I am very sensitive to flicker and found I can easily locate fixtures that make me uncomfortable with a simple hand waving trick. I live in US with 120v 60Hz. At work a few T8 fixtures and a few LED fixtures give the stroboscopic effect just like the original LED Christmas lights that made my eyes water. I literally can’t stand it. On the other hand my simple T8’s at home on electronic ballast and halogen incandescent, SOX and MV do not....but my HPS does....my parents GE HD refresh all glass filament LED do not and pass with flying colors. Wonder what’s up here and what frequency I notice and don’t notice.

Lastly the incandescent I understand do flicker but never go out rather it dims and brightens. Regardless it passes my personal comfort test. Would those well done T8 or LED actually have less flicker than the Incandescent due to a solid capacitor smoother inside? The only incandescent that ever bothered me was a Capsylite halogen I had as a kid. I assumed it was a thick filament and later learned they put a diode so I was getting 60HZ madness! LoL. Believe was 60 not 30 the flashing. Thanks guys!

The best for you are high quality LEDs and halogen bulbs. Cheap and dodgy LEDs usually operates at mains frequency due to the lack of smoothing capacitors. Also some CFLs tend to operate at mains frequency by the use. The flickering of halogen bulbs is almost none and less than normal incandescent bulbs, because halogen operates at much temperature and loss less temperature on each 0V cycle.

Never buy dimmable or filament LEDs, those will not be good for you.

Mike, I'm with you on this one. I have described my "method" of grading (well, sort of) the varying degrees of flicker of different sources in this picture, my post is about half way down. It describes what I refer to as 'hard flicker' and 'soft flicker'. On the 'hard flicker' end of the scale, you have those LED you describe, as well as inexpensive Christmas light LEDs and dimmed brake lights on vehicles, and on the "softest flicker" end of the scale is an incandescent lamp.

Wow!! Thank you so much guys, I truly appreciate this. This makes me happy to stick with my current halogens then, sweet! I was tempted to switch to the GE HD Relax 2700k filament LED’s as my parents run the Refresh 5000k version in a few places. Down in the base there’s small circuit board I mean reallllly small with these tiny tiny chips that look like transistors. I wonder if this is some kind of smoothing circuit as they seem ok to me. But I’d rather have justification to keep my halogens as I have a hoard and they’re serving me well. Thank you guys!

All LED's require a ballast of some kind. Some of the better ones include rectification circuitry (in addition to the ballast) to prevent flicker, effectively running them on DC. Others have only a ballast and run the LED on AC, resulting in what I refer to as hard flicker.

LEDs without filtering are not necessarily bad, because it is virtually the only way to eliminate the electrolytic, which is a component with inherently limited life. If you want to reach high power factor and long life (20khours and above; higher power proffessional products), you have to tolerate the flicker.
But they are of course not the type for you.


Most present LEDs have filter, so they do not flicker at all (the glass filament types of 6W and above).
But their life rating is then limited (below 20k hours; that, and the power factor of about 0.5, is the price to pay for a flicker free compact LED).

And then LEDs designed for flashing or signal applications (garage opener light,...) do not have the filter either, because the filter tends to destroy the rectifier, as well as the flasher control electronic (mainly when using triac based switching element). So stay away from these too, if you are flicker sensitive.

But with decent LEDs (still the non filtered type) the flicker shouldn't be any worse than a perfectly working HID or fluorescent on a magnetic ballast.
Yes , there are many products with way worse flicker and those are indeed cr@p...

Thank you!! This is great, a great deal of info guys! So if I do take the plunge and do GE HD line inside and out and GE LED tubes in garage on the lithonia instant start shop lights, I may be alrite! I won’t leave the hobby but will rather keep incandescent, SOX, MV, HPS as one each indoor demo fixtures. Live with LED and keep oldschool as the collection in other words. Main reasons for giving up living with them is I am nocturnal and burn 20ish incandescent all night long and my electric bill is high, and am using my hoard more quickly than expected. Also being ocd I’d like one type of lighting everywhere so if I switch out nearly 50 incandescent halogen and 32 T8 tubes, 175 MV, 35w HPS, and pair of 18w SOX to full LED I will report the electric bill changes it could get interesting. Just considering though makes me question myself although all white would be pretty outside and 2700k inside....it’s not me LOL, I like the intriguing and odd, each area with its unique startup and time I’m used to the warth of walking near an incandescent fixture and the hum of the SOX ballasts as the neon turns yellow etc. or the mercury vapor waking up and teaching the all LED car dealership next to me that in it’s day when young and fresh MV could play with the newcomers no problem for raw output LoL. 

When replacing fluorescents, I would not go for the LED tubes operated on the ballast. There are way too many different ballast characteristics for the same lamp so there is rather high chance you will have compatibility problems (the problem is, how the LED designs are supposed to "convince" the ballast to give off lower power without stressing any component).
Better to use mains voltage LED tubes and disconnect the ballast from the circuit. There the supply interface is clear: A constant voltage and the tube draws whatever current it likes...
But I guess even better way would be to replace the fixture for a proper LED type (and store the fluorescent one untouched). You likely get better light characteristics (so suffice with even lower power or get more light) and longer life (LEDs are running colder when on a larger area).

Thanks so much! When the time comes I will heed your advice and do a full fixture swap with integrated chips for the garage, just as I did in 2012 for the cheap T12’s I’d had that refused to light in the extreme cold. My freinds divided them up and use them indoors now!