worth it? Yes. As I said, these are what proper Christmas lights are supposed to look like.

Why LED is still awful for Christmas lights

Although LED uses less electricity and doesn't give off any heat you can feel, the light color and glow is just plain wrong. It's too bright and the colors aren't what they're supposed to be.

Proper Christmas lights are not supposed to be ridiculously bright since the entire purpose of them is to be decorative. They should have a soft, warm glow to them. White lights should have a silver or gold tint to them, and colored lights should have deep colors and only in red, gold, green and blue.

LED white lights have this beaming effect when lit and have no warm glow at all.

LED colored lights also have no warm glow and for some ridiculous reason have purple bulbs that just look terrible.

The LED version of twinkling lights also gets it completely wrong. They have an on/off blink like a switch, again no appreciable nice glow, and just look stupid.

I know why LED Christmas lights are still bad. It's because they have not caught up to where house lights are just yet.

For those that remember when LED light bulbs first appeared in the market, they were all one color. Stark, bright white. The kind that hurts your eyes just to look at it. After a few years and many complaints by consumers, bulb companies started producing "soft white" LED bulbs that are much more pleasing to the eye.

Christmas lights in the LED variety haven't come around to making string sets with softer light just yet. Eventually they will, but definitely not this year. When I perused all the Christmas LED lights, all of them were the same. Stark light, no warm glow, no fade in/out twinkling like the old sets had... yeah, someone has to go back to the drawing board there.

Presently, LED works best for outdoor Christmas light use, but definitely not indoor.

Best to stay with incandescent for indoor use until someone creates an LED set that has the right color, correct glow and hopefully correct twinkling effect too.

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