I once bought a Jaxman X1s with an XHP50 90CRI 5000K emitter. Currently I have 20+ flashlights, and the X1s still is almost always in my outdoor gadget set, because I love it with that specific emitter. I think, a little additional greenness/cyanness sometimes feels great for emitters in the CW-NW range (CCT >= 5000K). For that specific flashlight, my friends were very impressed, while I showed them another powerful light with 4000K 70CRI, and they were not that impressed.
Personally, I find lower CRI emitters looking mostly purple (and a little bit green/yellow) the least likeable - because the highly uneven spectrum. For some kind of emitters, I have even seen graphs showing very deep cyan dips with only near 5% intensity of the dominant wavelength.
Jaxman, I would like to ask a few further questions:
Currently you make Z1 in two variations: 1. XM-L2, 2. XHP50 / XHP50.2.
Did you consider Nichia 319A for your Z1 zoom flashlight instead of XM-L2?
- 319A has very similar output compared to XM-L2, but has considerably lower forward voltage, which menas, that if you use it with a buck driver (I assume, you do, because of the 2 cell compatibility), then you will have extended runtime with maximum brightness.
- While 319A is not available in 90+ CRI, it is still available in 80+ CRI (maukka measured them around 82-83) - and 319A has a very unique feature, because it has a hexagonal shaped light emitting surface, which makes the focused beam much more felt like a circle shape (and, it is a bit narrower than XM-L2, while focused). I think, that would be awesome for a zoom flashlight.
- Based on maukka’s published measurements, the best CCTs for 319A could be 5000K and 3500K
Did you consider Nichia 144AM as an alternative to XHP50 / XHP50.2?
- 144AM is very similar to 4 pieces of 219C closely fitted in a single package (144AM is the 6V variant, 144AR is 12V)
- has a projection shape very similar to XHP50.2 (being not ‘windows like’), but probably has less tint shift across the beam (however this should be tested on small quantity samples) - and available in some nice tints
- tolerates overdriving less, than XHP50.2, but I know, you don’t want to overdrive emitters anyway