LED test / review – Lumileds Luxeon MZ 5700 K min. 90 CRI (3V) – Finally! High CRI, High power, beautiful light

On first graph, the darker blue curve is for the Luxeon MZ corrected to 85°C Tj.
On your second graph, the same darker blue curve is for the XP-L2 V5 40E.

Something seems wrong.

Very interesting…

how is it compared with xhp50 high cri ?
since its maximum lumen is about 2000 lumen, special footprint, low Vf( more loss power if use linear current regulator like amc7135)
i doubt it will beat xhp50 hi-cri

Near 100lm/W @1000 lumens with 4 dies - I think xp-g2 quad can do it better.

Yeah, I forgot to change the LED data in my template.
It’s fixed now. :slight_smile:

At these who calls this LED ‘power hungry’: Mind you, the MZ is connected 4P, the XHP35 HI 4S. In highest bin E2 the XHP35 HI needs 3,200 mAmps for 2,850 Lumens, at 49 Watts. For hypothetical 4S config the current can be roughly quadrupled, which then corresponds to 12.8 A. Maybe the Vf would be much lower, approx 3.60 V or so. But you see that the power hunger can be expected, especially in it’s high CRI variant.

Cree is ‘cheating’ also in cool white high CRI (to increase efficiency) because they have much more green in spectrum, unlike the MZ. In spectrum it is very similar to the Nichia 219BT-V1 sw57 without much green in it.

I’m still waiting for 5700 K min. 90 CRI XP-G2 (which doesn’t exist, for sure). So this might be not really comparable to this MZ, especially if very high light quality is desired…

Thanks for testing this interesting led. Good to read that Lumileds consistently delivers great tints.

A sort of Cree equivalent may be the XHP50.2 in 5700K and 90CRI, Kaidomain had a very small batch of those and I bought one that I may use for a build one of these days. I’m sure that the tint will not be great but the beam profile may make up for that.

I got this light from Köf3. Considering the diffusor it still throws rather far.
The tint is special. It’s an almost perfect “snow white” with hardly any discoloration (maybe slightly yellow and blue, certainly no green). It’s perfectly even across all parts of the beam (the diffusor helps here though). I have tried a Nichia 144A 5700K R9050 3-step before and it was much bluer (of course there are indiviual variations, these are just single samples).

One thing to note here is the extremely low Vf. It allows for perfectly flat regulation with linear drivers until the battery is basically empty. This makes it great for building cheap, but good high-cri lights.

The only real competitor to this LED is the Cree XP-L2 with 90CRI. It’s not available in 5700K and 90CRI and has a very yellow/green corona when used with a reflector.

Inspired by this test I wanted to check that 5700K high CRI XHP50.2 so I swapped it into a KDIY KF8 (it had a boring 5000K XHP50.2).

And I’m not disappointed (tint is not horribly green, pretty white but more blue and green than red, and wood tones look not as yellow as with 70 CRI leds of same colour temperature), but I am also not super-impressed (219B 5700K 92CRI has a bit nicer tint, and being a new Cree, it has some ok not too annoying yellowish corona around the hotspot). The OTF output is about 1600 lumen (pretty constant, the KD boost driver regulates quite well).

Looks nice, thanks for the tip.
Is this board also available in 20 mm size? My test setup doesn’t allow the use of these little 16mm boards.

@djozz: could you make some whitewall shots and maybe a little comparison to Nichia 219BT-V1 sw57? This LED sounds interesting but I have always doubt about light quality and beam pattern because it’s a new generation Cree emitter. I tested the XP-G3 5700 K min 90 CRI already and the tint was ugly green with the known discolored corona…

I'll have 16mm and 20mm DTP boards soon. When I was designing first batch of 4040 16mm pcbs, this is actaully LED I had in my mind, Luxeon V is released later,but conveniently has same footprint.

I have few of these LEDs in my parts for almost THREE years!, that is how old is this LED, and still in 2018 it is brightest 3V LED (except very large luminus LEDs who don't fit in most flashlights).

I did some tests with this least ~6months ago, and lumen/voltage curves are very similar. Cross size in reality doesn't look that bad,gap is smaller than XHP-50/70 but bigger than XHP-50.2/70.2.

With medium roughness orange peel reflectors (tried OP C8 reflector) cross/hole is not visible.

In don't think people realize how good this LED is, it's a basically dedomed XHP-50 with 3V drive and lowest Vf of any 3V LED - regulated high mode would be available for a long time with linear drivers with decent overall efficiency ~85%, this would be similar like having 6V LED+7A output boost converter, but at lower cost.

BTW 5000K 70CRI variant is available in T flux bin (full reel), which is about 30% higher that LED tested above, I calculated ~3500+lm at 14-15A is possible (I'm considering to buy 1 reel for some time).

Some triples and quads can have higher lumens/efficiency, but even with mild OP reflector, this LED should have much better throw.

Has anyone stuck triple or quad Carclo optics in front of some of these? I think that’s what I would be most interested in. Neven, are you planning on selling these LEDs on your MCPCBs? I’d be interested in trying out a quad with them.

Quad quad :smiley:

Now that’s interesting. It would have the surface luminosity of about XHP35 HI E2 with much higher output. And be available in 3/6V.

The quad array is wide, wider than a XP-L Hi, which already looks less nice through these optics than XP-G or even better XP-E. On top of that, the middle part of a TIR is a plain lens, so on top of a donut you may even see a vague cross :smiley:

Im my suppose leds will flow so much light away tirs enter that light will burn the optics very fast.

I looked on the carclo website and it seems the led has been tested with the common 10mm optics. It doesn’t work well with the tighter optics but on the 10508 it seems to make a good beam with decent efficiency. I guess three or four of these combined under a medium spot optic would make for an extremely efficient high cri flooder. link

Well, speculation is all fine, and you all know what your talking about… But I wonder if someone has actually done it. If not I’d be happy to give it a go.

Aha, cool. Thanks for posting. I see that the 10623 is the quad equivalent. I understand that most would want these LEDs for throw, but I’m more interested in the high CRI and output combination.

Interestingly, 10508 offers tighter beam and higher cd than 10507. Still extremely floody though.

There is no sense to put these in small triples/quads, first emitting surface is larger than tir holes, which would probably cause optics melting at high power, second Luxeon V has similar output up to ~8-9Amps(and is 2x cheaper), this LED is better than Luxeon V only if you want to drive it at 9+ Amps. Mz can be considered as approx.two undomed Lux Vs in parallel. It's available in 3/6/12V.

DTP boards should arrive in 2weeks, I have one 3V 5000K 80CRI and two 3V 5700K 90CRI LEDs for testing, I'll try to put one in M1 host to see how beam and output looks. If there is enough interest I'll maybe buy one T-bin 5000K 70CRI reel. 3V 5700K 90CRI is available at mouser (unknown bin as usual with large distributors).