Cree XP-G3, testing a R3 4000K 90+CRI emitter

I bought a couple of those, they are very cuddly warm white with rosy tint. Most leds in this tint region are above 80CRI, but if it is 90+ I could not say.


Cheers ^:)

If Fasttech is correct (I don’t trust any spec from any product from Fasttech) in that this is the nvsl219at-h1, than this must be the sw27 colour rank, so 2700K.
But frankly, it looks even warmer than that!

I made a S2+ triple today with these leds to see how the tint is in a TIR optic. and it is again different but closer to the reflector optic tint; the close to rosy tint with little yellow from the i3 aspheric lens zoomie was not achieved. Not a bad tint though.

Against my principles here’s a white wall shot that compares some lights (I do not show whitewall tint comparisons usually because they do not represent the reality very well, and people still will use the picture to discuss tint).

left the XP-G3 4000K 90CRI in a S8 (reflector light)
middle top the XP-G3 4000K 90CRI in a S2+ triple (TIR optic)
right the XP-G3 4000K 90CRI in a ‘on the road’ i3 (aspheric lens zoomie)
middle bottom Nichia 219A 4500K 92CRI in a solarstorm SC02 quad (TIR optic)

The Nichia shows brown-ish on pictures which is not true, the blue-ish hotspot of the S8 does not show well. But you can see how the i3 light is close to the 219A while the other two builds have a tint more to the yellow side.

Where can you buy XP-G3 4000K 90CRI leds domestically?

If you find a place please do let us know. I want to get some more myself.

Hey… is this the 5 bin? I really like the 5 bin and 3 bin that I got in…

RMM said that he might have some lying around but he hasn’t posted any on his store yet.

Hi!

The other day I stumbled onto this while googleing:

https://www.cutter.com.au/products.php?scri=52&cat=Leds+soldered+on+Printed+Circuit+Boards&pg=2

What the sheesh? Now this may sound like a cheap joke but, does cutter gets the majority of high-CRI Cree leds, which may explain why it is so complicated to find them elsewhere?

Moreover, I've not taken an in depth look there but this can be read there:

“14mm Round DTP TPAD MCPCB with the U2 bin XML-2, 7D2, S6 min 90CRI”, which is bogus. That “the U2 bin” should be edited and replaced with an “an”, doesn't it?

Take care.

Cheers ^:)

Great Work Djozz!

Thanks for the test!

These look very promising. I’m ready for a 2700 lumen High-CRI triple!

I’m disappointed about the tint, but I haven’t had the chance to try all mine yet, hopefully there’s a winner in there somewhere.

They’re an authorized Cree distributor and sell a TON of LED’s, so no conspiracy, I’d guess buying power.

The owner is a member here at BLF as well as most other hobbyist sites like MTBR, CPF, etc., been supportive of our “hobby” for more than a decade.

I’m sure that’s a typo on the XM-L2, it’s in one spot on the page header, not the description. Never saw anyone complain about getting stiffed by exaggerated claims.

Djozz have you figured out that XPG3 90CRI tint anomaly?

I like the rosy similarity to the Nichia it shows!
Have you tried that specific LED with another reflector or optic?

Cutter claims to have XP-G3 4000K 5-bin in S3.

Is this a typo?

The LEDs I see tested here were R3 bin.

Is it really possible they have 90 CRI LEDs in an S3 bin?!

If so, these will be my new favorite LEDs!

Link

Most likely. It’s far too large an improvement over the high CRI competition and cree’s own PDF only has 90 CRI LEDs up to R3 bin. The 4000K S3 are all 70 CRI. See page 7 in here .

Thank you for the quick reply.

Mouser has them right here in North America, XP-G3 4000K 5-bin, but in R3 bin:

Link

I would pay the crazy high shipping to get them from “Down Under” if they really, truly were S3.

Otherwise, the highest 4000K tint I see available is 5C1 in S5 bin from KaidoMain.

Nice to see that Mouser has the 4000K 90CRI too. Still not good for Europe, Mouser’s shipping rates are almost as high as Cutter’s, when ordered from here.

I’m being delusional if I think Cutter has S3 efficiency bins that don’t even show up on Cree’s own PDF datasheet, correct?

No actually. Cutter has real CREE LED's that do not show on CREE datasheets. Cutter gets some exclusive small batches (relatively small) of rare bin/tint LED's that CREE can't list or sell normally because the yield is too small. That's small for the big buyers (say 10K plus), not small for us.

Perfect example is the XPL W2 bin LED's - yes they are real and not listed in the CREE XPL datasheets.

https://www.cutter.com.au/proddetail.php?prod=cut2840 (not in stock now but some of us bought them - Dale for example is getting about 2,000 lumens with one)

http://www.cree.com/~/media/Files/Cree/LED-Components-and-Modules/XLamp/Data-and-Binning/ds-XPL.pdf

Believe me, I've had some email exchanges with Mark Rilly and he's very much legit with this stuff.

They have 90 CRI in 4000K, 4500K, and 5000K shown here: http://www.cutter.com.au/products.php?cat=Leds+on+40mm+Round+MCPCB

I'm on the side of think'n these are legit and Mark got his hands on rare yields that CREE can't sell to their regular large customers. With small yields of exceptional LED's, CREE can't group them in lower bins because they would be out of spec, and can't list them because they can't make them on demand in high volumes to fill orders.

Thank you for the fast reply.

Your sentiments capture, precisely, exactly what I had been hoping was the case,
i.e., you translated my hopes into printed matter most excellently.

I emailed Mark R. this past week to ask him which 5-bin tint they were but have not heard back yet.
Perhaps he can chime in here to clarify:

1) Whether they really are XP-G3 S3 efficiency bin, and not the commonly available R3 bin
2) Which 5-bin tint they are

Mark, you out there…?

Ohhh - minor/major issue - he's really bad at emailing. Might not respond at all, might take weeks.

MRsDNF (Steve) lives kind of/sort of close to the Cutter store, visits there on occasion, and can help out contacting them, and Steve is very helpful. He might not be engaged on this thread though, so I'd suggest pm'ing Steve to help in contacting Mark.

I was think'n about ordering a couple of those 7X boards - looks like copper DTP. Gotta check but that TPAD board with the 50 mm optic, or 40 mm with a lens, might be a good fit for a SRK, but you'd have to build up under the MCPCB with a pretty big spacer.

Ohh - hear is an email excerpt I got from Mark back In October. This was about an XHP50 originally:

Hi Tom

Sorry thought you may be aware of this, Steve may want to chime in and confirm as he has been here and purchased non published bins from us on a fairly regular basis. The problem for Cree is they will often yield higher than published bins but only in non commercial qtys, they only officially release the bin once they can supply everybody, occasionally works in reverse, just has Cree drop a led 2 flux bins as they are having a yield issue

Cheers

Mark

Okay, that makes sense.

I would feel better before ordering if I could confirm.