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An LED running on continuous DC has no flicker, but PWM is not continuous DC, it's a square wave of some frequency.

Incandescents have analog inertia in the filament which smooths the light output from the AC sine wave. This smoothing is not 100%, but I've never met anyone who can detect it without equipment.

A photocell and an oscilloscope will show the smoothed live-frequency wave (I wouldn't call it a "flicker"). The wave delta is relatively higher in the perceptual range as the voltage is lowered to approach the minimum "glow-activation" threshold of the filament -- i.e. the fluctuation is more noticeable when the bulb is dimmed to nearly off.



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