In the past we used to take it as standard that LEDs were super-robust and rarely ever failed. They might have reduced slightly in intensity over time, but they still lit. Then we got the new era gallium nitride thin-film LEDs and the salesmen promised the same 100,000 hours lifespan, but it turned out to be a LOT less.

Gallium nitride blue, cold-green, UV and phosphor coated LEDs have three primary failure modes. Flickering, shorting out and phosphor degradation.
This means that they have to be treated as being disposable, and allowance in a design has to be made for swapping them out in the future.

The old gallium arsenide red LEDs and gallium phosphide green just lasted forever.

It follows that the best colour choice for these classic LED clocks is red, since it should hopefully last the longest.

Here's a link to the original video, hinting that the clock has lasted about 5 years - although the fading is visible much sooner than that and I've been tolerating the dead segment and colon LEDs for a while.
https://youtu.be/M8zjiershdI

It's worth mentioning that this clock has spent most of its life operating at a lower intensity setting to deliberately prolong the life of the LEDs, and was only used at a higher intensity setting when the LEDs were getting too dim. If it had been used at full intensity from the start it may have degraded in just a year or two.



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