Hacker News Reader

Comment by simcop2387 | Hacker News Reader

What I've found to help weed out the worst of the worst is to only buy dimmable versions of the bulbs. They cost more but because they have to support dimming they're almost required to have a better power supply to handle the usual triac based control that most dimmers have.

View on HN

Not sure this always holds.

The worst bulbs I've personally seen for flicker were dimmable ones.

The non-dimmable variant from the same range had no noticable flicker.

Price paid also seems to be no indicator of quality – I've had premium LED bulbs from major makes, bought from a reputable wholesaler, that have died after 6 months within days of each other.

I've had cheap no-name imports that have lasted years and had no flicker.

Yes, the dimmable has been the worst for me so far, they just make them flicker more to give less light.

Confirmed. Have dimmable at work and home and they flicker like crazy.

A lot of "dimmable" LEDs are actually shifting the flicker pattern to dim the light (shorter on phases). This is for LEDs where the user dims per remote control. OP was talking about the older "legacy" dimming, where you have a wall-mounted knob that reduces the current. Works well with incandescent bulbs. But only few LEDs support this. If they do, their internal power converter likely won't flicker, because of their more thought-out converter?

However, there are also LEDs that support legacy dimming, but again translate less current into different flicker patterns...

I've been trying to switch to all-LED in a home with lots of legacy dimmers and it's been painful. Even on circuits where I've replaced older dimmers with new Lutron CFL/LED dimmers, I get flicker.

In other places I don't have dimmers but have low-voltage (12V) cans. Lots of flicker issues there too, presumably due to the 120->12V transformer at the can.

And then I have a light fixture that's both dimmed and a custom 12V setup. I've given up on finding a working dimmer/LED bulb (MR16 GU5.3) there. Probably need new 12V transformers?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com