Dimmable LED bulbs flickering

[King Mustard]

Argos Home Curico 4-Light Spotlight (767/2929)
4x Megaman 142600 light bulbs
Dimmable smart switch: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165845195497
Tuya app

The bulbs slightly flicker (only slightly, but enough to be annoying).

When I used a non-dimmable smart switch (which of course meant off or 100%), there was no flickering.

Any idea where the issue could be?

 

[ericmark]

Oh I wish I did, all I can say is the worse bulbs in my house were the G9 bulbs, it seems the smaller the bulb the greater the problem, these two bulbs are both G9, the smaller one flickered, the larger one did not, inside the larger one I found a large smoothing capacitor, which explains why the large one does not flicker.

However if I fit one of the large bulbs, or one quartz halogen bulb, the other 4 small LED bulbs don't flicker, and the small bulbs with a mechanical switch rather than electronic switch don't flicker, and the electronic switch one can hear a relay working inside the switch, it's not solid state switching.

The switch manufacturer does a chart to say what bulbs work this has clearly been updated, it now says

Recommendations: We advise our customers to use Dimmable LED bulbs ONLY and a minimum of 5 Watts per bulb recommended.

note the minimum of 5 Watts per bulb, not just total, and finding a G9 bulb 5 watt or over which will fit inside the same glass covers used with quartz bulbs seems impossible. So in real terms the chandelier looks completely different with LED bulbs fitted.

But we should not dim quartz halogen bulbs, it reduces their life, we could not dim CFL (compact fluorescent lamps) so until the LED we could not dim lights once the old tungsten bulbs were withdrawn. However I was not trying to dim, only switch with electronic neutral less switches, and still had problems.

So today I simply don't try, I use smart bulbs if I want to dim lights, so all built into the bulb. Some dimming switches do seem to have a good name for no flicker, but even with simple mechanical switches I have had flicker, and it seems not related to price.

However in the main I dim lights for ambulance, and so want to also reduce colour temperature, and a dimmer switch can't do that, so basically it seems the day of the dimmer switch has gone.

 

[foxhole]

Argos Home Curico 4-Light Spotlight (767/2929)
4x Megaman 142600 light bulbs
Dimmable smart switch: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165845195497
Tuya app

The bulbs slightly flicker (only slightly, but enough to be annoying).

When I used a non-dimmable smart switch (which of course meant off or 100%), there was no flickering.

Any idea where the issue could be?

You smart dimmable switch is cheap Chinese cr*p.

 

[ericmark]

You smart dimmable switch is cheap Chinese cr*p.

Possibly, the switch it seems needs a neutral which means for me not an option. I little more expensive to a smart bulb, but that that much, and to my mind big advantage is it uses same app as bulbs. This is my gripe, so many apps you need to use, OK they all migrate to Google Home, but using Smartlife to me is a big advantage so don't need yet another app.

I am assuming you know of a non Chinese smart dimming switch, rather than just say it's useless, how about recommending one which works, not Energenie as I know they have same problem, and not sure if they dim, so seems Lightwave is the one most recommend, at £80 I should hope it would work, and at that price I could fit 8 smart bulbs with no wiring required, and should one fail, I can just change one.

These intelligent dimmer switches can do a whole lot more than a traditional dimmer switch and are LED compatible.

but the question is what will it do which a smart bulb will not, one thing it can't do is change the colour temperature or change the colour, it depends on the make of smart bulb, but some will work with remote controls.

At £40 the use of dimming switch and dimming bulb with a 5 bulb chandelier breaks even, except can change colour, so in the main no point in a dimming switch costing more than £40.