Not questioning a single thing you stated above, I don’t understand most of it tbh.
I just want to point out a few things and your numbers come in handy:
Nichia recommends operating the 219BT-V1 at a current greater than 10 % of the sorting current (I think that’s 700 mA, so 10 % would be 70 mA) to “stabilize the LED characteristics”.
I know, we normally don’t really care what manufacturers recommend, especially when it comes to maximum currents. We exceed them by factors of 2, 3, 4, 5… as long as it gets brighter.
Now, let’s take a closer look at these minimum ratings: 70 mA x 12 LEDs = 840 mA is what they’d recommend for this set-up, 6 mA is what we through at it. That’s 140 times lower than what Nichia says is fine to have stable LED characteristics. What do they mean with these characteristics? I don’t really know. Could it be related with the flickering? Do the non-Nichia versions have that “issue”? I don’t know. And by “what we through at it” I really meant us flashlight nerds, most of us.
We want the switching driver, we want the great efficiency, we want all modes pwm-free, we want to have moon modes so low that we can look into the dim glowing dies. But we complain when one emitter isn’t as bright as the other in the 0.5 lm mode or when one part of a XHP70.2 isn’t lit at 0.5 lm mode.
The fact is: these LEDs aren’t really meant for that.
I don’t need those super low modes. Do you? Maybe pwm isn’t such a bad thing after all. Adding another channel with low-current-LEDs? Would be even more efficient, but then you couldn’t look at the dim glowing dies of the main emitters.
I wouldn’t want to pay extra dollars just to have the last box checked.
I just set my E12R so that the lowest mode is a little brighter than default but flicker-free and I’m super super happy with this light.