LED test / review – Lumileds Luxeon MZ 5700 K min. 90 CRI (3V) – Finally! High CRI, High power, beautiful light

Interestingly, 10508 offers tighter beam and higher cd than 10507. Still extremely floody though.

There is no sense to put these in small triples/quads, first emitting surface is larger than tir holes, which would probably cause optics melting at high power, second Luxeon V has similar output up to ~8-9Amps(and is 2x cheaper), this LED is better than Luxeon V only if you want to drive it at 9+ Amps. Mz can be considered as approx.two undomed Lux Vs in parallel. It's available in 3/6/12V.

DTP boards should arrive in 2weeks, I have one 3V 5000K 80CRI and two 3V 5700K 90CRI LEDs for testing, I'll try to put one in M1 host to see how beam and output looks. If there is enough interest I'll maybe buy one T-bin 5000K 70CRI reel. 3V 5700K 90CRI is available at mouser (unknown bin as usual with large distributors).

Yeah, I guess they are pretty big… but I still got me some ideas :smiling_imp:

BTW, looking at Lumileds website I just saw Luxeon F Plus:
https://www.lumileds.com/products/automotive-lighting/luxeon-f

Looks like it could potentially beat the Blackie…

  • much lower thermal resistance
  • more efficient
  • individual bins are orderable
  • similar die size

ADDED: There’s alu DTP SinkPad for that: http://www.sinkpad.com/inner-product.php?id=31

And not to forget, Osram has announced the Oslon Compact PL series, which does exactly the same, with very smilar footprint.

The thermal pad of the Luxeon F is tiny though. Also, the Luxeon Z ES doesn’t get quite as high as other LEDs with a 2mm^2 die. In my eyes it would be surprising if this LED surpasses the Black Flat HWQP.

This LED looks like a great way to get a lot of light from a single cell light. I did not know about it. I guess the non standard footprint has kept it from seeing more use by flashlight modders.

Nice LED for pebbled TIR optics. :+1:

The use of XP boards is possible, though. I’m own a flashlight with the MZ already.

But this LED was called ‘power hungry’ to get 2800 lumens of high CRI light, which is true in some point.

Because that there are not much boost driver or compact modding hosts for multi battery use out there the needed amperage is a problem indeed because the current is way too high which ‘traditional’ drivers for single battery can handle. In my JAXMAN M8 the Luxeon MZ is powered by the A17DD_L and the FET gets really! hot at Turbo (approx. 13 Amps with more than 100 deg C on FET!) which should lowers it’s lifetime rapidly.

For building a triple I would recommend the 12 V variant of the MZ (LMZ9-SW57) and a hypothetical high power buck/boost driver with 4S battery config. Because of the needed diffusor or matte optic bigger reflectors of the also bigger host would also increase the throw.

I just ordered a couple of the 3V 70cri type from digikey. I’m thinking it might work well in an EE X6 maybe with ledil iris TIR.

Good luck with the triple tricky reflow! :innocent: :slight_smile:

I think that will make a great light!

Do you have any throw numbers from the testing you’ve done?

Soon I'll make few builds, but theoretically light with this led (T bin) should have ~2 times the throw of domed XM-L2 or domed XP-L in same reflector at close to max. power (14-15Amps).

That would be great, but is that taking into account the cross between the dies? In reflector lights the cross reduces throw because when you look into the reflector there is always some area reflecting the dark cross.

I will also report my findings when I test the LED in a C8.

There should be no cross/donut if OP reflector is used, of course this reduces throw, but it still should be way better than any triple/quad. Gap between dies is smaller than XHP-50 or XHP-70, and should be similar to dedomed/shaved XHP-50.

I did some testing of this LED in a supfire L6 (26650 light with C8 head). I purchased the LMZ7-QW57 (3V 5700K) emitter from digi-key. I reflowed on a 20mm Tpad XP footprint MCPCB (I got it on the first try :sunglasses: ). With a fully charged 30Q I measured 11.7A by measuring the voltage across a 10mOhm shunt in place of the tailcap (this cell is old so the current might be higher with a new cell).

The results are a bit disappointing. I measured 69Kcd at 6.78m (with smooth reflector, reading taken at point with highest lux), and less than 2400 lumens OTF (ceiling bounce test).

A XHP-50 4500K 90CRI de-domed will do 2000 otf lumens at 6V and 5A (10A for the Luxeon 3V). So in this regard it’s actually quite similar. This shouldn’t come as a suprise as the Luxeon M and MZ are also from 2015. They aren’t new.

How do you like the tint?

Mine is the 70 CRI version. I would say the tint is fine. It is definitely on the cooler side but not noticeably blue like a cree 1A.

Ok, then it really isn’t that efficient. :frowning: