testing two of KD's new Nichia 219b leds (4500K'92CRI' and 5500K)

Interesting! Thanks once again for your curiosity djozz!
I’d like to see a mod with the triple nichia board, will old-lumens do one soon perhaps?

Thanks for the graphs!

Thanks for your wotk. Is there any chance for some beamshots? Quick mount with any free reflector, pointed at some colorful object so everyone could judge is it really high CRI.

WOW.. If the Nichia 219B really is 92 CRI then its a HUGE step forward.

Being able to easily get 500+ high cri NW lumens out of a single cell light... Me likey!

The 5500K Nichia looks really good on paper too!

This also open up new extreme possibilities with those 20mm triple TIR optics.. J)

:love:

Thanks djozz! Looking forward to hear more about your subjective thoughts when you get the time.. :)

Looks like I may be replacing a few old Nichia’s in some of my lights.
Thanks for sharing your work here Djozz, much appreciated. :wink:

Nicha chip is obviously bigger than 2mm^2.Could someone calculate exact die size from pic? It looks like 3mm^2 at least.

I took out my trusty ruler, the surface area of the Nichia219b die from the picture measures 1.3 times the XP-G2 die. so with the same output, throw should be 23% less.

Thanks Djozz for the tests!!! Highly appreciated!

Now I'm looking forward to hear more about the CRI.......

I devoted quite some time in finding out how to reproduce tints and CRI on the internet, and although it is possible to show differences between leds, it is just not what is happening in real life. I had a discussion with RaceR about the usefulness of an as good as possible representation of led tints on colour charts and photo's, and although despite the quite disappointing results I still thought it was worth the effort, RaceR thought not. But it gives an idea how hopeless it is, especially if you want to demonstrate CRI with pictures, high CRI leds look nearly as good as any neutral led in such a picture while in real life it is so much nicer...

Mind that the triple that KD is selling is the with old type 219A, great emitter up till now, but with this new option I would not want it anymore. Great price though :-)

lower forward voltage, and more lumen!

WIN

You must have misunderstood me. I personally found the charts very interesting. :) I was the last one posting in that thread too..

I just did not think that using the same white balance for emitters in the 7000K and 3000K gives the best comparison when comparing various and completely different emitters ability to render colors (CRI).

If the white balance is correct for two different tints (basically white should be proper white) it will be easier to compare their ability to render colors correctly. Especially if you have a benchmark (100 CRI picture) where the WB is correct too (again, proper white).

If you want to get some sort of visual point of view, then the approach with a fixed daylight setting is "ok". Im saying "ok" because there is no great way capture tints like the eyes perceives and adapts to various tints. For a CRI comparison, id say correct WB on all pictures is easily the best way. But there as still challenges......

At the end of the day, it would not be easy to distinguish a 92 CRI and a 80 CRI emitter with certainty anyway. So your subjective thoughts would be good enough for me. You have lots of experience with various emitters and tints. The best way is always to personally experience tints in real life and in various environments anyway. :)

Thanks for explaining RaceR86, in the end this all means: tint photography can be useful, but only bleakly reflects what we see in real life..

And even if you manage to get a picture that accurately reflects what you see in real life, it may look completely different on somebody else's monitor. There's likely a bigger difference between two different monitors than between two similar LEDs.

That is huge variable indeed, different panels (TN, various IPS), personal settings (brightness, Kevin of the monitor), browsers often times do not display colors well. Most monitors are bad anyway even if you can say "I see rich colors"

My pictures, with my camera and as displayed by my monitor, only look 'right' with the white balance on the fluorescent setting. They may look like harsh blue-purple utter crap on everybody else's monitors, who knows. Using the daylight setting on the camera gives something that looks like it's from the 1940s.

Djozz, how well do you feel the emitter maintains its CRI level throughout increasing current?

I have several 119s and 219s and I just somehow feel the higher the current, the less pleasant the tint becomes.

Great info as always. Thank you for the testing djozz.

thanks for the review djozz, that’s a huge help. More output and lower Vf are huge improvements. I wonder how the 92CRI 219B would compare output wise to an XP-G2 R3 3C or 4B? I was thinking about one of those with an XM-L2 T6 3C for a new bike light, but if I can get higher CRI with the same output (throw is not such a big deal) then the 219B looks like a good alternative.

Disappointment!

I put the '92CRI' 219b in a AA-host with a BLF-mini driver (it runs at 1.3A on a Li-ion) to compare it to other lights, a ssUFc3 with a 'old'219Ahigh CRI Nichia also on a BLF-mini driver, a sk68 clone with a Osram Oslon SSL80 4000K 96 CRI led, and my old Xeno03 modded with XP-G2 3C (5000K).

(left to right: Xeno with Xpg2 3C, AA-host with KD's 219B, sk68 with 96 CRI Oslon, UF with old 92CRI Nichia 219A)

I did some thorough comparing by eye, and I am afraid that I am not convinced that this led is 92CRI. It sure is a nice tint, but it does not have the warm yellow and red that the 'old' Nichia 219A 92CRI and the Oslon SSL80 96CRI show. In fact, it is very much like the XP-G2 3C (5000K) that is in my Xeno03 at the moment, a tiny bit less yellow, and a tiny bit more red, so it might be a 80CRI 5000K led.

I tried to capture the comparison in a photo of some colourful objects, but although I could easily see the difference by eye, it does not show on the picture.

I do give you a beamshot comparing KD's 219b on the left, and the old 219A on the right, not because the tints that show are exactly what I see by eye, but because it does show that the tints are quite different.(you see some PWM on the left beamshot because the light was on medium mode)

So what should i say? The tint comparisons I just did are not scientific enough to proof that this led is not 92CRI, although I can not imagine how you can make a 92CRI led with visibly less red, and paler yellow in it than the other highCRI leds I compared it with.

So sorry, all my subjective senses say that this not the 92CRI one