This is my tier list of North American market LED roadway luminaire brands based on recent reliability concerns. This list is subjective, so you can disagree if you want.

I think that aels autobahn series was quite reliable except for the purple atb0 and atb2s and the Autoconnect. I totally agree with led roadway lighting in s tier. We had the 158w nxt-m put up in 2015-2018 here and I have seen 0 failures, they are super low glare and after adding one for my collection, very high quality construction and very well designed.

I'd say GE belongs in the C category. Their lights aren't as good as they used to be from what I have seen. The drivers in the older GEs were well designed in that I've never seen one flash. They would just go out. I've seen newer ERL series lights flash and after not long in use. Even one on CalTrans.

I haven't seen newer Visionaire lights, so I'd also put them in C. If such a list comes up in the future, and I've seen newer Visionaire LED lights and more of them, I'll change my rating of them. The Bow was the most purple light I saw on FDOT (at least fifty or more, non highmast) and ties the ATB0/ATB2 combined in general with how many I saw purple. However they seem like decent lights with about 3-4 out that I saw in about one hundred or more of them.

The bows seem quite new on fdot, surprised to hear that they went purple.

The Visionaire LX series (circa 2015) seem pretty good. No driver failures noted, some partial array failures, but no shift in color temperature. Overall exceptional performance so far.

B Tier

The Visionarie BOW series on the other hand are total junk. At my work we have a few driver failures with some strobing, several with dead arrays, along with 40+ units turning purple. All from 2019.

I’ve heard supposedly Leotek may aquire Dialight, so we’ll see.

Okay, I know I will be somewhat controversial in my opinion, but ...

Leotek isn't THAT bad. Our municipality uses E-Cobras as HID spot replacements (I've noticed more on certain roads than others), and I haven't seen a single failure since the the 2019 Universal Lighting diode debacle (they were supposedly the supplier of AEL ATB-series luminaire diodes, among others).

Sure, they're stubby and honestly hideous things, but they've been stable workhorses around here all these years, and I've honestly grown somewhat fond of them. I'm assuming the trouble arises with their GreenCobra lineup, hence the Toilet Gallery moniker?

And, I would agree with FL40 on GE being C-tier. When they were owned by, you know, GE, they were without a doubt best in their class. Now, under the ownership of Current / Daintree and conglomerated with Hubbell, I don't think that's the case anymore. They were piloted in the City of Philadelphia, but their use was subsequently scrapped in favor of the new AEL AutoConnect lineup, which really isn't half bad.

Today I saw at minimum six half-dead or seizuring GE luminaires. There are four DOA units on i-95 South heading towards Philadelphia, if that says anything about their quality...

Your utility must have a pretty big stake in Leotek LOL. They got the unicorn units. Or they just used them recently. Any E-Cobra in use before 2021 or so has aged really badly over here.

It’s the opposite. The GreenCobras are the decent ones. A lot of the older ones I’ve seen have a noticeable yellow tint in their light quality, sure, but they aren’t as degraded as the E-Cobras. They hold their color better and don’t yellow as fast, and are actually decent (at least the older ones, I live far from the new large GreenCobra installations). I’ve only ever seen one flash like a strobe light with half of the diodes flashing at a different rate than the other half.

The E-Cobras are actually just as reliable as the GreenCobras from what I’ve seen, the problem is the plastic optics they used which degrade really quickly, making the light outputted turn a dim sickly yellow color regardless of CCT used.

I think they fixed that issue on 2021+ units... We have a few cases of "queasy LED syndrome" (yellowed optics) around, but most are wayyy older. There's one that has a faulty PC and puts hardly usable amounts of light onto the ground... Honestly I completely forgot there was a light at that intersection until I looked up one day, lol.

Interesting. The one that you mention that has a “bad PC” likely has a bad driver or its optics are starting to go. A bad PC wouldn’t cause a light to go dim unless you’re utility uses those smart PCs and it that’s the case then it’s a possibility.

@fluorescent lover 40 , by a faulty PC I meant that the lamp is on 24/7/365 which in turn has severely yellowed and dimmed the light output from the luminaire.

Ah gotcha.

I wonder where would Lumec or Signify in general fall on this tier chart. I didn't know Dialight made roadway luminaires, I know they make traffic signal modules and other LED luminaire components. Interesting they also make luminaires.

They make the streetsense. They're beefy and expensive but the smallest version looks good imo.

I put those under Genlyte since that name covers every luminaire brand made by Signify.

Yeah, Dialight makes the StreetSense and the ProSite. Extremely expensive but well-built luminaires.

I haven't heard of will or xtralight. Which lights do they make?