I don’t think it makes any difference if the LED is PWM controlled or current controlled as far as looking at it is concerned.
Too bright is too bright no matter how you get there.
As Scallywag said, a too slow PWM coupled with a short duty cycle makes for a very unpleasant light to use in almost any circumstances.
Some lights have truly awful PWM running in the 100Hz to 300Hz range with 5% to 25% duty cycles.
One of these will cause eyestrain and headaches for me and many individuals. Yet some folks seem immune to truly awful PWM.
There are several threads about PWM that are buried in the general info category.
I made a video of the LT1 PWM charactistics and duty cycle here:
That might help explain the relation of PWM to brightness.
And another looking at PWM vs camera shutter speed.
