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

I Taw a Putty Tat!!!

The LED Lensers I have don’t have glue, just screwed in tight. The POP Lite and the Coast did have glue.

The cool white version is cheap everywhere but I had to buy mine at Mouser so I could get it in neutral white. Cool white harshes my mellow, man. :bigsmile:

++thumbs up for that! I’m the same way.

Yes. I just bought one UFSH98 from DX.com. The LED assembly looks exactly like the one in the photo shown by ledoman. They claim it is Cree XM-L T6 in the product description anyway. I asked DX and waiting for their reply…

good idea is to report it. everyone who receives any light claiming to be a Cree of some sort, and receives the fake latticebright needs to report it, file claims, etc. to wake up these sellers to stop this false advertising and selling fakes listed as brand-name emitters. soon we may begin to see other good brands & emitters like the Nichia 219 arriving as cheap fakes with low CRI, random tints, and low quality knock-offs of those emitters.

I have one UltraFire Cree T6 and two UltraFire Cree Q5’s. So I opened them up today.
The T6 was LaticeBright- it has a poor blue tint
One Q5 has a board that says HT-PE. It is the brightest of the three but has a cold blue tint that is worse that the “T6”.
The other Q5 is another LatticeBright. It is the weakest of the three but has a great “frothy cool white tint”. The emitter is very small compared to the other two.

So who knows what is actually in these things? I would swap out the emitters, but that wouldn’t help unless I put in drivers too. I may do that though. MntE’s has some good choices.

I have some pictures but I don’t know how to post them.

Upload your pictures to http://imgur.com/ then post the link here between exclamation marks !!
You do not need to sign up for http://imgur.com/

Sampling of mine:

The new T-43 was a little surprising, but not really - Small Sun's are almost always cheaply made with the 1 or 2 exceptions like the T-08, but the T-08 had quality problems. The original ZY-T11's for example, are worse quality than the UltraFire and other clone ZY-T11's out there.

The nastiest one above is the T-43, because the MCPCB is marked CREE, but the LED definitely has the signs of an LB.

This is my first time posting pictures and I can’t seem to get a link to imbed each picture so I just pasted the direct link to the photos.
I don’t have a camera and my iPad couldn’t focus up close. I could get better pictures if someone realy wanted them

Here you go:

Easy. Use the 'tree' icon on BLF, next to the anchor. On the imgur website, rt. click on the picture and choose 'copy link'. Paste the link into the 'Image URL' field that show when you click on the tree icon.

UlraFire T6 - LatticeBright inside
Dim with unpleasant Cold Blue tint

UltraFire Q5 - Lattice Bright inside
Weakest of the three but nice frosty cool white just a small touch of purple

UltraFire Q5 with LB picture two

UltraFire Q5- HT-PE label?
Unpleasant Very Cold Blue tint but the brightest of the three

UltraFire Q5- with HT-PE picture two

wow indeed. It looks like this is only the icing on the cake were all about to encounter now with entry-level budge lights from China sellers…
Good thing here with seeign these photos is the more photos we can find and look at of the various LB fakes, - the more aware we will become in identifying them and able to file claims, false advertising, etc. to the sellers.
Thanks for the photo Tom, i will post this one in the OP too.

Also i noticed in the comparison and other photos of the LB LEDs is that the phosphor appear to be more “pale” and thinner, that may explain why some mentioned the tint is of a more bluish harsher color than genuine CREE Cool white emitters.
Another scary thought on this, is if the phosphor is actually thinner & less dense, is there a possibility there some harmful U/V spectrum light emitted from these fakes from the original emitter die? can this be tested?

No UV. Our white Leds use a blue led to excite the phosphor. UV can be used instead but it has a shorter life, is less efficient and I believe it’s more costly. I’ve seen some special high CRI white leds use UV.

we need to continue to
post the fakes vs genuine comparison pics. this has been a big problem with HID bulbs—- the counterfeits have become increasingly difficult to identify except for a few clues. then just buy from reputable sellers and manufacturers

we will continue to post the side-by-side comparison photos as we can get them, to help everyone identify the fakes from the genuine versions.

You can see on the ultafire q5 picture two that the reflector was crimped and dented. I wonder if the emitter was swapped? When I tryed to get it out I had to push it out from the back to keep from damaging it. Maybe they purchase the flashlights, swap out the cree’s and then sell them both?

Does anyone know what HT-PE stands for?

HT-PE = counterfeit Cree XP-E (very likely if you compare 3 small holes around the dome)

Here are 2 SK68’s
The one on the left I got about a year ago and has a driver, no modes but it runs on AA or 14500
On the right is one of several my brother gave me 3 months ago. He got rid of them because they are DD and do not run on AA

On a 14500 the one on the left draws 1.6A and is twice as bright as the right one which draws 2.2A and is blueish

These new LED’s are the worst of the worst!