Why are LED drivers with the same output power and application different from each other?

Is it absurd or for real?

How can we simply identify the quality of LED driver before we obtain the sample?

Basically, we can have a rough understanding of an LED driver from its appearance and specification. But today, let’s see another available method—marks on its label.

Certification

Generally speaking, drivers exported to different areas or applied in mid-to-high end projects will have certain requirements for certifications, because different certification represents product’s safety performance certified by professional institutions. But there exists some certain testing expenditures to attain different certifications and the cost of an LED driver will increase with the amount of certificates. Certainly, the more certificates an LED driver has, the more guarantee an LED driver’s performance has.

Certified LED driver

In order to meet different certification requirements in different areas, what we can ensure is all of Lifud LED drivers have certifications tested and evaluated by top authoritative institutions.

The following table simply shows some common certification marks, LED drivers’ performances they are inclined to test and their required countries.

2. PF

The PF value reflects the utilization rate of an LED driver towards power grid. Now let’s see a simple example:

Although the extra 20W will not be shown on the household electric meter, it will cause loss of supply to the country. Therefore, there are certain mandatory requirements for the parameter of an LED driver in various regions. For example, the American Energy Star requires that the PF of an LED driver be >0.9 within the rated input voltage range.

In terms of PF, some low-end drivers will be designed with lower ones in order to reduce cost, but for Lifud drivers, almost all of their PF are >0.9.  

3. IP rating

IP rating is the protection level of product’s dust-proof and water-proof ability and is expressed by two numbers (IPxx). The following picture simply shows us the protection effect of different IP rating and detailed analysis can be found in previous texts.

Generally speaking, the IP rating of an indoor LED driver is IP20, and outdoor LED driver’s IP65/IP67. Certainly, if an LED driver with IP65 rating is applied in outdoor lighting projects, the waterproof structure of its light fixture must be better.

Other marks

There are other marks to acknowledge other features of an LED driver. For example, “double insulation/stronger insulation” can be “decoded” as whether the LED driver is suitable for Class II light fixtures or whether it can be assembled on common combustible surface, etc.

For DALI LED driver, it still has DALI2.0 mark which indicates that the LED driver conforms to the DALI2.0 certification standard. Compared to DALI standard, DALI2.0 is not only helpful to significantly improve the interoperability and compatibility among products of different suppliers, but also a complement to LED driver’s test items.

All Lifud DALI LED drivers conform to DALI2.0 certification.

Now we’ve acknowledged how to identify an LED driver from its different marks on the label. Although the difference of each parameter is slight, the improvement of each point is the result of circuit design, technological innovation and the application of high-quality component. Then how to further identify the quality of an LED driver from its important parameters in the specification (such as harmonic, flicker, life curve, etc.)? We are going to learn it in the next text.

PS: The above content is only an analysis on the reason why some LED drivers are expensive on the market and for reference only. But in actual application, in order to balance the cost and performance of an LED driver, probably it is unnecessary to optimize all of its parameters. After all, an LED driver which is suitable for its lighting project is the best.