the leds have proved themselves to have a long lifetime and areof very high quality, a lifetime of at least 50,000 hours can be expected.many of the cheaper led strips and strips use leds which from theoutside look identical to the epistar leds but they are cheapcopies with poor internal materials which give rise to a short lifespan. theleds on these cheap strips are usually mounted to a very thin circuit boardwith copper tracks which do not adequately dissipate the heat away fromthe leds further shortening the lifetime of the product. most of these ledstrips are designed for short term use such as festival and holidays.the cheap led strips can also have leds which are poorly gradedfor color consistency so the color along the length of the same strip canlook very uneven, for example some leds may appear a different whitecolor to others which can look blue or warm white in color. for long termuse and professional installation our led strip is a much wiser choice.