- The Fake-Cree LED Awareness Thread - The new "low" in Budget lights.

The genuine XTE: > https://www.cree.com/led-components/products/xlamp-leds-discrete/xlamp-xt-e-white

Tricky business! Hard to really know

I zoomed in on your pic and I don’t see the dot that’s in one corner of the XTE’s.

Thank you for your observation. I’m an amateur at identifying fakes. I’m about to drop a couple thousand dollars on lights and don’t want to be taken for a fool.

Any thoughts on the credibility of 1000bulbs.com ?

Very Helpfull thread,thanks!
have some old XM-L same package as original and bond wires
but die size a bit smaller than the authentic
will post photos soon

Anyone knows if this is a fake XM-L2 u3 or not? Got this from Aliexpress.

Thanks

It looks like the real thing to me but the bin could be anything. But you never know just how cleaver they can be.
This might help a little.

Thanks. The dot pattern looks right. However, there is a curious writing in the corner that I couldn’t find on the internet.

Looks fake to me. The substrate on that is white, but on a real XM-L2 it’s black. Even the fake emitters getting decent so as long it works fine I wouldn’t worry about it being genuine or not.

I was curious so I bought a XM-L T6 on a starboard from digikey (shouldn’t be fake right?). I installed it into the flashlight and guess what? The T6 was about 160 flux while the U3 from the light was about 200 flux from about 6 feet away. So I guess these are either real or very good fake.

Link is not working)

Is it possible that these LB’s are actually using CREE’s chip, but has worse implementation (i.e. lower quality substrate, lower grade gold wires, worse quality phosphors, etc.)?

I also have a gut feeling that LB may be cutting corner by using the blue LED chip meant for XP-Gs in the XML-like body and try to pass it off as XM-L. Of course, that results in lower overall efficiency.

its difficult to know. the LB LEDs are less efficient, have bad CRI, and very inconsistent with quality & tint.

I may have gotten a fake chip in this cheap light

Cheap zoomie

It is a 6 Volt XHP 70, but when I took off the bezel and lens the dome just fell off!

See my post in modding.

That’s “instant dedome” feature! You should be happy about it that you don’t need to do it yourself. :laughing:

LOL

They run a seriously over driven Fake XHP…

But the 3amp 6v driver is perfect for an MT-G2 if you drop one of those in and swap out the cruddy plastic lens with a glass one, you get a good few more lumens and the light runs way cooler also decent run time on half decent 26650’s

I swapped in a real (hopefully) HP70.2
Where do I get a glass lens?

the build quality is definitely not cree.
look at the die attach adhesive.