+1
Many reasons, production volumes may be the most prominent. Most leds are made from a single monochromatic light source, usually some blue though Yuji International is venturing into violet dies with its VTC series for ultra high fidelity colour rendering. The violet hue you see on smartphones, tablets and other LCD screens isn't violet but just a pale mimic. Now add the current state of development in led lighting (still sucks) plus emitter price into the equation and the carelesness of most folks in this regard, and you can now guess why crap white plus crap rendering index is most common. 
Cheers ^:)
Depends on the use. For illuminating objects (for photography) I prefer 5000k neutral, but also like to contrast between warm and cool white (the combination of warm and cool can be quite beautiful). For illuminating light painting tools, I default with 6500k, but sometimes also use anything between warm and cool. For throwers (wanting the see the beam in the photo) I’ll use cool white.
4000-5000K neutral white for me.
Cold, Warm or Neutral? … I’d choose Neutral.
- Cold (6000K+) - long range and looks decent indoors but looks hideous outdoors. Tends to be perceived as being brighter than it is, making cold tints one of the better tints for wowing your friends with your light.
- Warm (3000K) - looks great outdoors especially in nature, but makes everything look orange indoors.
- Neutral (4000-5000K) - good enough for both indoors and outdoors. Best compromise of tint choices. For an EDC light meant to be used anywhere, in my opinion neutral is the best choice.
I’m not a huge fan of high CRI. It’s nice to have, but from my experience other factors are MUCH more noticeable than CRI, in this order:
- Tint - most important factor for me. If the tint sucks, I’m not going to like the light no matter what else it does.
- Total output (high or low lumens / throw). Lumens are nice. Why carry around a 200 lumen light when you could have a 1000 lumen light the same size?
- Does it make everything look greenish? For CREE emitters you want A and D tints. C tint looks slightly green.
- CRI - this one is subtle. Good CRI helps especially for artwork / photography, but for most lights I find CRI mostly unnoticeable. Unless I actually hold up a high CRI light side-by-side with a lower CRI light the difference is almost unnoticeable.
So CRI is nice, but I’d definitely take a 4500K 80-CRI light over a 6000K 100 CRI any day.
Boy you haven’t seen 5500K-6000K with high CRI in person. It’s like sunlight, not blueish at all. Much better than 3000K in any configuration.
PS. 3000K makes everything orange outdoors as well.
Its relative to the time and the environment.
Warm light is much more pleasing to the eye in the night but neutral is better for every day use at any time.
This.
400K-5700K is neutral for me
5700K looks nice only with high CRI for my liking
I was surprised to find myself very OK with 5700K in a 90 CRI 219B. It’s the first LED over 5000K I’ve found acceptable. I find color temperature more important on white walls, but I don’t spend a lot of time illuminating walls.
Outdoors, I notice CRI a lot. It took me a while using different lights to get there.
Prefer CW for throwers and NW for flooders.
Workshop, home office, working EDC (headlamp): 5700K CRI 90+
Headlamp (outdoor EDC): 3500K CRI 90+
House patrolling/spotter/thrower (for those thieves): whatever coolest and brightest, 10.000K if possible. Even LED with no phosphor will do as long as they go blind!
Rest of my house: 4000K CRI 90+
- Clemence
So, a 5 watt blue laser?
I’m standardised on 5000K for just about everything now, having tried both warmer and cooler colour temperatures. If sheer lumen output isn’t an overriding priority, I go for 90+ CRI Nichia 219-series LEDs.
About the only exceptions to this policy are my household LED bulbs - those are 2700K 80 CRI because that’s what everyone else around here likes. The kitchen fluorescent is 4500K, though, so that’s where all my soldering and whatnot happens.
The beam would be too small hahaha