Once you go NW you never go back.
You then move forward into high CRI NW.
I am rather picky, neutral white is no longer good enough, I need high CRI and will gladly give up lumens to reach it in many cases. It just look so much better and you can actually see what you are looking at.
I figure I will repost my story of what turned me onto NW again in condensed form.
I had both a thorfire S70 with the CW stock emitter and a convoy L6 with the NW 3A emitter. I modded both of them with a TA driver and they were both making around 6k lumens. The thorfire was about 10% higher in both lumens and throw when tested on the meter.
I took them out with the family and was testing them on a bridge over a creek. First I turned on the S70 and it was an impressive beam, lit up everything bright and we thought it was really impressive.
That is until I turned on the L6, instantly everyone unanimously liked it more by a wide margin. The beam was more pleasing to look at, the colors were far more life like and what really shocked me was that it actually seemed both brighter and it easily threw further. I expected exactly the oppisote result so it shocked me.
With the S70 we could just make out the far bank of the creek.
With the L6 we could easily see the rocks, bushes and even the frogs jumping into the water.
I was so shocked that as soon as I got home I checked the batteries in both of them and re-tested both lights. Sure enough same results as before, the batteries were about the same voltage and the S70 still was about 10% higher on the meter then the L6.
After that I ditched CW altogether and looked at lumens completely differently. Ever since I have been focusing on high CRI NW LES’s even if I don’t get as many lumens and never looked back.
People that see my lights always comment on how good everything looks and wounder what kind of light it is since they are used to seeing CW LED flashlights.
The moral to the store is that paper numbers don’t tell the whole story but then that is the case for many things.