The Luminus Xnova Cube is not a new led, it was announced 5 years ago already, but it caught some interest on BLF as it is one of the few leds that come in the extreme warm 1800K colour temperature, and at 90CRI.
Mouser is usually too expensive for me to buy leds from because of the high shipping costs, but I had gathered a small wishlist over time so I did a larger order to get to the free shippings treshold (60 dollar before tax), and the Cube was one of the list.
The partnr. of the led tested is MP-1616-1103-18-90. I wish other manufacturers make their part nrs so easy to read: a 1616-size led of 1800K and 90CRI. The led is small, square and has a symmetrical two-pad footprint. Edit: I had not even noticed it but Agro pointed out to me that the Cube comes in two radiation angles: the 1103 of this test has a close to standard radiation angle of 130 degrees, while the 1100 version with higher silicon/phosfor layer has a very wide 170 degrees radiation angle.
The appearance and size of the 1103 version is very similar to the high-power Cree XD16, until you light it up, then you notice that it has 2 very small dies next to each other and thus the Cube has in fact more resemblance to other midpower leds like the Optosolis and the SunLike (I mention these two because I tested them but there are many more midpower leds with two dies embedded in a phosfor mixture) than the single high power die XD16.
(here is the 1800K Cube lighted at 1 mA to show the light source)
As you can see, the Cube with its two separated dies will behave bad in the common flashlight optics but I want to use this led for a simple mule build and a small lantern so that is no problem. But I do need the voltage/output charactistics so here is the test, with older data of the two other midpower leds mentioned added, for no other reason than to have some reference.
The datasheet mentions that the tint of the 1800K Cube is above the BBL at 25 degC, but lands on top of it at the working temperature of 85 degC. Perhaps my copper (non-DTP) board cools too well because even at 700 mA the tint is still well above the BBL. But I must admit that when looking at the light colour, that looks still very good and extremely cosy.
Here is the tint data at 350 mA measured straight above the led. At 60 degrees the tint is slightly warmer (80K) but nothing else changes much. Also, the measurements at both 20 mA and 700 mA are not significantly different from 350 mA, so I leave them out.
I have no conclusion about this led because it has no typical flashlight use, it serves a very specific niche. But I hope that a few people find the data useful.