LED Bulbs causing 'strobe' effects?

Pulsedriver

Pulsedriver

Pulsedriver

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Hey folks, I am in the process of changing the house lights to be LED's, I was fortunate, you could say(!), in the fact that the previous occupants of the house decided to take the lightbulbs with them, which was nice of them...:rolleyes: Anyhow, most of it has been straightforward to find the LED replacements for each, the only ones I am having trouble with are G9 bulbs.

We bought 3 new light fixtures from BHS which use G9 halogens, and they are in the 3 places we use most (hall up/down & lounge) so ideally want them LED as soon as possible.

The only issue is, I have so far tried 3 different brands, the first 2 were from a well known rainforest site, 2 different brands, but both of them caused what I can only describe as a strobe type effect, in that if you wave your hands in front of you, you could see it 'strobing' or flickering, it wasn't good!

I then tried from Homebase, a set, which did not flicker or strobe, but they were 2w, so it was depressingly dingy in comparison to the 6x40w halogens it currently uses.

So the question is, does anyone have any recommendations for G9 LED bulbs that do not cause that strobe effect and have a comparable light output to the 40w halogens? They do not need to be dimmable, I did see on LedHut they have 5w G9's which I was tempted to try, but it's expensive if they have the same issue (albeit the light will be better for sure)
 
Id bet its the cheap LEDs as Caged has said.

I never understood why people take bulbs with them when they move. I had the same issue when I moved into my current house, as well as the kitchen cupboards being full of black bags with rubbish in them, broken furniture like bookcases, a soiled mattress (nice!) and all the garden lights had their mains wire cut completely, couldn't even salvage them!

Amazing what people do.
 
We have some 60 and 100watt equivalent 3000K warm white LEDs (LED GLS I think but not 100%) made by I think Crompton Lamps that seem fairly decent.
 
Our GU10 bulbs cause this when we dim them, and they weren't cheap either, I think I paid £12 each for the ones in the front room and we have 8 of them.

This is using dimmable LED bulbs and a varilight trailing edge dimmer switch.


Our bedroom lights buzz when dimmed, with a similar setup to the ones I mentioned above
 
LEDs flicker... that's an LED thing... you can very clearly and easily see the flicker from a 50Hz electrical system through them.

Some people are more sensitive to it than others and some LEDs are better at hiding it (ie, they react slower or hold charge longer).

Cheap computer monitors will do that quite clearly too... I've always despised LEDs because of it.

Other types of energy saving bulbs do it too... all our lights at home have to be Halogen / standard incandescent bulbs because the others give me a headache.

Unfortunately... most things are now using LEDs for power saving reasons.

I don't even like the general colour temperature of LEDs - even ones that are supposed to be in the same range as halogens or similar. They always seem colder.

Thankfully... some are getting much better. The backlight in my newest Dell monitor is pretty good and we even found a couple of home lights in LED that have a nice tone and imperceptible flicker.
 
I have ordered a set from lightrabbit, they use high quality parts, so I would guess if these do it as well, all will... But we shall see! I will update when fitted!
 
Most dimmable LED's will need a trailing edge dimmer to stop your room turning in to a disco.

If they're not being dimmed then as other posters have said.
 
crinkleshoes said:
LEDs flicker... that's an LED thing...
Click to expand...

It's nothing to do with the LED - it's the LED driver using PWM that causes flicker. Not all LED drivers use PWM. There are two ways of controling an LEDs brightness. PWM and current controlled - there is no flickering with current controlled LEDs. Current controlled is more complicated, hence why cheap products use PWM.

Cheap computer monitors will do that quite clearly too... I've always despised LEDs because of it.
Click to expand...

Again, that's nothing to do with the LED, it's the monitor using a driver that uses PWM. For example, I'm sensitive to PWM so I make sure my monitors don't use it.
 
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