I can tell by the conviction of your words that you have stones. I’m not sure I need to see them though. 
Like I said above I can see a difference. With my two high cri lights and in the pictures. I don’t know the effect the camera and monitor play but yes the reds are more vibrant. Even on my red dog house I see it. But in my day to day uses. It just doesn’t matter matter to me as much. It’s not a deal breaker. And when I take my daughters to the park at night. It’s not lit at all basically I make a circle of 8 to 10 lights. High cri isn’t a priority. I need output, and decent run times at a higher output. Your needs are different then mine and others. When I hear the cat fighting with the racoon outside. I don’t think let me grab my high cri light. I just grab a light I know is a few thousand lumens and run it away. I don’t need to see the raccoon in more vibrant color. Just to see it
In these pictures, the low-CRI light also appears to be better at showing red, due to being brighter. That wooden door is much more visible in the second shot… which may serve as an example of why one might prefer lumens over CRI. Brighter tends to look better.
Of course, the visible difference here could also be due to completely unrelated factors like exposure time, ISO speed, or white balance.
…and the difference in the example of the “two neutrals” could still be the (unknown) CCT and/or tint rather than CRI. Just because you say both are “neutral” doesn’t mean they are “the same, other than CRI”.
It seems things are going in circles. Everyone is correct, but talking about different things.
Assuming all other things are equal, higher CRI will generally look better. However, that’s a bit like assuming a spherical cow in a vacuum. It is completely correct within the confines of its hypothetical scenario, but it may gloss over a few factors which are relevant for practical applications.
…
On a lighter note, here’s a picture of Elon Musk’s cow expressing her discontent with her role as a rocket test payload:
She floated by my space rock around breakfast time this morning, and still had that look on her face. Maybe she’ll be a bit less angry by the time she reaches Mars.
I can see how the Utorch would drive you to post vulgarities, it has a,… distinct output.
Perhaps take the picture again without the plastic lens, you may be surprised at how much the plastic distorts and colors the output. Here are my results.
With lens:
Without:
thanks for reminding me of those photos
the NoLens looks a lot better!
the with Lens looks exactly like my yellow/green donut hole
fortunately I knew what I was getting into beforehand, so not distressed
I bought the Low CRI light intending to have it modded to Nichia anyway
I will add AssPheric lens replacement to the goals list, a diffuser film may be in order…
Please post in the Utorch thread if you find a decent replacement lens. It works well as a mule but the aspheric gives it an interesting character were it not for the crazy color the stock plastic lens adds. (I don’t really KNOW if it’s the plastic that affects it, just thought it was worth mentioning).
Gotta add I’m feeling pretty dull compared to my fellow flashoholics. Besides working on equipment in the daytime and using flashlights to overcome daylight adjusted eyes when peering in ancient machines I mostly use my flashlights for object avoidance at night. I’m an old dad with young kids, old kids, and grandkids so there is always a high probability of stepping on a toy or something that shouldn’t be on the floor.
I could get by with a flashlight that only showed grayscale.
In the past, i bought lights without high Cri because I didn’t know/care about CRI.
Now, i buy lights without high CRI to mod them with my Nichia high CRI
Also i buy low CRI because i have enough high CRI in my collection.
I have changed over half of my flashlights’ leds to the 219B sw45 R9080.
For me now, tint is even more important than cri, bad tint is more noticeable
Good point TK…… :+1: …
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Cognition Ahead
Blessed be the peace keepers.
Nice…… 
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from Jason Hui over at Prometheus Lights;
” _When you order a MIL/LEO Alpha you can choose your LED, but I still recommend the “Maker’s Choice” MCE 4500K LED. I have two theories on this. First, these are 82 CRI minimum and I believe the enhanced color rendering will allow your brain to recognize features and make decisions more quickly. It’s just a theory, but when life demands split second decision making, I want to reduce the workload on my brain as much as I can.”
_
Interesting spin, which of the following lights reduces the workload, processing time, the most, for you?
I can understand better now, why people say NW low CRI shows colors well, even CW Low CRI shows relative colors. In the next pic I removed the worm from bottom right above, and added a Thorfire TK05 CW XP-G3 Low CRI
Use whatever light you like, choices are good. Our brain is really good at adjusting its white balance and relative color perception, even when a light has Low R9. I would go so far as to say our brain is much more forgiving than the camera, which in itself is quite good at adapting to different relative colors.
thanks to all for sharing your thoughts
From the ridiculous to the sublime
Even with a Green Filter, I can tell the fruit colors apart in real life:
I hear deer dont spook when illuminated with a Green Beam 
Hmmmm…. looks like you ate a tomato & replaced it with an orange.
You are very perceptive!
fwiw, Deer cant see Red, and I can still tell the fruits apart
Blue works for me to tell colors apart too, but deer can see it really well, so you Will be noticed
Bottom line is everybody is right, it makes absolutely no difference what CRI or color a light is, you can still tell colors apart from each other.
There would be no need for High CRI if relative color was all I cared about. I think the Blue looks “cool”
lol
That says more about the filter than about the light source. The filter is letting non-green shades through. Here’s a true green filter applied in a checkerboard pattern:
The physical filter certainly decreases non-green shades quite a bit, but it’s still letting through enough to make out some other shades.
For comparison, here’s the same perfect* filter applied to an earlier pic.
* “Perfect” meaning the red and blue channels were completely zeroed out before saving, but jpeg compression has added small non-zero values in some places.