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I simply can’t stand LED Christmas lights. Not only do they have a very different color temperature, but the refresh rate is so low that they appear to move when you look at them and it’s quite hard to focus.

If anyone has suggestions on higher hertz and lower Kelvin LED lights that look similar to incandescent I’d appreciate it.

2 comments

You're buying bargain bin lights that have an insufficient/nonexistent decoupling capacitor. I really can't tell you which brands to look out for since 90% of them are the same Chinese garbage. You'd have to look at display models in the store to find good ones. Either shake your head from side to side or wave your open hand in front of the lights to test if there's a strobe effect. Expensive LEDs like those sold for smarthomes generally have better circuitry. If you're feeling adventurous, you could solder a capacitor in series yourself. RGB lights will look bad when producing white light, but they also sell strips that come with RGB as well as a warm white diode.

> Either shake your head from side to side or wave your open hand in front of the lights to test if there's a strobe effect.

My method is filming any suspected bulb (not just Xmas lights) in slo-mo for a second and watching if they flash on playback. However, most I can tell out of hand without resorting to slo-mo.

If there’s something untrustworthy about the light emitted, it’s an LED.

This is what the pros use-

https://www.christmasdesigners.com/100-light-2800k-warm-whit...

They are full-wave rectified so they don't flicker, and have an interesting semi-directional output them gives them visual interest when draped on the strand that brings to mind old-style incandescent bulbs.

A warning, though--these are way too bright to use indoors.

Hmmmm

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Just by curiosity how much is the cost difference between “amateur” and “pro” grade ? Like 1.5X or 2X the price ?