Walmart's store brand 3-way LED bulbs are wired backwards

haha1234

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Oct 31, 2010
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Not sure whether this belongs in the LED forum or the fixed lighting forum. It's one of those regular household E26/E27 screw LED bulbs that replace the old filament bulbs and save energy.

Anyway, Walmart's store brand 3-way LED bulb is wired backwards. That is, when you first turn it on, it';s at the highest setting. Turn it again, the second setting. The finally, the lowest. Then off again. Repeat.
off -> high -> medium -> low -> off

The old incandescent 3-way bulbs always went the opposite way
off -> low -> medium -> high -> off

I tried another brand of LED 3-way, and it is wired correctly and goes low-medium-high like the filament bulbs do/did. eBay item #352322333536

Walmart bulb
 

iamlucky13

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Are these traditional 3-way bulbs with a 3rd contact on the base? Or are one of the newer types that can operate at different brightness levels even when not installed in 3-way lamps by cycling through low-medium-high when turned on and off repeatedly?

It doesn't necessarily sound like they're wired backwards as in a mistake was made. I could rather be that the manufacturer chose to reverse the mode order because the way LED 3-way bulbs are designed allows them to start with high first, where as with incandescent 3-way bulbs, the order is determined by the lamp they're installed in.
 

zespectre

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I bought a pack of those for a friend.
Most of them worked the reverse of what I'm used to (high, med, low) and one of them worked HIGH, LOW, MED. Not thinking too highly of their quality control.

I have found that I really like FEIT brand which I generally get from ACE hardware.
 

ssanasisredna

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Oct 19, 2016
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I bought a pack of those for a friend.
Most of them worked the reverse of what I'm used to (high, med, low) and one of them worked HIGH, LOW, MED. Not thinking too highly of their quality control.

I have found that I really like FEIT brand which I generally get from ACE hardware.

Nothing to do with quality, more likely they changed control IC or IC vendors. It's possible they ordered the wrong one.
 

ssanasisredna

Enlightened
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Oct 19, 2016
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457
Um, if so then a mistake like that is pretty much the definition of poor quality control.

If they purposely changed the control IC to save a few pennies that is not a quality control issue that is a MFG issue. If they ordered the wrong IC ... yep, quality control, but odds far more likely the former. It was a conscious decision.
 

iamlucky13

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Oct 11, 2016
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I would not be surprised if they simply get new bids from time to time to have a bulb with roughly the same specs and perhaps the same appearance made, and the differences observed are due to batches made by different contract manufacturers.
 
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