- The Fake-Cree LED Awareness Thread - The new "low" in Budget lights.

Very Helpfull thread,thanks!
have some old XM-L same package as original and bond wires
but die size a bit smaller than the authentic
will post photos soon

Anyone knows if this is a fake XM-L2 u3 or not? Got this from Aliexpress.

Thanks

It looks like the real thing to me but the bin could be anything. But you never know just how cleaver they can be.
This might help a little.

Thanks. The dot pattern looks right. However, there is a curious writing in the corner that I couldn’t find on the internet.

Looks fake to me. The substrate on that is white, but on a real XM-L2 it’s black. Even the fake emitters getting decent so as long it works fine I wouldn’t worry about it being genuine or not.

I was curious so I bought a XM-L T6 on a starboard from digikey (shouldn’t be fake right?). I installed it into the flashlight and guess what? The T6 was about 160 flux while the U3 from the light was about 200 flux from about 6 feet away. So I guess these are either real or very good fake.

Link is not working)

Is it possible that these LB’s are actually using CREE’s chip, but has worse implementation (i.e. lower quality substrate, lower grade gold wires, worse quality phosphors, etc.)?

I also have a gut feeling that LB may be cutting corner by using the blue LED chip meant for XP-Gs in the XML-like body and try to pass it off as XM-L. Of course, that results in lower overall efficiency.

its difficult to know. the LB LEDs are less efficient, have bad CRI, and very inconsistent with quality & tint.

I may have gotten a fake chip in this cheap light

Cheap zoomie

It is a 6 Volt XHP 70, but when I took off the bezel and lens the dome just fell off!

See my post in modding.

That’s “instant dedome” feature! You should be happy about it that you don’t need to do it yourself. :laughing:

LOL

They run a seriously over driven Fake XHP…

But the 3amp 6v driver is perfect for an MT-G2 if you drop one of those in and swap out the cruddy plastic lens with a glass one, you get a good few more lumens and the light runs way cooler also decent run time on half decent 26650’s

I swapped in a real (hopefully) HP70.2
Where do I get a glass lens?

the build quality is definitely not cree.
look at the die attach adhesive.

one indicator of fake is sloppy die attach.
a mature manufacturing process like cree’s wont have that.
that sloppy attach increases thermal resistance.
so far even if the rest of the device looks spot on the poor build quality gives it away.

I don’t know if I should mention this, but I noticed a large influx of Chinese suppliers making “CREE XM/XP family” clones. There are at least three manufacturers I am in contact with are making these.

Make no mistakes, they don’t sell these as “XM-L” or “XP-G” but rather, for example: “5050 5w” (basically using XP-G sized die on XM-L case). It is up to the flashlight makers to advertise these as “CREE”.

You can probably guess what happens when they advertise the “5w 5050” as “XM-L” and push 10w into these.

PS: Some manufacturer I know may offer High CRI version of these too. (although you will most likely get in-spec CRI, but the tint will very much depend on the luck of the draw).

Glued on emitters :person_facepalming: , every time I think I’ve seen everything, this has to be up with batteries filled with sand

To be fair, CREE does this too, but in a less sloppy manner, unless the LED in question are flip-chip ones that can be soldered directly on the substrate.

Are the emitters on kaidomain genuine?