I tried to go to the Phillips website then I went into the eye comfort section and clicked on shop all eye, comfort bulbs, and it saysI’m sorry there’s nothing available which I know is BS. The website is broken.
And I don’t even care if it’s Phillips or a different brand I need something that runs in the 3000 K range. I’d love 3500 but I don’t think I can get that. With flicker free ( and I have just spent the last 4 1/2 hours looking Online and I can’t come up with anything so does anybody have any ideas of what I can buy and please offer a link to a product.
I am now currently using the last of my incandescent bulbs. If one of them burns out I am out of luck my room will be dark.
Normal lightbulb. A19 type
Or am I just searching for something that literally doesn’t exist?
All LEDs are flicker free on dc power and they all flicker on ac power so what you’re looking for is an led bulb with a good quality internal dc power supply. Unfortunately many, even those advertised as flicker free, don’t meet this requirement, because they’re built cheaply.
This also depends to a degree on your eye sensitivity. My vision is poor but I can clearly see the difference between 30 and 60 fps whereas some of my friends and family don’t seem to notice such a thing. I don’t know if that’s similar but I’ve had experiences where I’m like “these lightbulbs are flickering” and other people are like “no they arent” and I then question if I’m potentially mentally ill or my eyes are possibly worsening even further (although thankfully sometimes other people notice too).
To oversimplify it it has to do with the rectification of the power supply and constant vs switching current dc power supplies
You can verify this by taking a high quality slow motion video of the bulb at least 240fps. I have some clips but they won’t upload.
Basically a hue white ambiance doesn’t flicker. This meets your requirements as it is adjustable between 2200k to 6500k. However, these are expensive and frankly I wish I never bought them because philips changed the terms of service after sale. I bought into their “ecosystem” years ago and I only run smarthome stuff on my local network but they are pressuring users to move to “philips security” which will require your lighting to be connected to their servers 24/7. This is apparently going to be necessary in a future update. A workaround is the bulbs do work with z wave but that requires additional hardware/software, plus why support a company that pulls such bullshit
A second video I have shows that as hue bulbs age they do begin to flicker though it is hard to see/perceive for some time. This is not a criticism of hue and more just something to be aware of with led lighting, the power supplies will begin to weaken and fail over time. Thankfully this takes quite some time, the bulb I have is approaching 8-9 years of life. But considering the price that’s not necessarily a great price per year (although keep in mind they’re regularly on sale). The flicker is mild
A third video shows a cheaper no name bulb that was marketed as flicker free. My partner says they are not bothered by it so it’s in their office but I can’t stand it. The video shows a much more dramatic flicker.
There is this website which verifies this for you, bulbs listed are either truly flicker free (category a) or imperceptible flicker (category b):
https://flickeralliance.org/collections/flicker-free-light-bulbs
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Beautiful comment, I love it.
Also: “pressuring users to move to “philips security” which will require your lighting to be connected to their servers 24/7.”
Is the most unhinged boring techno dystopia shit I’ve read. It’s a goddamn light bulb, kindly fuck right off with that shit.
The service is free, for now. That will change when they have a bunch of ”pot committed" users signed. Then it will be "to continue providing our amazing services, and the cost of underlying systems (CEO & board member pay raises) it is now #only# 3$ a week.
It doesn’t matter if it’s free. Fuck that. Your iot shit should NOT be on “cloud” servers. I love having automated tech shit in my house, it’s great, but it’s 100% not worth having if it can’t run offline. If my internet is down I should still be able to control my lighting with 0 issues
My one exception is if it needs an initial authentication online and then can run offline forever. Lutron caseta is an example I will endorse, the product works extremely well. Never have drop outs, unresponsive devices, etc. it does require an internet connection to activate a device initially but after that it can run on an isolated vlan with no internet access indefinitely (I have verified this)
Philips, like so many other iot providers, will likely skimp on cybersecurity. Why should I trust them to potentially sync my address, my lighting schedules, information about the layout of my house, etc? Further they will absolutely harvest my data and sell it. If not initially then eventually. Fuck all of that. The best option for security is to air gap all my iot shit and not connect it to the internet at all. If the vendors don’t respect that then I don’t respect them. Either I’ll hack it to make it work, find a workaround, or sell it. Either way I’ll make sure I shit on them online every chance I get because I’m so goddamn tired of corporations stealing our autonomy as consumers
Highly recommend home assistant btw. Only voice assistant you can actually run locally and only voice assistant you can actually have autonomy over. It’s frustrating that the choice is a more feature filled product like alexa, siri, or hue versus home assistant or a pure z wave bulb but the former always robs your autonomy. They either fill the space with ads whenever possible (alexa), don’t allow you to customize the assistant and control your data (siri and alexa), at any time will change the tos to revoke api access (chamberlain, mazda), force server sided bullshit (hue), etc
of course they wanna charge you. they’ve been purposefully fucking with incandescent light bulb lifetimes for a hundred years as a means to increase profits.
they can’t do that anymore, so they need another racket to get you to keep coming back and giving them money…
and they found it.
just like every other greedy bastard corporation—subscriptions.
at least they aren’t gimping the led units to some arbitrary lifespan, but you know damn well they’re using the cheapest shortest-lasting sub-components and cheapest manufacturing they can find.
I’ve had Philips Hue for like 6-7 years now I think, I only registered a few weeks ago when I bought a new phone and wanted to get all my all configurations to my new phone without much hassle. I don’t mind them being connected as there’s no cameras or sensors on them and I’m not looking to buy any of their sensors or anything.
Also I trust EU regulations to be such that Philips can’t deprive me of basic functionality on these. Also also, the scripts for these were rather simple, to the point that despite me not having touched a single line of code for like 15-years, and even before that only having done it for some courses, I could easily manage a script to manage them.
Just took a clip at 240 fps, no flickering. Reading the earlier post I was like wondering about flickering, because I’ve never had any as all my bulbs are Hue Colours.
Eu regulations won’t save you when someone hacks philips servers and all of the data they’ve stored on you is captured by malicious actors. And whoops, it turns out they stored a ton more than they needed to, your address, your lighting schedule, how many rooms are in your house, names of users with access to your home, etc. and whoops, turns out they did the bare minimum to secure their servers and hacking them was basically as simple as knowing how to hack things
So terrible! What will the eu do! Be really mad at them and 8 years later sue them for 70 million dollars, which is 5% of their operating revenue. They will surely learn their lesson and definitely not continue doing the exact same thing without changing at all. But they’re really mad at them! And they can’t stop you from turning off the lights! Nice! Also they harvested all that data above and sold it to advertisers to make back the 70 million (and then some) so it didn’t even matter they got hacked, your info is easily available for like 24 cents
They definitely don’t flicker though until they’ve had a significant amount of use. But there are a lot of comparable bulbs for much cheaper that don’t cost nearly as much. Not all of those are “smart” though, but you can combine them with a smart product that’s much more consumer friendly (like lutron caseta) and then you’re good to go. Or just get a z wave bulb if you want a bulb that can do things like change colors/temperatures. Fuck philips, fuck compulsory “cloud” services”, and fuck the regulatory bodies that have utterly failed us because they simply don’t understand tech beyond basic connectors (or they’re paid not to, I guess)
And whoops, it turns out they stored a ton more than they needed to, your address, your lighting schedule, how many rooms are in your house, names of users with access to your home, etc. and whoops, turns out they did the bare minimum to secure their serv
I have literally no fucking problem with them knowing any of that — which they’re wouldn’t from my data.
Even if they recorded the actual signal strength of each bulb in relation to the Bridge, they wouldn’t know how many rooms I have. My naming scheme and placement scheme in the app does not reflect reality in the slightest, nor do the names of my devices. They’re half-arbitrary alphanumeric combos, like OH1 and CX2. And even if they did, my apartment size isn’t exactly a state secret?
Hue having any of that data is far less scary than the potential of me getting stabbed on the way home.
Now, just to make sure you understand, I don’t agree with any of the data that probably is collected on me. But whilst I’d rather them not have it, it honestly doesn’t makena bit of difference practically.
Are you European or not? Just curious because if you are, do you always stop to refuse cookies, even “legitimate interest”? Do you avoid sites which don’t allow you to do that?
Or are not European and don’t even have the option?
Because I’ve genuinely spent literal hours in the past few years scrolling through the lists of hundreds of vendors to individually click them off.
But sometimes those popups are designed so you’ll accidentally click the accept all. And on occasion it has happened. So… what’s the practical difference?
Aa I’ve shown you, ideologically I do stand and act on the side of privacy. But do I really care or fear “malicious actors”?
Even if you had my every single password and id, you wouldn’t be able to harm me in any way. What are you gonna do, add money to my account? Improve my credit?
No.
The only malicious actors that I’m concerned with are the local police.
This is all besides the point. This is not a website. This is a product, that runs in your home, that was sold for years on the agreement that they would not be able to harvest this data (simply because I could run them without connecting to the internet). Now I still have that option of course, but I will eventually trade product updates to do so. It is a given, philips has said as much
Also the data would likely include things like your wifi SSID and password (hopefully encrypted).
It’s cool that you don’t care about your autonomy and privacy but the bottom line is companies like philips shouldn’t get to unilaterally get to make decisions that alter the tos over a decade later because people like you are apathetic. Some people have literal thousands invested into this ecosystem and many have hundreds, easily. Your apathy and people like you enables companies like philips to bully consumers and make consumer hostile decisions
that was sold for years on the agreement that they would not be able to harvest this data (simply because I could run them without connecting to the internet). Now I still have that option of course, but I will eventually trade product updates to do so
So you’re saying “I’m eventually going to value updates to these products more than my privacy and my data, despite me having the option of not doing that, keeping my data, and still having the same functionality in the lamps they had when I purchased them”?
I don’t know what your problem seems to be.
It’s cool that you don’t care about your autonomy and privacy
Autonomy. Yes. My autonomy is deprived from me because some random sweaty bro is crying online that companies are companies.
So you’re gonna trade your autonomy and privacy for some pathetic updates on your lamps? It seems like you don’t care about your privacy. Where do you live again? If not in the GDPR area your data is traded in thousands of places where mine isn’t.
I do care about mine, but I’m not such a moron that I think that caring about it makes any difference on a personal level. I care about it because of the societal implications it has, not because I’m a paranoid incel who’s afraid of some random company having checks notes info on how many lamps of theirs I have at home.
I have a wifi specifically for guests and shit devices that might need it. It doesn’t really matter who has access to it.
Again, what is it that I’m supposed to be so afraid of? No-one can blackmail me on anything, I have no digital assets (even money) to steal.
I’m politically on the correct side of this issue because I understand the consequences in the bigger picture. I don’t know if you even see a bigger picture, it just sounds like you have have paranoid delusions of being persecuted.
Have you thought about seeing a mental health care professional to get checked out?
The domestic appliances division has been sold to a chinese-controlled investment firm in 2021. Guess when this push started…
Thank you. This has been bothering me for years. I’ll stock up on good ones for the house remodel!
You didn’t say why you wanted flicker free bulbs - if it’s because you make videos, welcome to the exciting world of cinematic lighting. All lights for videography are flicker free, but expect to pay accordingly.
I get eye strain from led light bulbs so I’m trying to fix that. Sorry should’ve put that in the post
Came here to recommend video lights. There’s some cheap options available these days which will offer you full RGB or Kelvin scale control, flicker free, etc. Check Godox Neewer, Sirui, Smallrig, Amaran for “budget” but still reliable brands, or try your luck on Amazon/AliExpress with no name brands which would probably still do the trick depending what your usage is. You could go for a small tube or panel for example (options are endless).
I’m totally ignorant to the world of modern video lighting. Could the bulbs from any of these companies be used as “regular bulbs”? Meaning, could I put them in a ceiling light fixture and run them for 8 continuous hours/day? Or, are they intended to only be used for shorter duty cycles, like during a video shoot?
I love the idea of precisely adjustable, completely flicker free, high CRI lighting in my kitchen (which often doubles as a home office for me). A bonus would be beautiful flicker free videos of my cats, even in slo-mo! But, not if I’d have to replace the expensive bulbs every month because I’m not using them for their designed purpose.
I haven’t been completely satisfied with any of the more common IoT bulbs.
Sure they could, obviously the higher in price the more tanky they get so I’d trust brands in order of pro -> prosumer -> knockoffs like anything else but yeah film sets can stay on for hours on end, sometimes in conditions much less cozy than your kitchen. They’ll typically come with some form of passive or active cooling (fans or mechanical dissipation with radiators).
I’d steer clear of battery powered models even if most of these can be run with a plug as well just because you’ll pay extra but if you go for tubes or the small panels.
I’m just now realising your question is whether you could use them in regular fixtures as in screw them in and yes there’s also options for that from a few brands, they can even charge from the power of the light fixture itself, they’re not cheap the ones on my “might buy” list are the godox C7R but you could go for the C10Rs. I don’t see why they’d last any less long than standard LEDs but I might not be aware of it. At that point you’re paying Hue prices though so not sure if they’re the best tools for the job since the daily use aspect of a system like hue is way more adapted for home use.
Thanks for the response! I’ll add these to my list to research.
Lots of good answers already in this thread, so just pitching a couple of “not what you asked for but maybe interesting” thoughts: Have you tried CFL lightbulbs? Those don’t flicker and should be available in a wide range of temperatures. Regarding the headaches, imho it’s more likely to do with blue light/color temperature than flickering, unless it’s severe enough you can notice it even if just barely. In that case, maybe look into glasses with blue light filters, helped me a lot with screens and indoor lighting
I wound up cannibalizing a bridge rectifier from some old electronics and making an a/c to d/c adapter so I could do close up photography. I labeled it “lights only! 120v d/c” but I’m also the only person with access to it.
You are playing with fire. Except more dangerous. You have zero reason to be using such high DC voltage for photography.
How do you think that’s any different than using a 120VAC fixture?
It’s 120v DC into an led light designed for 120v a/c there’s no difference other than no flickering.
Lots of good advice but one question - have you tried LED bulbs before and had flickering problems?
Just worth checking a standard LED from your local super market before you go down the route of expensive brands or online purchases.
The reason I say this is that there are a lot of shoddy cheap and counterfeit electronics sold on Amazon for example. A supermarket bought bulb meanwhile actually has some quality control and standards plus you have somewhere you can go back to should you need to return them.
All my LEDs are from my local supermarket, own brand (Tesco, I’m in the UK, but Philips are also available for me) and I’ve had no issues. I’d also buy from local retailers where you can get good returns policies (Argos here, or your big box retailers in the US)
Amazon meanwhile has a policy of mixing stock that it purchases with stock from small sellers that they place in their warehouses and sending any to a customer. So a “sold by amazon” item may actually be a counterfeit item supplied by a 3rd party. Basically do not buy anything of value or branded from Amazon. So don’t buy Phillips or other brands from Amazon.
And definitely do not buy the cheap Chinese unknown brands on amaxpn or elsewhere. The supermarkets will of course be buying Chinese made bulbs for their own labels but they will be buying them in bulk from specific factories and under contracts with some quality expectations, unlike the shitty free for all small seller type sourcing that your get from Amazon. Small sellers are going to be buying cheap ass unbranded bulbs and the factories are going to sell their cheapest bulbs plus ones that’s do not meet bulk orders quality control thresholds via this route (cheaper to dump the bulbs by selling cheaply instead of having taking the financial hit and binning them). A large supermarket has leverage over the factories to maintain quality (or lose the contract) while small sellers have none.
Personally the only time I had a flickering LED bulb was a dimmer-switch lamp; it was designed for LEDs but didn’t work with the bulb I bought but turned out I’d accidentally bought a non dimmable bulb. Otherwise I’ve not had a single bulb flicker in my house including all ceiling lights and numerous lamps. All my bulbs are supermarket own brand.
Most of the ones that I see installed in stores have that problem. My workplace put in led and I come home with eye strain. The ones I bought at menards have had the same problem.
My big problem is that I don’t visually see flicker but rather if I move my hand in front of my face I see a shutter effect. Which I’m assuming is because the refresh rate of the bulb is to slow.
It’s not a “refresh rate” really. LED’s are Light Emitting Diodes, and a diode is an electrical component that only allows electricity to flow in one direction. So an LED only works when electricity is flowing in one direction. Houses run on AC current (Alternating Current) with a frequency of 60Hz in the US. So if you plugged in normal AC into the LEDs, it would be off half the time, flickering 60 times a second. The LED light bulbs should have built in components that convert the AC signal into a constant DC signal. If you get normal bulbs that are well made, there should be absolutely no flicker.
Are you using a lot of computer screens at work? Because using computer screens can cause eye strain, and also cause you to blink less resulting in your eyes drying out. Both of those can cause headaches. If you do use a lot of computer screens, you should consider getting eye heat compress (my ophthalmologist recommended me this one). You should also be able to get normal store bought LED bulbs that do no flicker. Perhaps try the slightly more expensive name brand options if the store brand isn’t working for you.
These Philips LEDs are what you’re looking for. They’re also temp selectable so you can dial it to 3500K (what my entire house is). They’re super dimmable and flicker free. These are the only bulbs that worked for problematic coach light fixtures for me. No more flicker even in cold weather (they say indoor but work outdoors in a covered fixture just fine). Comes in 40W or 60W equivalents. CRI of 90. Not 95 but noticeably much better than cheap brands.
Description: White Dial Flicker-Free Frosted Dimmable A19 Light Bulb - EyeComfort Technology - 800 Lumen - 5 Shades of White - 7W=60W - E26 Base - Title 20 Certified - Indoor - 4-Pack
They look good. Do you have a model number or the upc code off the box? If I can buy it locally I’d like to. But it doesn’t show that info on the Amazon site.
UPC: 046677576318
Thank you. I do appreciate it
The Sengled ZigBee RGB or white bulbs work well for me and have tunable white LEDs. They seem to have a good DC/AC conversion. But they do require ZigBee.
Ikeas tradfri lightbulbs are cheap, realiable and don’t flicker.
They exist. My entire house is 3000K.
You can buy whatever Chinese brand is on Amazon this year (in my experience they change brands about the same time the bulbs start burning out), or try your local big box stores. I do believe Philips has some though, and they’ll last longer.
Edit: Just Google it.
This 4-pack actually has multiple white options in each bulb, including your desired 3500K: https://www.amazon.com/Philips-LED-Flicker-Free-2700-5000K-576314/dp/B0B8TNK47C
My entire house is 3000K
Your heating expenses must be absurd.
The neighbors just point their solar panels at that house.
He might live in Phoenix.
No he means $3m
in my experience they change brands about the same time the bulbs start burning out
lifetime guarantee!!
your lifetime? nope.
the fixture’s lifetime? nope.
the building’s lifetime? nope.
the lifetime of their marketplace seller account.
I have had luck on the internet searching “Rough Service” light bulbs. It’s the only way I know how to still get incandescents. I bought a ton when I found the listing on Amazon. I wish LEDs would have more quality standards.
It’d be a big spend, but you can get some Hue dimmable A19s with a bridge for your home and set them to whatever color temp you need. It’s not accurate to specific temps (I can’t ask it for 4000k) but with a little tinkering in the spectrums and sliders you could get it close.
The lamps I got had a “flicker-free” mark on their packaging, so you might want to find some with that. (I think this is the one I got, but I kinda doubt you’ll find this greek brand where you live.
Another solution probanly is to go to a hardware store and try each 3000k lamp into the testing plug they have (they tend do have such). Open your phone, turn on the camera, get it close to the lamp and see if you can see any difference in flickering (the store lamps will probably flicker already, so just see if the tested lamp adds any extra flicker).
Another possible solution might be to trst the lamp and try to hear any buzzing sound, but that will probably be very hard in a crowded store.
Apart from all these, lamps have tint. It either goes to green (positibe duv) or to magenta (negative duv) and have a light quality (cri). Get a high CRI lamp, if you want something close to a conventional bulb. Also you need to find something with a neutral tint, which is rather hard. The lamps I got above have a slightly green tint and I didnt like it much, it took me some time to get used to…
I had issues with flickering and then I rolled the dice on these, and I can say that the 3 packs I’ve gotten do not flicker - https://www.maxximastyle.com/
https://optimizeyourbiology.com/light-bulb-database
I almost always recommend the Phillips Ultra Definition bulbs, but they only do 2700k and 5000k. If you want something in between you might get stuck paying quite a bit more for a specialty one.
https://www.waveformlighting.com/flicker-free-led-lighting
$20/bulb though. You could just stay on incandescents, but your power bill will reflect it.
Where would I buy an incandescent from for a normal table lamp?
They’re online, but specialty lighting stores will sometimes sell them as well. Here in SoCal, we have a chain called Lamps Plus that sells them.
