I got a little lost in this thread.Since no one really tests light bulbs for a flicker, I have bought all the super expensive testing equipment myself, bought a bunch of light bulbs and spent couple of days by testing them. Have also measured their color spectrum and some other parameters.
The most surprising result was that incandescent / halogen bulbs do flicker.* Quite a lot, actually.
The second most surprising result was that all modern LEDs from reputable brands have almost undetectable flicker. The intensity of light was flickering by 1-5 lumens. Halogen bulbs were flickering by up to 300 lumens, depending on their power. That's ~100x more flicker!
Also, the color spectrum is much better with LED bulbs.
2200 or 2700 kelvin LED bulbs produce almost zero blue light. Incandescent bulbs produce much more blue and even ultraviolet light (the cons of blue light very much outweight the benefits of infrared light, in my opinion)
Considering all the aspects, I liked LEDs made for IKEA and Jysk the most. They performed the best and cost literally penies. Since I'm in Europe, I can't speak for US retail chains, sorry.
Bulbs made by GE or Philips performed very well, but they are much more expensive than the above. The price is not justified.
I was not very impressed by Osram and LIDL bulbs.
Bulbs from eBay and Aliexpress were mixed bag. Some were absolutely horible. Some were really, really good. Even some of the very cheap ones. But even the worst LEDs did not flicker much more than incandescent bulbs.
*Flickering of incandescent bulbs is much less of a problem in countries with 120V/60Hz power system
I'm located in the Pacific Northwest, so my daylight is much shorter in the winter. I'm using mostly 3000k (700lumen) lights in my "living" area at night. Should I be concerned about blue light effect from these bulbs, and consider switching to a good-quality incandescent?
Thanks for your help.