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

For the cheaper off-brand budget lights yes there are not many single-Led lights that are 1000 lumens or more. But with premium lights using premium LEDs such as XM-L2’s or XP-L emitters there are many well over 1000 lumens output. Also note that many of the larger single-LED premium lights that use emitters such as a MT-G2, XHP-70, etc are reaching 1500 ~ 2000 lumens all in stock factory form.

Hi, I'm new here and this thread is disturbing but very useful.

I bought what is supposed to be a Sipik SK68 from Gearbest with what they claim is a Cree Q5 (XR-E Q5) emitter. Inside is definitely not an XR-E but rather what seems to be a fake XP-E look-alike, based on what I have read and comparing photos. (Square insertion pads right on edge, no third wire.) Since I'm kind of inexperienced with the topic, could someone more qualified confirm my appraisal of the LED I received? (Damage to corners of PCB was already there - the workmanship of the assembly of the flashlight is pretty awful, but that's a different topic.)

THANKS!

See response 736 above and earlier discussion and pictures for identification.

You probably bought one of these (thirteen search results)?
http://www.gearbest.com/sk68-\_gear/
And probably paid anywhere from $2.99 to $9.18 for what you got?
(the pricey one has a probably-junk charger bundled with it)

And with luck you used PayPal?

Nobody has sold a real SK68 for probably years, but every store is selling the clones/copies/imitations.
Pretty consistently they’ve had LatticeBright emitters the last few years, which early on were blue-purple-craplights but have gotten rather better since then.
If it’s a good enough cold white light and works properly, you probably bought a cheap lesson there and got value for it.

If you’re entirely new to all this, you could complain and they will likely offer you a partial refund, after the usual send-us-a-video and etc.

I buy these lights for around $2 (patience at eBay or AliExpress, they show up off and on), and replace the emitter and the driver, and maybe replace the pill, and ….

Hi! (I did study many posts here, including response 736 etc. before submitting my original post.)

And yes, specifically http://www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_15289.html?wid=21

I wasn’t expecting anything amazing with the flashlight, but at the time I was not aware of the rampant fake emitter situation, and I naively assumed I would get a real Cree LED, but maybe one from an “off” batch. I bought the light with the idea of having something cheap in my car, along with an Energizer Ultimate Lithium primary installed.

The tint is a bit blue/purple but not altogether unbearable for an emergency car flashlight. I think I paid $3.77 each, and got two of them. Since I’m just beginning to consider modding etc., I figured I could try swapping in a (real) emitter on the second light. I will, of course, research that but any appropriate choice come to mind for a relatively easy and nice emitter swap?

Thanks for the reply!

Definitely not a Cree XR-E Q5 emitter. ( and i agree its a roughly handled copy of a old first generation XP-E. The original Sipiks and its clones are getting difficult to find with the XR-E these days, as most of the cheap ones we seem from many sellers now come with a crappy purple tint Latticebrignt led.

Hm, back in 2015 they said it was a genuine Sipik product but didn’t answer directly about which emitter.
You can ask them what’s up now: http://www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_15289.html?wid=21

Howiezowie, if you wanna make a straightforwardly nice & simple mod to that flashlight, take a look at these bargainly priced emitters mounted on 16mm boards:

That XP-E HEW is a real bargain beauty ($0'99 after BLF coupon).

Cheers ^:)

The pictures they have definitely shows a ” XR-E” , so if they sent you one with a crappy LB XP-E clone its false advertising. The originals Sipiks i have that i bought 3 + years ago definitely has Cree XR-E emitters in them, and are far better built, brighter, & have a better tint than any of the knock-off clones we see now.

http://zoomermod.blogspot.com/2015/11/sipik-sk68-mod-xr-e-q5-dedomed.html

Not in English, but the pictures are nice

The new Sipik SK68 has XP-E

Barkuti, Hank, antiparanoico, DBSAR:

Thanks for the great followup and info. Very helpful!

By the way: [quote=hank] http://zoomermod.blogspot.com/2015/11/sipik-sk68-mod-xr-e-q5-dedomed.html

Not in English, but the pictures are nice [/quote]

I am using Chrome browser and it offered to translate that Asian page into English - super handy, like magic!

From that site just mentioned (Chromium browser also offers translation from the Japanese, but it’s, er, imperfect yet.

But the pictures are nice. Here you can see the XP-E, showing the two squares and the round dot in the corners.
That’s from 2015 sometime.

if its a “real” XP-E would be fine, but its difficult to find real Cree leds in anything these days in lights under 10 bucks, what we usually end up with is a horrible tint, inefficient latticebright copy.

ARRRRRRGhhhhhhhh

(emailed the link to Sophos to check, and cc’d to webmaster and support at sipik.com (here’s hoping either of those “standard” addresses exists there.

Dagnabbit.

So I did ask on the website, and they’ve promised to find out what emitter they’re selling:
—————————

Hey guys, I just joined today and found this thread.

I finally received an Ultrafire T6 that I ordered on eBay from a vendor that I had been assured was legit. Normally I will only order an Ultrafire product if it is from a vendor that is well known for selling authentic products as most of them are copied so much now you have about a 1 in 100 chance of getting even a decent copy.

As soon as I opened it up Latticebright, and worse they did not even try hiding it. It was printed on the star. The eBay vendor assures you that he only sells authentic products. He will wish that were a true statement before I am through.

I have already sent him a message letting him know what I have found and pretty much left the ball in his court. I am curious to see his response.

I was able to get 3 Q-5's from a Amazon vendor that was recommended to me. Products are fulfilled by Amazon out of their facilities and that seems cut down on the clones. I did order another T6 from the vendor on Amazon, it is suppose to arrive tomorrow. I guess I will find out then if it is a clone.

Great thread, I read some of the other thread lines and saw tons of great information. I am still much the novice, however I work as a technician so I catch on to things pretty quick.

I will post sometime tomorrow the outcome of the T6 arriving tomorrow.

My 2 cents: is it quite possible that the vendor sold you that torch believing he got “genuine” UltraFire lights from his supplier and has no knowledge whatsoever to distinguish between a real Cree XM-L T6 and a similar looking LatticeBright T6 clone.
So he might have also been ripped off. Also note that if a china shop or Ebay only states “LED type: T6” and the word “cree” is not even mentionend you can be sure to get a LB clone, and it would probably not even be a false statement.

K.

+1

Same about Q5. If they do not mention the word “CREE” it is because it will not be “CREE”, it can be anything else

Well, to be honest, neither “T6” nor “Q5” are any type of leds anyway. If they were just a tad *cough* “smarter” they could deliberately slam a typo over the “Cree” name on the ads (“Cr33”, “Creee”, …), and so they could completely lawfully rip you off. “All sales final”, LOL! :D

Cheers ^:)

Hi, what about this one. Does it look like cree xm-l2? I know quality of picture is not the best.

Imgur