I totally agree- that's why I think we need better branding and marketing in stores. I personally like the Costco model of "do the research for the consumer and give them limited choices" but it's easy to see how this could go wrong too.

I'm sure early incandescent lightbulb manufacturers had a lot of shoddy products and consumers just had to figure out which brands to trust themselves. Eventually, it'll even out for LEDs too.

>With LEDs, what's the "I don't want to deal with this, I just want something that will work as intended and not introduce weird artifacts"?

That sounds like an ideal situation the free market should be fixing -- so why isn't it?

I generally buy the lamps that say "warm white". They're usually the 2700k variety. I've literally never had an LED light go out and the colours look fine. Philips lamps seem like a good bet, though I remember seeing an in depth YouTube review that showed that IKEA actually had better colour representation (many brands add an extra dose of red light to boost the warm colours).

Not skimping on lamps helps prevent most problems, usually. IKEA sells great LED lights over here in Europe, for prices that had me worried at first. Most other budget stores and brands sell lamps that mostly emit warm light but will make any food look disgusting from missing wavelengths; fine for lighting a hallway maybe, but generally not worth it in my opinion. It's mostly these bottom of the barrel lamps that people buy, not knowing about the effects cheap lighting can have, that cause visual problems.

It makes sense: back in the day, a cheap lamp may not have lasted as long ,but the colour profile was nearly identical. If you were fine buying a lamp every year, you could just grab the cheapest bulb on the shelf. With anything beyond incandescent light, that's not true anymore.

The difference between a €5 lamp and a €10 lamp is quite significant and worth it considering they'll probably last you at least five years anyway. My personal approach is to look for "warm white" (or 2700k if they use that instead), not pick the very cheapest lamp I can find, and if that leaves multiple options, start comparing statistics like CRI.

why are you acting like you need a college credit in an LED survey course in order to buy incandescent-replacement LEDs? It's like a new vocabulary of like 5 terms/concepts that can all be summarized in a sentence or two.

When I upgraded my house, I spent maybe 30 min reading some articles and then 30 more going through product listings [1]. To upgrade a core piece of infra for my whole house.

[1] I can already hear people saying "an HOUR???" But guess what now I know about LED bulbs forever.