Just for the record, i have many high CRI LEDs especialy 219C (yeah i bought maybe too many at the time…) and although some of them don’t have the tint i would prefer, they are ALL better tinted than low CRI Cree LEDs with similar colour temperature.
Low CRI LEDS make beige and skin colour (for example) look green, whereas high CRI LEDs show them in the colours they actually are.
Must say, the 3000K Nichia 219C i have are the least pleasant tint. Too yellow, apparently above the BBL too (hint of green rather than red)
Here’s my point though:
When you have cool white LEDs to me the CRI is less important.
The red end of the spectrum is supposed to be less present with 5500 - 6500K, so it still looks more or less like it should with low CRI cool white LEDs.
And there has been progress too. I have some old XP-C Q5 cool white LEDs, and there really is very very little red in their spectrum.
Red objects don’t even light up, so to speak. It’s actually a bit funny.
Later Cree’s may not have deep red, but at least they have some orangey red, so red objects will light up, albeit a bit orangey.
Anyway, it’s a matter of how important you think colour rendition is.
Depends on the application too.
What many CRI babies (i guess i’m one of them though…) seem to overlook is the fact that with low light levels the human eye can hardly properly distinguish colours anyway.
The human vision system prioritizes contrast over colour identification, because the prior is simply more important than the latter.
So basically for close range application with sufficient output, the CRI and tint matters much more than with a light outside.
INteresting to note is that outside in the dark, where contrast counts most, a warmer white LED provides more clarity to the human vision system than cool white. But when you use this same light indoors and (thus) at closer ranges, the lack of red in a warmer white LED really shows, and skin colour and beige turn greenish…
80 CRI LEDs are often a nice compromise between output numbers and colour rendition.
The few 80CRI Cree’s i have are quite okay.
I have some old LG 4000K 3535 LEDs that are quite excellent actually.
Now the 4000K 90CRI Samsung LH351D’s i have certainly are not greenish. In fact, this is a very nice LED with high efficiency to boot.
But the die is very large, so if i had read more about the LED choice in regards to the optic used, i would have known they don’t make a great team…
No surprise the XP-L HI works well with small triple TIR optics.