Don’t worry about tint with e21a. Pretty much all of the e21a LED’s that Clemence sells are right on the BBL line or even slightly below, for perfect tint. Just pick your favourite CCT. There won’t be any green in these LEDs. The color rendering is also absolutely amazing, and unlike SST20 leds’, they don’t go green when using them at lower power.
As for beamshots, that will always depend on the combination of LED and optic used. If you are looking for more throw, go for the quad e17a, and if you want better efficiency and floodier, go with quad e21a.
Here is an example of a Fenix HL50 I had modded with single e21a LED vs the original XM-L2 LED. You can see the improvement in tint is drastic! No more Green!
I have a Tiara modded e21a, and placed an order for the Skilhunt that will be a nice complement with longer battery life.
Also placed order on Virence H04. I already have a H04F with a single 3500K and I like it despite the quirky diffuser thingy. Same threads as the H03 so S1 shorty tube also works if you can get the right one. Also like the Mode B UI. Add/remove levels as you like. I have mine set to all levels except T2 since its almost the same visually as H1. It’s also easy enough to add/remove levels when necessary.
The E21 has an XP-G / 219C size die, and the E17 has half the mm² surface area die of the E21, so E17 is comparable with XP-E die size.
The E21 can safely handle max. 2 Amperes and the E17 can safely handle max. 1 Ampere.
So a quad of E21 can handle 8 Amperes and a quad of E17 can handle 4 Amperes.
So i think a quad of E17 would be more than enough to handle the power of the H04.
A quad of E17 is also much smaller so it will be less floody (tighter beam) and probably have less ‘donut hole’ effect.
But the donut will be evened out by the optics anyway (i assume)
Probably the E21 quad will have better efficiency because they will have an easy job, below half of their maximum recommended current.
But they cost twice as much as the E17, but the LED boards for both are equally priced and not cheap, so for the total price of this modded Skilhunt, the difference is negligible.
The driver of the light will determine the current and thus the run time, wich will be about the same, but maybe a bit longer for the E21 because it will work on a slightly lower Vf because they run at less than half the max. recommended current.
So in all, it seems the quad E21 is the most attractive option for buying this light.
Well said Jerommel, thank you :+1:
For CW and WW, I suggest to use E21A unless you need throwy confined hotspot. Or if you need pure RGBAL color headlamp.
I decided to go with E17a. The slight drop in efficiency/output is more than compensated by the much higher intensity in the beam. I think it is easy to get a floody beam using a diffused wide optic, but its harder to get a throwy beam. I think the E17a quad board will give me a better range to chose between throwy and floody. The higher intensity in the beam means I will likely use the headlamp in a lower mode, another reason why I won’t worry about the efficiency difference.
If I had more money, I would probably get one of each