There are no high intensity LEDs that also have high CRI.
If you want both extreme throw and high CRI you need a short arc lamp or possibly HID.
Those come with their own downsides.
I have to say I agree with you. I’ll give up a few lumens for a 5000k tint. And granted the couple lights I put 219c 90 cry 5000k look nice in. But id rather have better output at 4500-6000k. Then high cri. Usually when I use my flashlight I’m doing something and don’t have the time to appreciate the better colors I just need to see something. I find more of a difference looking at something with a cw then a nw emitter. Then let’s say a 70cri nw and a 90 cri nw emitter. Nw is easier to make things out
thanks
can you give examples of usage applications that favor high intensity, and applications that favor high CRI?
could that be greater distances outdoors vs shorter distances indoors?
is throw better for identifying large targets like Deer, and High CRI better for seeing how cooked the meat is on the BBQ, illuminating the food on the table, and relaxing around the campfire after the hunt?
Besides what you mentioned above. I imagibe high intebsity leds are good for stage lighting and other events. Where you need to light up a specific thing and not everything around it Or maybe not. Flashlights make up a very small fraction of a percent or few of led sales. So these high intensity leds arnt made just for us. There are some kind of uses for them
I don’t know if 80cri counts as high cri. But xpl hi comes in 80+cri. I havnt looked at Crees datadheets in awhile to see if they make them in 90 cri. But mtn electronics has a couple of them in 80cri
To me I think 80 cri leds are a good compromise if someone wants better cri without sacrificing output as much as long as you can get the color tempature want. Richard only has them in 2700 and 3000k. And u4 bin. Don’t know if their are others maybe someone can pull their binning chart/order code chart and see for xplhi or other xhp35 hi
I recently lent a friend of mine a 4000K 90+ CRI light to go mountain biking at night. He has only used cool white low CRI lights in the past.
He came back saying that he found he didn’t have to strain his eyes as he did with his other lights, and was able to bike just as fast as before with less light. He said he was able to identify the features, rocks, roots, etc much more clearly with the high cri light and it felt more useful than the brighter cool white low CRI leds he’s used in the past.
As a tint and high cri fan, I am also a foodie. Some are content with bulk cheap icecream. I personally prefer to eat less and have some quality Italian gelato. To each their own.
If LED manufacturers were to release ultra low CRI leds with even more output, where would people draw the line for the lumen race?
I was wondering the same
here are two identical lights except for the LED
one has 600 lumen max and 70 CRI, the other 450 lumen max and 90 CRI
(25% less lumens and 29% higher CRI)
Its an uphill battle to convince buyers that giving up 25% or the lumens to gain 29% in spectrum is a good thing. Marketing is going to have to spin it, and make High CRI have perceived value, example, for tracking blood when hunting, working in an ambulance, cooking steak and salmon, illuminating other colorful and delicious foods… or sex, High CRI inreases libido… think that would sell?
pretty fair to say one is not as bright, but I agree with your mountain biking friend,
“I can see better even though its dimmer.”
- I insist on neutral white.
- I strongly prefer 5000K, but have been known to experiment with other colour temperatures.
- I prefer high CRI and insist on it for EDC lights with general purpose beam profiles.
- For lights where throw is a priority, I’ll sacrifice CRI for extra lumens.
My Nitecore MT06MD - 2×AAA, 5000K, 90+ CRI Nichia 219B - is by far my most used light. It’s the first light I think of when I’m in the house or working on electronics.
My next most used light is a custom Convoy X3 with 5000K XP-L HD and BLF A6 electronics. I’ve been using that one whenever I’m outside in the dark for the last two years now. Built for me by James at 3Tronics, top quality work.
I use an Astrolux S41S with 4× 5000K 90+ CRI Nichia 219B as a desk lamp. The floody beam profile works nicely for that.
If I’m awake, I have a BLF-348 with me. Again, 5000K 90+ CRI Nichia 219B.
from elzetta;
” In tactical applications, where one may search for and identify persons based on the color of their vehicles or apparel, faithful color perception is essential. Imagine searching for a suspect known to be wearing a red shirt and last seen near a light blue house. With a cool-tint flashlight the red shirt will appear black and every white residence in the neighborhood will seem to match the described blue house. With a neutral-tint beam, however, colors are accurately observed and proper identification may be achieved quickly. All Elzetta Alpha Models and Bravo and Charlie Models equipped with High Output AVS Heads produce neutral-tint beams.
Further benefits of neutral-tint beams manifest when smoke, haze, or fog is present. In such conditions, cool-tint beams tend to “splash back” with greater harshness than neutral or warm beams. While such harshness is generally more of a perceived phenomenon than a quantifiable one, most people find cool-tint beams to produce more glare in adverse conditions than neutral-tint light.
The pursuit of high lumen ratings has led manufacturers to use cool-tint LED’s in the vast majority of tactical flashlights today. Unfortunately, like so many other features which are driven by Marketing Departments rather than thoughtful user-based engineering, these bluish beams sacrifice real-world performance. When faithful color rendition is important, as it is in tactical applications, look for a flashlight with a neutral-tint beam. After all, there is nothing “cool” about being blue. ”
The only use I can think of where high CRI would be a high priority are fine photography (most normal photography doesn’t even need it), art exhibits (lighting on the artwork), and maybe some jobs where you have to be able to discern between several similar colors, like telephone cables and automobile wiring.
Yeah, that’s Beam Tint and/or color temp. High CRI isn’t strictly needed for that.
He was mostly seeing the very real, very large difference that color temp makes.
thanks, so HCRI wouldn’t work better in their lights than tactical ?
surely, the better light quality, the better the brain can react rather than having to decipher more whats happening.
I have to disagree. I think it’s an equal contribution of CRI and colour temp.
Not really. Whether a tint is slightly green or slightly rosy has nothing to do with CRI.
That’s determined by beam tint: Whether the tint is above or below the BBL (Black Body Line). Above the line tends to look green. Below the line tends to look rosy.
You can get high CRI LEDs both above and below the BBL. Some examples:
- Below the BBL is the popular 4500K Nichia 219b with rosy tint.
- Above the BBL is the LED used in the Zebralight SC64C with greenish tint.
Having high CRI doesn’t change the beam tint, all it does is make the existing colors in the tint look slightly more vivid (like the slider in the post above). The benefits of high CRI are extremely subtle and very hard to see without a side-by-side comparison in front of you.
There are the lumileds MZ leds. They are domeless and high cri.
Meh… 
I have one light with a higher CRI (S41 Nichia), and my other lights are somewhat neutral.
While I enjoy the color rendering, I am willing to sacrifice for more lumens. I just got back my modded HL MT09R from Texas Ace, and he installed high-bin P2 5700K Cree 70.2 emitters. I don’t know if its the luck of the draw or what, but the CRI and color temp on the light looks fantastic (Thanks, Ace!). And…its getting 23,400 lumens on an integrating sphere when tested. IN this instance, I really wanted a “max output” light in a smallish package, and this fit the bill.
My EDC is an Emisar 4D, and the CRI on the MT09 seems a bit higher. (though I love my 4D!!)
“a cool-tint flashlight the red shirt will appear black and every white residence in the neighborhood will seem to match the described blue house. With a neutral-tint beam”
Elzetta is misusing the term cool, which is a color temperature.
they refer to a cool “tint” which is a misuse of the word tint
they describe color rendering inaccurately, red does not look black under cool white, and it is not the cool white that makes a Low CRI light poor at representing red. Elzetta fails to use the term CRI at all
then they misuse the term neutral-tint to describe high color rendering, again confusing the term tint, for CRI, and they confuse the term neutral color temperature for a type of tint, which it is not. Neutral is not a type of CRI, neutral can be used to describe either a CCT or a Tint, but both CCT and Tint are separate from each other.
I disagree, it seems to me you are suggesting that warmer color temperature shows colors better, the way Elzetta does, but CCT is not an indication of CRI. High CRI shows colors better. Some High CRI LEDs have a warmer color temperature, but it is the High CRI that shows colors better, not the neutral color temperature, and not the possibly neutral tint.
again:
neutral color temperature is not the same as neutral tint, and is not the same as high CRI
clearly people at Elzetta and on this board, share many errors in terminology.
bottom line is high CRI is required to show colors more accurately.
tint is a separate variable, and I agree that some high CRI leds, such as the crees that Zebra uses, have green tint. Which is why I am not impressed with Zebras high CRI
many Zebra buyers end up going to a lower CRI “W” color temperature (which is actually what I call neutral white), to get away from the green tint of the high CRI. In the process they give up High Color Rendering. Zebralight High CRI LEDs have rather low R9, which imo is one of the reasons they have green tint.
so no, Neutral White does not render colors better, Neutral Tint does not render colors better. High CRI renders colors better. And a High CRI LED can also have neutral tint, and can also have a neutral white color temperature
there is so much confusion about terminology, it is almost too much to explain. And I suspect many here simply have not yet understood the differences in meanings of the term neutral, since it is used separately for a type of color temperature and a type of tint.
It is also a common misuse of the term tint, to say someone likes neutral tint, when they mean neutral color temperature, aka, neutral white. Then they misuse the term pure white, as if only one color temperature is white.
its a very messy mess of terminology. I can see why some people dont yet grasp all the nuances of the various terms, neutral, white, tint, CRI, cct, and Kelvin
here is a neutral white, neutral tint, low CRI, low R9 led:
here is a neutral white, not neutral tint, high CRI, low R9 led
here is a comparison of a cool white, high CRI, not neutral tint, lower R9 led on the left, and a neutral white, high CRI, neutral tint, higher R9 LED on the right
It can, though. If the CW light has insufficient red content, then the overall intensity will be much less (in the red) compared to a light with much more red content, where they shirt will show as red.
Look up the Purkinje effect.
Neutral color temperature does not render colors better than cool color temperature.
However, the cool temps do sometimes make objects outdoors at night look “washed out”. Neutral feels more pleasant and to me makes it easier to see things outdoors at night.