what is special about Nichia 219B

It is a led, of a pretty modern type, it is a direct replacement for XP-type leds, and comes in nice tints and colour rendering qualities that are appreciated by many.

It is used in a number of flashlights that can be bought directly, and it is also build into existing flashlights by handy people with solder irons.

A 219b is an LED emitter made by Nichia. Its the part that actually makes the light, a tiny (3.5mm x 3.5mm) square of magic that converts electricity into light. If you look down the “business end” of a flashlight, its what’s sitting at the bottom of the reflector, the same location you’d find a light bulb in an “older style” flashlight.

The 219b is a perennial favorite for a few reasons, but mostly because the light it makes is super nice to look at. Most LED emitters really fall short of incandescent lighting in a few areas. CRI on LEDs is lower (that’s a measure of how much of the color spectrum the emitter can faithfully reproduce), but the 219b comes closer than most any other. Also LEDs also can sometimes have a “tint” shift to them, sometimes greenish, sometimes tannish, sometimes rosy. The 219b tends to be more rosy than others, which is the preferred direction for a lot of folks.

219b does have one shortcoming though — its not as bright as other emitters. So you kinda trade raw power for clean light. So 219b’s wouldn’t be the right choice for every flashlight, but they are right for many others.

Really its just one of those things you kinda have to experience for yourself. All LED’s don’t make the same quality of light and its hard to accurately describe (or even photograph) those differences. You just gotta start buying lots of lights and comparing them yourself :slight_smile:

Good luck, and hold on to your wallet… :slight_smile:

SBSLIDER: 9 times out of 10, people go with a NICHIA for the T-I-N-T…i think.

IMHO the nichia 219 is all about CRI and to a lesser degree tint, at the expense of lumens/watt efficiency. Cree XP emitters are all about efficiency, at the expense of CRI and to a lesser degree tint. Where things can get highly debate-able is that the hi CRI Nichia doesn’t “need” as much light output for one to decipher what they are seeing. Conversely the Cree XP with its low CRI will need more output in order to compensate for its poor color rendering.

Wiki CRI:

They do a much better job at rendering color, with a more natural look that is easier on your eyes.

It’s something you would likely have to see first hand to really appreciate though. Most of your mainstream LED flashlights don’t use these LEDs, and people accept the quality of light from the other emitters. My father is a network engineer, and had always refused to use LED lights as they did not work well to make the color code on network cabling show up. A while back, I built him a custom 2xAA P60 light using a high-CRI Nichia 219b emitter, and he loves it. The higher-quality LED output makes the color coding show up really well, making it very easy to identify the individual strands. His co-workers were also very impressed, but it was a special one-off build I made for my father, and no one else has one.

Thank you for all the detailed responses. I get it now. I suspected it was an LED, hence emitter. I would be interested to check one out. I definitely like the neutral white of my archer 1A, it would be interesting to see the difference with the Nichia 219b. Brightness is not everything.

The Astrolux A01 is the cheapest way to get one, but some say there are quality issues

or
Lumintop IYP365 with a Nichia
For this lamp ask M@dm@x (Madmax) for a code.
or
Nitecore TIP CRI
there is also a code

There are some affordable lights from Jaxman as well, that come with 219B-V1 R9050 in 4000K or 5700K.

I like the A01 review, thanks for the link. Tempted to get one of these as I really like firefly mode. Have not looked at the other two lights recommended yet.

Most definitely if you are into firefly and LOW-low modes the Nichia would be the better choice. IMHO

And this is why I intend to, one day, make myself a Convoy M1 for myself with a new driver and a 5000K Nichia. Wonder if there are still hosts around…

The A01 is quite nice, but the driver in the latest version is horrible (I bought one before realising they were no longer the original Manker ones). Next mode memory and you can’t avoid triggering the strobe every 7th time it’s turned on :frowning:

In my opinion, the 5,000K 219B is a fantastic emitter with color rendition that you can’t otherwise get with a “pure white” tint, but I have been pretty unimpressed with my 3,500K-4,000K 219B lights.

I don’t find the 3,500-4,000K 219B’s colors to be much better than NW Cree emitters’ colors, but you’re still paying the price of an unnatural reddish tint that makes white objects look dirty, and a huge decrease in efficiency. I’ll give up ~6% of output for a Cree NW emitter over a cold one any time, anywhere, but the non-5,000K 219B’s don’t give me enough of an improvement over the NW Crees to justify a nearly 50% loss in output.

My pill was loose, messed with it, finally got pissed and tried gluing it in to keep it from unscrewing, won’t work now at all. Now I need to get some acetone and try getting the glue off…

Thanks for the heads up. I was late to the party on these for a long time and am waiting on one now for $10 yet am (now) not as eager.

There is a Brass Tool coming up for $25 on massdrop, with a Nichia 219b they are about 4000-4500k very nice way to go, but no firefly, the low is 3 lumen. No PWM, unlike the latest Astrolux A01, sadly

another N219b light with a firefly of 0.09 lumens, is the L08, really versatile, 4 modes, and NoPWM

Outstanding post!

a couple pics
to illustrate the point that Nichia tend to have nice pink tints, instead of yucky yellow green ones… look at this pic, and imagine that the BBL line is “normal” or technically, neutral Tint… Where Tint means any shift off the BBL line, above into yellow or below into pink…

now about how much red a High CRI Nichia puts out:

compared to a Low CRI CREE

Deep red and cyan blue…
Those are the problematic colors.

but this topic seems to be going on about the ‘old’ 219B.
But now we have the 219C of course.

And how does the 219C compare to the 219b for tint?

well, that depends on the CCT and Tint of the particular LED BIN that is selected

for example on the left is a 4000k N219c (what people call neutral tint), that actually has a slight Yellow Tint above the BBL. In the middle is an N219b 4500k, with a subtle rosy tint, and on the right is an N219b 5000k with a slightly green tint, besides being blueish due to having a cooler color temperature.

in general the N219b at a given CCT, say 4500k, can still vary, some being more yellow, above the bbl, and some being more pink, below the bbl

imo the 219c tends to be slighly less rosy, and slightly more yellow green, when it does not land smack dab on the BBL (the neutral tint line)

note Im using Tint differently than most people… what they call Tint, I call CCT, Color temperature… the part with the K on the end of a number… The confusion comes from the terms Neutral White, and Neutral Tint. Some Neutral white Leds have Neutral Tint :slight_smile:

if you like videos instead of text…here is one about Nichia: