(Edit: I’m also coming from buying Philips Hue bulbs for precisely this reason, so in fairness, it’s not as big a price jump.)
One of my Waveform Lighting bulbs arrived defective, and it flickers all the time. I couldn't detect the Cree flicker with the naked eye but the defective Waveform bulb flickers visibly. Not sure if Waveform's QA is up to snuff.
Ketra was good, smart bulbs like Hue with an open API, but far better than Hue. Lutron bought them, killed the API and and proceeded to require inferior and costly priority controls