I thought the mannakin was real for a moment

No surprise, most of these horrid panels are shit! I won't fit them!

I can't say it's the case for all LEDs but many of them are horrible, its a kind of what I can best describe as a 'grey' light. The lights in subway sandwich shops are some of the worst. And I just noticed the 'Muc off' sign and thought it said something else!

I have to admit I quite like the glare free, evenly lit illumination that these LED panels can provide when done properly. I much prefer them aesthetically to cat 2 louvres that they usually replace. However, this only applies really in 840 colour (or 940 if anyone make such a thing) & being LED all the usual reliability issues apply!

Cat2 louvers are the best non glare luminaires out there, in the better ones you can't tell from afar whether the light is on except by looking at the floor area under the luminaire. None of this glare control exists in the LED panels and they are glary, despite being diffused

Not this again. Maybe the ones you're seeing are just over bright in the first place. We use loads at work and I would't say they create glare. Cat 2 Louvre's do work well if fitted properly, but they are ugly as shit and the crappy louvres are rarely fitted properly

I've seen dim LED panels and they seem to be quite glarey. Could it be to do with AC flicker. 99% of these thing's'll be the cheapest ones shops can get their hands on and I can't see them being fed nice pure DC like LED's are supposed to.

I've seen some LED panels that actually look quite good & give nice light.

I'm assuming these are early generation ones? That or something really cheaply made crap?

When I first looked at the pic I was more looking at the lights, but was like: who's the guy .. then I noticed it was just a man-i-ken

There aren't better or worse optics in the diffuse panels, they are all just diffuse panels. The only difference is the LEDs inside and this is not the deal here. Most of them are about 4000 Lm output, and most are flicker free. They glare because they are a bright square among other non illuminated blank tiles (that cannot be illuminated, because the light does not turn around to get to them). Cat 2 louvers don't look bright from the side and that's what makes the difference

I wouldn’t actually mind these if the colour temperature and colour rendering was correct. It just seems harsh and unnatural despite being heavily diffused. Motorbike shops seem to love these. I’d have preferred to use Flourescent fittings that can have alsorts of different louvre options. The ones in my new break room have two big PL-L lamps in the middle in a sort of cat 2 reflector and the outsides are curved to direct light from the top of the lamps down in a lovely soft sort of way.

My workplace (the during the day one, not the shed of ballast stuff) uses LED modulars which are a box with some depth, Prismatic Acrylic panel on it's face, and LED PCBs on its back. Those actually do work better than the White panels optically, they don't appear glary like the White panels allthough they do put out quite a lot of light

The LEDs in them are not bad in terms of LEDs, they are 4000K and don't seem to have weird hues, but the lighting in the room still hurts in the eyes (activity includes electronics testing lab and working on the computer). I have a FL luminaire above my desk (it is integrated part of the desk itself), which originally had 2x 36W 765 tubes, and then i put in a 827 (one 827 and removed the starter for the other tube). When i switch it on it sorta dilutes the LED lighting that falls on the desk area (i put in the 827 tube to push down the Blue part of the overall light as much as possible), this definitely helps with the feeling in the eyes, but with it on there is way too much light to my liking, so i don't use it most of the time (i prefer dimmer lit spaces)