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Thread: Please, less blue LEDs!

  1. #1
    Senior Member watercooled's Avatar
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    Please, less blue LEDs!

    Is anyone else tired of everything they buy being covered in dazzlingly bright blue LEDs? Personally I'm getting sick and tired of it; like other colours it can be pleasant if used thoughtfully, but designers should also take into consideration how bright blue appears to the human eye, along with the blurry effect caused by not being able to focus it properly. It's getting to the point I'm sticking black electrical tape over a lot of my gear as I find it really unpleasant to have in my FoV.

    Seriously, some of the LEDs used (mainly on cheaper stuff) are powerful enough to project a blue spot to the other side of the room!

    A lot of the above problems, along with a few others, are described here: http://texyt.com/bright+blue+leds+an...e+health+risks

    So, I intend this to be an appeal of sorts to manufacturers, to put some actual though into lighting used rather than constantly defaulting to dazzlingly bright/tacky blue lights.

    Feedback is welcome, for or against my opinion. If enough people agree, I may try to forward the thread to some PC hardware MFRs if possible, feel free to do the same yourself.

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    Headless Chicken Terbinator's Avatar
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    *Looks at immediate workspace*

    >VM Superhum with blue (and green) lights.
    >Razer Nostromo gamepay/keyboard - blue LED's.
    >Ultrasharp power indicator - blue LED.
    >Disc drive/case lights - blue LED.
    >Galaxy S3 - blue LED for notifications.
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    for all intents it seems to be the same card minus some gays name on it and a shielded cover ? with OEM added to it - GoNz0.

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    Anthropomorphic Personification shaithis's Avatar
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    I wish more of mine were blue
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    Fewer?

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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    I have a white, red and two LED fans that are blue on the case. Maybe it's time to change to white LEDs? Or none at all But if I'm honest I would like my next case to have a side window and some LEDs inside, not sure if they'll be blue it depends on the brightness etc I guess on how ugly it looks. But I'm not fascinated as I used to be by them

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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    Case in point - I recently bought an Icy Box drive enclosure. It has a blue light for showing it is on, and a red light for disk activity. Now my office at home has a lot of lights in it, from green, yellow and blue lights flashing on my router, to the back light on my keyboard, the lights flashing on the network switch and so on, but nothing compares to the blue light on the IcyBox.
    Fortunately, this is easy to rectify as you can easily disconnect the blue light from the PCB inside the ICyBox. If that hadn't of been possible, I may have returned it!

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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    Disagree!

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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    I'm fine with muted blue LEDs, and most of the devices I have are sensibly toned down, but I have one set of speakers that have a single, very small, and BLINDINGLY BRIGHT blue LED as the power indicator. I'm really not that desperate to know if my speakers are on or not!

    So I don't necessarily agree with fewer blue LEDs in general, but certainly I'd back a call for more subtle use of LEDs...

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    Senior Member watercooled's Avatar
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    It may be a more subjective thing than I originally thought then, but I know I'm far from the only one to think this way (also read through that article if you haven't already). It probably wouldn't bother me if they were, as scaryjim says, used more subtly; I just find it a cheap + nasty colour now because of how much it's overused + MFRs stupidly choosing high brightness LEDs for indicators.

    On or around my desk:
    Blue power LED on my Dell monitor
    Blue ring around volume control on my Creative speakers
    Blue glow around Antec PC case power switch, reasonable brightness considering it's under my desk. Also an fairly bright but sensible blue HDD activity light, at least when viewed from above.
    Superhub is essentially a Christmas decoration - in modem mode I see a bright blue LED on the side, with a much dimmer green one below that. On the front, there's a blue|red glow in a lame attempt to make purple, but again the blue is noticeably brighter.
    Fractal R3 has a fairly bright blue power LED (and strangely no HDD activity light) which becomes annoying when it's darker.

    The HP Microserver's 'hp' logo/status indicator just looks like a blue blur, especially when it's dark.
    And lots of cheaper cases use stupidly bright LEDs, sometimes needing 2 layers of tape to reduce the amount of light from searchlight to indicator level.

    I personally don't really understand the appeal with tacky little lights glued to everything possible nowadays, but again, because of the reasons I've listed, blue is by far the least pleasant I've come across.
    Last edited by watercooled; 05-09-2012 at 10:13 PM. Reason: Edited for clarity.

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    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    Quote Originally Posted by watercooled View Post
    Blue ring around volume control on my Creative speakers
    My main 2.1s have this, but it's a nice muted blue (and the volume control is on the sub, so it's tucked under the TV unit) and I think it looks quite classy. Overall I think I'd prefer blue lighting to most other colours, it's just the insanely bright ones I have a problem with.

    The worst offender in my collection is probably my Acer laptop, which has a large charge indicator on the front which glows insanely brightly - orange whilst charging, blue when plugged in but fully charged. I have to hide the lappy under the bed when I'm finished with it of an evening otherwise the light is bright enough to fully illuminate half the room...

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    Senior Member watercooled's Avatar
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    Yeah it's not too bad with the speakers, but they're right next to my monitor so it's still fairly visible in my peripheral vision. My low opinion of them probably makes it more obvious than it would otherwise be, but TBH I never thought that way when green LEDs were the norm; sure, too many lights in your FoV can be annoying regardless of colour, but the blurry needle-in-eye effect you get from blue really irritates me.

    All I am asking really is, have some bloomin' imagination and stop defaulting to high powered blue LEDs for nearly everything. It's just getting boring if nothing else, there's more than one colour to choose from! http://www.oksolar.com/led/led_color_chart.htm

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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    Have quite a few blue ones myself (on the case and several on the side of the router showing which wireless aerial is currently active which project onto the ceiling if the room is dark, a bit like the Bat symbol)

    I do like them but yes some variety might be nice.
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    I remember buying a pair of headphones with inline sound controls - there was an led to show that it was NOT muted, which was blinding to say the least. I had to stick electrical tape over it in order to carry on using them.

    As other people have said, it does depend on the led used. The ones that aren't so bright are fine, but the really bright ones should not be used by manufactures, unless they're planning to make a torch

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    Anthropomorphic Personification shaithis's Avatar
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    I must say, I did a build a year ago with an Antec 900...the PC was plugged into my TV and I was sat back on the settee waiting for windows updates etc to finish.......but one of the blue LEDs kept catching me in the eye from ~10' away, completely blinding me! It was just a very narrow angle that caused it though, none-the-less it was the angle I was sat on!
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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    Hate the ultra-bright blue leds. Wherever possible, I starve them of their power source with a resistor.

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    Re: Please, less blue LEDs!

    I just don't understand having bright LED's on monitors.. Who thought it would be OK to simply put a glaring blue LED light on a monitor facing you.. it's not even faint, but really bright, try watching a movie in the dark and see how that distracts you.

    I use blue tac to cover most LED's that point towards me.

    monitor & speakers controller specifically.

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