btw, just to show how picky I am about beam quality, one of the reasons Im not impressed with HDS is
rings in the beam
so, when I tell you the single LED mod to the RRT-01 has rings in the beam, it does, just like an HDS… LOL!
tbh, the RRT-01 reflector is worse, has more rings:
I live with it, but, I wish I knew how to improve it
other trivia
for reference, the stock XM-L with 18350 gives 700 lumens, on my homebrew meter
I put a fresh 18350 into my triple 3500k and got 470 lumens, thats a 33% drop to gain High CRI
I put a fresh 18350 into my single 4500k RRT-01 and got 360 lumens, thats a 49% drop to gain High CRI
from which I infer that with 18350, the triple 3500k, despite having a less efficient LED is making 30% more lumens than the single 4500k.
—
for reference, the stock XM-L with 16340 gives 640 lumens, on my homebrew meter
I put a fresh 16340 into my triple 3500k and got 370 lumens, thats a 42% drop to gain High CRI
I put a fresh 16340 into my single 4500k RRT-01 and got 320 lumens, thats a 50% drop to gain High CRI
from which I infer that with 16340, the triple 3500k, despite having a less efficient LED is making 16% more lumens than the single 4500k.
fwiw, the single 4500k LED uses half as many lumens as the triple 3500k to illuminate its hotspot, because its a smaller area…
no wrong choices
more is more better