I was talked in to purchasing a Streamlight Knucklehead light today. Wonderful light, I really like it. Very helpful when working on cars. However, it has two Luxeon Rebel LEDs which are clearly cool white; but, they look AMAZING. Pure white, good color rendering (yellows don't look green) and really bright.
They don't make everything look dead the way Cree cool whites do.
What other lights use these LEDs? I know that MagLites do but they are really size inefficient IMHO. Also, 120 volt E27 based lights? These would be awesome for home lighting.
I took the Luxeon pill out of my Pelican and installed an XM-L. No way would I go back to the Luxeon, I bet it throws about 1/3 as much light as the XM-L
I'm not going for brightness here, I am going for light quality. The light that comes out of a Luxeon is absolutely stunning. My double Luxeon Streamlight is definitely not that bright but it does well. However, the color temperature is (I would claim) a perfect 5000K (pure white, zero blue, zero yellow) with a decently high color rendering index (since it doesn't turn yellow colors greenish, reds and browns look perfect too).
All of the Philips bulbs with the Rebel emitters I have found use royal blue emitters with the "remote phosphor" caps making a "2700K" light. I would love to find a bulb with a quality LED driver that uses these cooler white (5000K would be perfect for the bathroom, IMHO) LEDs. As of now, I am probably going to have to work on building one of these bulbs.
Also, the Streamlight Knucklehead is a really nice light. Even has a moonlight mode.
I have a Fenix E10, a Maglite XL100 and a Maglite 2D LED using Rebel leds. I haven't used the 2D but the other two is really nice lights with very nice tints. E10 has a pure natural beam that I love to use for matching my socks to trousers :) I mean thanks to the nice color rendition. XL100 has a tight beam due to the small size of Rebel and the deep reflector XL has.
I think it is the best pick for ~100 lm applications and many EDCs need only 100lm.
Not even close. The NW Xeno has a slight yellow to it where as the Streamlight has absolutely zero yellow. There isn't even a hint of yellow. It's actually really nice. In the woods though, I much prefer the neutral white of my other lights over the cool white of the Streamlight.
