A Zero Flicker, Local Control, Analog LED Strip Controller!
March 6, 2025I love LED projects, but I absolutely hate it when they flicker and band on camera when the controllers use low PWM frequencies. I said, “Never again,” and bought basically every analog LED controller currently on the market and today we’re going to figure out which one is the best.
First, I’ll test their PWM frequencies both on camera and with a purpose-built flicker meter, then I’ll explore their LED behavior customization options, and last, I’ll test how each controller integrates with voice control and Home Assistant and see which ones work completely locally without the internet.
GLEDOPTO 301W
For $15.99 the least expensive controller we’ll be testing is the GLEDOPTO 301W which uses WiFi and the Tuya app for control. The 301W can handle 12V or 24V with a max of 6A on a single channel and 10A total. The 301W has five LED output channels with convenient lever lock style terminals that can fit up to 20 AWG ferrules or 18 AWG stranded wire, a small onboard button that can toggle the light and control dimming, and an extra set of terminals to setup an external push button with the same functionality.
In my testing, the GLEDOPTO 301W had an idle power of 0.408 watts with no LEDs lit, and when lighting a 12V RGBW LED strip the 301W had visible banding on camera at all dimming levels other than 100% and my flicker meter measured the PWM frequency at 1000Hz.
GLEDOPTO 201W
Next for $17.99 is the GLEDOPTO 201W which also uses WiFi and uses the Tuya app for control. The 201W can handle 15A of current on a single channel or 20A max thanks to its larger terminals. The 201W has the option of using a barrel style connector for its power supply or lever style like the rest of its terminals which can fit 18 AWG ferrules or up to 14 AWG stranded wire. Also, like the previous GLEDOPTO, the 201W has an onboard button that can both toggle and dim and has terminals to add an external push button.
In my testing, the GLEDOPTO 201W had a much higher idle power consumption of 1.89 watts with the LEDs completely off and also had visible banding at all dimming levels with the same 1000Hz PWM frequency.
GLEDOPTO 201P
After that, also for $17.99, is the GLEDOPTO 201P, which looks basically identical to the 201W but uses Zigbee instead of WiFi. The 201P has the same current limits at 15A on a single channel or 20A total, it has the same barrel jack connection and lever lock style connectors, but the on/off and dimming button on the 201W has been replaced by a reset button on the 201P that is used to pair it with your Zigbee hub. However, the 201P still has terminals for a push button, which supports push to toggle and hold to dim functions.
The 201P had an idle power consumption of 0.744 watts, which is half as much as the 201W, but also showed banding at all dimming levels and had the same 1000Hz PWM frequency.
ATHOM WLED ANALOG CONTROLLER
Next for $19.88 is the Athom WLED Analog Strip Controller which as the name suggests is a WiFi controller that uses WLED firmware. The Athom controller accepts voltages from 5-24V and can support up to 16A total. It has both barrel and screw terminal power connections and the more standard screw style terminals can fit up to 14 AWG ferrules or 12 AWG stranded wire. The Athom controller has an onboard button that can be configured in WLED, but no terminals to wire an external button. The Athom controller also has two additional connections: a JST connection for an optional IR remote and an extra data and ground port to connect an addressable LED strip.
The Athom controller had a low idle power consumption of 0.444 watts with no LEDs lit but still showed banding on video with a PWM frequency of around 900Hz when set to “Normal” frequency in WLED and unfortunately still showed some slight banding when set to “Faster” despite being at the upper limit of what my PWM flicker meter could register.
Shelly RGBW2
After that for $19.90 is the LED controller that I’ve been using for the last four years in all my projects, the Shelly RGBW2, which is mostly discontinued at this point. The RGBW2 uses WiFi and is controlled with the Shelly App or web interface and, unlike the rest of the controllers in this video, the RGBW2 is only a four channel controller instead of five, so it only officially supports RGBW strips, not RGBCCT strips. The RGBW2 supports 12V or 24V but has the lowest single channel current limit of any of the controllers in this video at 3.75A but can support 12A total. The RGBW2 has slightly smaller screw terminals than the Athom controller and can only accommodate 18 AWG ferrules or 16 AWG stranded wire and it also has an input terminal that supports programmable push button functionality.
The RGBW2 had the lowest idle power consumption yet at 0.336 watts, but showed banding on camera, which is consistent with my previous experiences and the ultimate reason I’m making this video in the first place, and like the WiFi controllers from GLEDOPTO, my flicker meter showed a PWM frequency of 1000Hz.
Pautix WL5
Next for $19.99 is the Pautix WL5, which uses WiFi and is controlled with the Tuya app. Despite being called the PAUTIX WL5, it’s labeled MiBoxer on the unit itself and in the Tuya app. The WL5 has a barrel connector and traditional screw terminals like the Athom and can accommodate 14 AWG ferrules or 12 AWG stranded wire. The WL5 supports 12V or 24V strips and has a current limit of 6A per channel or 15A total. The WL5 doesn’t have buttons to control the LED strip or terminals to connect a button.
In my testing the WL5 had an idle power consumption of 0.78 watts and is the first controller so far to not show banding or flicker on camera throughout the entire dimming range, with the PWM frequency far exceeding what my meter could accurately measure.
BTF-Lighting C05Z
Following that up for $20.99 is the BTF-Lighting C05Z, which uses Zigbee for control. The C05Z is a bit smaller than the rest of the controllers so far except the BTF 301W, and says it accepts 5-24V via its barrel jack or screw terminals and that it supports a max current of 6A per channel and 15A total. But there’s no chance you could get close to those numbers since the tiny screw terminals only accept 22 aw AWG g ferrules or 20 AWG stranded wire and 15A would easily melt a 22 AWG wire. The C05Z also doesn’t have any buttons for LED strip control or terminals to connect an external button.
In my testing, the C05Z had an unbelievably low idle power consumption at just 0.156 watts which is great but had significant banding on camera at all dimming levels with a measured PWM frequency of 1000Hz.
GIDEALED ZC05M
Moving on to the G IDEAL LED ZC05M-20 for $21.99, which is a Zigbee controller that is almost completely identical to the GLEDOPTO 201P as far as terminals, voltage compatibility, and current limits, with both barrel and lever lock style terminals that accept 18 AWG ferrules or up to 14 AWG stranded wire, and screw terminals for an external button.
Also, exactly like the GLEDOPTO, the IDEAL LED had an idle power consumption of 0.744 watts with significant banding at all dimming levels and a measured PWM frequency of 1000Hz. In other words, this controller is exactly the same as the GLEDOPTO 201P other than a $4 increase in price.
BTF-Lighting C05W
Next for $23.99 is the BTF-Lighting C05W, which uses WiFi and is controlled by the Tuya app. This one is basically identical to the C05P, which was the Zigbee version, and it has the same small form factor with a barrel jack and tiny screw terminals that only accept 22 AWG ferrules and the C05W also doesn’t have any button terminals.
The C05W had an idle power consumption of 0.576 watts, which is over 3x higher than the Zigbee version, and still had significant banding on camera at all dimming levels with a measured PWM frequency of around 510Hz, which is the worst yet.
Shelly Plus RGBW PM
After that for $24.99 is the replacement for the Shelly RGBW2, called the Shelly Plus RGBW PM, which really rolls off the tongue. Like the RGBW2, the RGBW PM is WiFi and uses the Shelly App or web interface for control. This new RGBW PM is easily the smallest controller in the video but has some major downfalls as a result. First, like the RGBW2, the RGBW PM is only a four channel controller, so it doesn’t support RGBCCT LED strips. Second, because they chose to include four different button inputs, each of the screw terminals is extremely small and just barely fits a 22 AWG ferrule or 20 AWG stranded wire. Lastly, the RGBW PM doesn’t have any passthrough terminal to power your LED strip, so you’ll need some other lever lock or wire nut to split the power supply cable between the strip and the controller. This may have been a purposeful decision to help them increase the maximum supported current and the RGBW PM accepts 12V or 24V and has a current limit of 4A per channel or 10A total.
In my testing the Shelly RGBW PM had an idle current of 0.6 watts which is about average, but I am happy to report that the RGBW PM is now the 2nd controller to have zero banding throughout the entire dimming curve, which is odd because the flicker meter measured a PWM frequency of 849Hz. But that indicates to me that the frequency is actually well above what it can reliably measure. The Shelly Plus RGBW PM also has a high frequency mode which it says can help eliminate power supply whine which measured at 2.2kHz and also had zero banding on film.
EMITEVER 1501
Next for $26.99 is the EMIT EVER 1501, which is another WiFi controller that uses the Tuya app but appears to be a unique design from all the other controllers in the video. The 1501 supports 12V or 24V and has a max of 3A per channel or 15A total. The 1501 has both barrel and screw terminal power inputs and fairly large screw terminal outputs that just barely fit a 14 AWG ferrule or 14 AWG stranded wire and the 1501 has no on board buttons to control the strip nor terminals to add them.
In my testing the EMIT EVER 1501 had an idle power draw of 0.744 watts and showed noticeable banding at all brightness levels with a PWM frequency just under 1000Hz.
BTF-Lighting WB5
After that, also for a price of $26.99, is the BTF-Lighting WB5, which is a WiFi controller that also uses the Tuya app. The WB5 supports 12V and 24V and has a maximum output of 6A per channel or 15A total and uses press to connect terminals that just barely fit 16 AWG ferrules, or 16 AWG stranded wire, and like the last few controllers we’ve seen the WB5 also lacks any buttons for controlling the strip or terminals to add them.
In my testing the WB5 had an idle power draw of 0.29 watts, which is excellent for a WiFi controller, and it is now the 3rd controller to not show any signs of flickering or banding on camera throughout the dimming range. The PWM frequency was definitely too high for my flicker meter to make sense of it.
BTF-Lighting LM052
Following up on that, also for $26.99 is the Zigbee version of that same controller which is called the BTF-Lighting LM052 with all the same stats and connections: 12-24V, 6A single channel, 15A total, and press to connect terminals for 16 AWG ferrules and stranded wire.
The LM052 had an even lower idle power draw than the WB5 at just 0.18 watts and, like the WB5, the LM052 showed zero banding throughout the entire dimming range with PWM frequencies too high for my flicker meter to correctly register.
QuinLED An-Penta-Mini
Jumping up quite a bit in price, the QuinLED An-Penta Mini is a WiFi controller that can run either WLED or ESPHome and supports 12V to 48V inputs with a maximum output of 5A per channel or 10A total, which I am oversimplifying slightly. The An-Penta Mini has big screw terminals that fairly easily fit 14 AWG ferrules or 12 AWG stranded wire on the input side and it has two outputs with the same wire capacity that are intended for the warm white and cool white channels. Then there are three smaller outputs for the RGB channels. The An-Penta Mini also has three button inputs on the opposite side which are configurable via WLED or ESPHome.
The An-Penta Mini had an idle power consumption of 0.672 watts, which is slightly above average, but had absolutely zero flickering or banding throughout the entire dimming range. Even on “Normal” clock mode, my flicker meter was nowhere close to being able to measure the PWM frequency of the An-Penta Mini which I’ve heard from Quindor is somewhere around 19000Hz. On “Fastest,” that frequency goes up to 80,000Hz, and just for fun I tested it out with the clock set to “Slowest” and it still didn’t show any banding or flickering.
QuinLED An-Penta-Plus
Last, if the An-Penta Mini didn’t quite fit your needs, there’s also the $44 An-Penta Plus that triples in size, adds ethernet, and increases the maximum current per channel to 10A or 30A total. The An-Penta Plus also increases the size of the power input terminals to accommodate massive 12 AWG ferrules or 10 AWG stranded wire, and you can double that up to safely feed the board 30A of current. Speaking of safety, in Quindor fashion the An-Penta Mini and An-Penta Plus both have internal fusing on each of the positive outputs. In addition to the larger power inputs, each of the power outputs is also larger and can fit 14 AWG ferrules or 12 AWG wire, and there are power injection outputs for both of the white channels and a total of four positive voltage outputs. On the far side of the board, the An-Penta Plus also includes an output for an addressable LED strip.
All this power comes at a cost, and I measured the idle power consumption of the An-Penta Plus at 1.03 watts. But as you would expect from the care taken in the design of the board, there was absolutely zero flicker or banding on camera throughout the entire dimming range, and my flicker meter had absolutely no chance of measuring the ridiculously high PWM frequencies of the An-Penta Plus.
That means that out of the 15 LED controllers, only six had high enough PWM frequencies to avoid flickering when dimmed, which was my main selection criteria.
Thermal Testing
I also tested their thermal performance by running two 5m 24V RGBW-CCT COB LED strips at full brightness for 30 minutes and then recording their maximum temperature with a thermal camera. Almost all the results were completely uninteresting, and with these two strips only being able to pull around 5 amps total, none of the controllers had any issue dissipating that heat. The only even mildly concerning results were from the GLEDOPTO 201W which had a single component that was significantly hotter than the rest, and the Shelly RGBW PM, which showed the downfall of using small terminals and thin wires and the tiny 22 AWG wire I was using with it heated up to over 50 degrees Celsius.
Power On Behavior
The next most important thing to me is being able to control the LED strips exactly how I want to, which means configuration options. This starts with their power on behavior, which basically means if you want to control the strip with a switched outlet, or if you lose power, what happens when the power comes back on?
I tested each controller and scoured their respective apps for power on options and found that these 11 controllers started up instantly when powered on, while the BTF Lighting C05W and WB5 power on directly to a dim light for a second before returning to their previous state, the Shelly RGBW2 has a brief flash and then a one second delay before returning to its configured state, and the Shelly RGBW PM has the same one second delay, but doesn’t have the initial flash when it first receives power.
For programmed power on behavior, these four controllers will always turn the LED strip on to the last brightness and color state when powered up, the IDEAL LED and GLEDOPTO 201P can configure their power on state via Zigbee in Home Assistant, the Pautix WL5, BTF C05W and BTF WB5 are configurable in the Tuya app, the Shelly controllers can have their power on state configured in the web interface, and the WLED controllers are configurable to a certain extent, but require installation of a special user-mod called Autosave which is not included by default.
LED Strip Type Control
The next important aspect is being able to change the options on the controller to accommodate different LED strip types. Starting with the Shelly controllers, as I mentioned earlier, they only have four outputs, so they don’t support RGBCCT LED strips that have both cool and warm white and need five outputs. But you can set up the Shelly controller as an RGBW controller or four separate white channels, and a major benefit of the Shelly RGBW control is that you get a separate slider for the white channel so you can mix colors with the white channel as much or as little as you want. On the four channel white mode you get a separate brightness slider for each channel.
WLED has the most granular control where you can set up basically any strip type, multiple strips, multiple outputs, you name it. You can also control how it handles combinations of the white and color channels, and you can optimize for things like maximum brightness or maximum color accuracy.
The PAUTIX WL5, EMITEVER 1501, BTF WB5, IDEAL LED, and GLEDOPTO 201P, 201W and 301W all have a push button that toggles between five different modes, and the documentation is terrible for them, so here’s what they do.
RGBCCT mode does pretty much what you would expect and gives you a separate control for color and one for white with a color temperature and brightness slider.
RGBW mode is similar but combines the two white outputs which allows you to get more brightness overall at the cost of controllable color temperature.
RGB mode just removes the white controls from the Tuya app and Zigbee control and only uses three channels.
CCT mode gives two outputs of controllable white where the cool white and blue outputs are used for the warm white channel and the green and red outputs are used for cool white.
And the 5th mode is called dimmer mode which just outputs the same signal to all five channels, and you get a single brightness slider for control.
The least configurable of all the controllers are the BTF-Light C05W and C05Z, which only have RGBCCT modes.
Smart Home Platform Integration
Last, one of the most important things to me is how each of these LED controllers works with different smart home platforms, and by far the most common platform used by these controllers is the Tuya app. The good news about Tuya is that it is relatively easy to use and seamlessly integrates into Amazon Echo, Google Home, Smart Things, and Home Assistant. But the bad news is that it’s a cloud-based dependency so if your internet goes down, you’ll lose control of your LED strips and if you’re someone who wants to block your IoT devices from the internet you can’t do that with Tuya.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is WLED, which is an open source, local only firmware that integrates easily with Home Assistant via a built-in API, has MQTT support and support for Amazon Echo, but does require a bit more setup and knowhow than Tuya.
Shelly is somewhere in the middle of those two, with cloud and local options, and simple integration with Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Home Assistant, but the Amazon Echo and Google Home solutions only offer brightness control rather than brightness and color.
The ultimate local only solution here is Zigbee which requires a Zigbee hub or Zigbee dongle, and any other integrations into Amazon Echo or Google Home will be handled through that specific hub, and for this video I used Home Assistant with ZHA and the Texas Instruments CC2531 Zigbee receiver.
Conclusions
After all that testing, which LED controller should you choose?
Personally, flickering and banding on camera is a dealbreaker for me, so that narrows it down to just six options.
If you’re looking for something plug-and-play with Amazon Echo and Google Home control, I think the $19.99 Pautix WL5 is the best option due to its configurable power on behavior, configurable LED strip type, no banding or flickering, and nicely sized screw terminals that can accommodate 14 AWG ferrules, with the only downsides being not having connections for an external button, and the fact that it runs on Tuya which is a cloud-based service.
If you’re looking for a Zigbee option, the only controller that didn’t have flickering was the BTF-Lighting LM052 which also had very low idle power consumption and decent sized, easy to use press fit terminals. But the downsides of the LM052 are that it doesn’t have an external button connection, its power on state defaults to on and isn’t configurable, and in Home Assistant you can’t have the white channels on at the same time as the RGB channels when set up as an RGBCCT controller.
For local control WiFi, I think the Shelly RGBW PM, QuinLED An-Penta Mini, and An-Penta Plus are the clear choices. The downsides of the Shelly RGBW PM are its extremely small terminals, lack of a 5th channel for RGBCCT strips, and small delay during power on. But its small size, four button input terminals, and local interface are extremely convenient, especially if you’re setting up four different white LED strips instead of an RGBW strip.
The An-Penta Mini is extremely thoughtfully built and can be configured basically any way you want inside of WLED. But with all those customization options, changing settings isn’t as simple and foolproof as the other controllers and there’s no option to remember the last state power on by default. The increased build quality also comes at a cost and it’s $10 more than the Shelly and over three times larger.
Last, the An-Penta Plus is basically an industrial design with significantly more power handling than most people will ever need, ethernet connectivity, and tons of customizability. But it is massive even compared to the An-Penta Mini and by far the most expensive controller in this video, which based on its build quality is totally justified, but for most people the design and specs are probably overkill. However, if you just want the absolute best no matter the cost, this is it.
As a reminder there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, but I do have links for all the controllers below, and as always, I appreciate it when you use those links since as an Amazon affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you.
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