Nichia 219C, testing a 5000K 83CRI emitter, comparing with a XP-G2 S4 2B and other leds

Wow, nice photomicrograph! Worthy of a scientific journal. I always enjoy your reviews. And it looks like this emitter is going to find itself on many shopping lists.

Man you are a record H) thanks for the whole work, guys like you makes the life easy

But i have a question the Nichia leds have a very nice tint so why dedoming it as long as using them are not meant for throwing ?

Thank you djozz!
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I wanted to do a little mod with this led, to see what it does, and to be able to judge the tint. Thinking about how to make use of the low voltage and high output, it was going to be a small 16340 EDC-light, not surprisingly my favorite type ;-) . But I think where this led really stands out is a 18350 battery EDC, like the Convoy S2+, with a FET-driver and a smooth reflector for some throw. But I did not have that host. Oh, and a single 18650 triple on a FET-driver will be a beast (2500+ OTF lumen), comparable with triple dedomed XP-L's but a bit better throw and light quality (even more true for the 90+ CRI versions of the 219C).

So I had this little Supfire S1:

The mods that were done:

*changed the switch to a small Omten instead of the dubious stock switch (had to mod the tail section a bit for this)

*bypassed the tail spring with 20AWG silicon wire

*Nichia 219C 5000K 83CRI on a 16mm Noctigon, Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste

*AK-47-A1 based single-sided FET-driver, 3 modes (5,25,100) + memory

*AR-coated lens, changed green o-ring for black one.

Glamour shots of the led (actually this led does not look that elegant with those white blobs on the side):

Performance (on a Efest IMR 16340 V2 550mAh):

*3,3A on high, quite steady, not skyrocketing down at all (how's that for a 16340 battery!)

*800 OTF (djozz-) lumen at start, 700 lumen after 30 seconds (mostly heat-sag). The light gets very hot after a minute, but keeps performing with handcooling.

*Convincingly bright hotspot, (have not measured throw yet, but mind it is just a small OP-reflector..)

*Nice neutral tint. It is difficult to judge the 83CRI for me, my brain has been trained to associate high CRI with a warmer tint (my favourite colour temperature is 3500K) and this tint is over 5000K. But the tint is very pleasant neutral white with no hints to green or red or whatever.

Conclusion: this is XM-L2 performance in a 3535-package. The only competitor for this performance in small EDC's is a dedomed XP-L (which is comparable throwy and a bit more efficient). But when the 90+ CRI version of the 219C is there, all my lights will have swaps again!

Thanks for the update djozz. You have to love the low voltage requirements of this led.

Any idea when we can expect them?

I can't find in which thread it was, but DBCstm asked them on the phone and if I remember well they answered somewhere september.

This LED is astonishing! If we consider that there is a CRI 70 Variant that is one brightness bin higher (D320) and somebody would succeed in dedoming these bad boys… Yeah Cree, better come up with something.

Too bad, that there isn’t a NCS…Version, like there was with the B and B-V1 series. To me, it appears, that the NCSL and NCSW have smaller dies than the NVSL and NVSW. If I got that right, NCS where binned at half the current of NVS, have little less efficiency, but share the same maximum ratings for current.

There are some things people should try to understand when talking about Nichia LEDs. Not claiming, I know all that stuff about these Nichias, but I’ve seen many comparisons between 219A and 219B and got the feeling the one who did it didn’t know that there are many 219A’s and B’s… They compared tints, saying 219A is warmer than 219B, that’s like saying XP-G is warmer than XP-G2 :wink:

EDIT: forgot the most important part: thank you djozz for testing. You should be considered for the MVT-award (most valuable tester). Would you mind taking some beamshots to show us a hint of the tint?

Thanks :-)

I have tested one small die NCS.. 219B led half a year ago, it was for sale at Kaidomain for a brief period. It performed incredibly well compared to the XP-E2, much higher output, higher current capability. But there are three reasons why Nichia's (other than two well-known high CRI types) are not used: 1) anything not Cree is disliked 2) they are hard to dedome, and dedoming is a big hobby over here, 3) Nichia's are notoriously unavailable (that is: in small quantities for private customers) while Cree is everywhere. Here's the thread: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/30818

I have once done a series of tests trying to reproduce white tints with digital camera and monitor, and the clear result of that is that it does not work, does not even come close to reality, in photo's colours disappear and other appear out of nowhere. You can just about distinguish a warm tint from a neutral and cool tint and that's it. Some folks try to show differences between two neutrals on the internet and that's just impossible. Especially our wonderfull 90+CRI leds which in real life show the colours most vibrantly, in a picture on your computer monitor does not look any better than a middle-of-the-road 70CRI neutral. So I will show no beamshots of this 219C led because it will give you even less information as a description in words. Threads: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/20204 and https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/21609 .

So… next we need high CRI monitors to view beamshots on! :bigsmile:

Well, actually that is far from enough: you need camera's in which each pixel records the full spectral distribution of the incoming light, and display monitors that in each pixel not just emits RGB, but full spectrum as well. Not until then you are close to a solution :tired:

Now Nichia needs to scale up the 219 to make an emitter to complete with the XM-L2/XP-L.

Tester's horror!

Last night I was measuring things in my integrating sphere and I had the uncomfortable feeling that the reading of my luxmeter was a bit high, like a few percent, not much. And during the testing suddenly the readings were way off! It appeared that the battery was empty, it was actually very very weak. The meter apparently can run the battery very low before failing, but does not give any indication in the display, which was quite unexpected for a high-end luxmeter. And then the really horrifying thing struck me: how long has it been reading too high?

The last serious test I did was the Nichia 219C, so this one had to be done again :tired: . Luckily I had ordered two more of these, along with two for another BLF-member, so I did the test again today. Here's the results of the second led together with the first results from the OP.

Ok, I got away with it, the second led does not test significantly different from the first one, so the story of the OP still stands. As you can see the second led has a slightly higher Vf (~0.03V), and (only at the higher currents) a slightly lower output. So the efficiency is a tiny bit less. The output difference above 5A could be explained by a slightly worse heatsinking, inside the led, or perhaps it is reflowed a bit worse.

I does look like the luxmeter was working fine during the test in the OP.

This exact LED according to the datasheet has a tolerance of 6.25% So the same exact LED under the same voltage bin can have a significant difference without thinking of reflow or micro-metric errors.

10 amps! Your not doing any testing on me. Thanks for the update djozz and sense you must be scratching for something to do?

@ djozz: Oh man, I feel a bit stupid now, because I’ve stumbled upon that test you did some time ago, but without realizing that it was a NCS… 219B. Even that one looks pretty interesting even though it’s a B. They have NCS… 219B-V1 and I regret that I haven’t ordered some of them last time I ordered some LEDs from Nichia via Lumitronix. Anyways, it’s a pity that there isn’t a NCS… 219C, because if there was, it would probably outthrow every other LED we’re using in our builds…

You may be right about photographing tints of LEDs and their color reproduction, no, sure you’re right about that. You can’t show how they look to your eye in real life in a photo. But I think, you can show at least a little difference to lower CRI LEDs. I’m going to try it out, not going to be of great scientifical value, but fun to me. I have NVS…219BT-V1 in sw40, sw50 and sw57 and the first thing I want to do with them is building a single P60-drop-in with each tint, just to find out what I like best.

Thanks djozz, very good work as other ones you have done in the past. I am not familiar with the issues of dedoming Nichias but isn’t the gasoline method safe and reliable with Nichias? Why did you try the hot dedoming instead of the gasoline method?

It is a bit of stubbornness, I had one bad result in the past with the gasoline method and hot dedoming always works fast and reliable for me (with Cree emitters). And there's only so many emitters that I want to sacrifice, so I leave it to others to find out about this. My fear is because Nichia's have stiffer domes gasoline dedoming does not work out so well as with Cree leds.

Djozz, i have a favour to ask ( for us all :wink: ) Can you pleace test Nichia vs XPG2 with a smaller heatsink, or straight in a C8 body
Those would be real life flashlight conditions, it would be interesting to see the lumen output when temps are 85+ deg C

Sorry, I'm done testing for a few weeks, from tomorrow on I will be away with the family camping on Terschelling :-) . There will be enough opportunity to keep rattling on on the forum, but nothing practical can be done.