High CRI... not what I expected? (Happy ending in post 118)

Nothing wrong with High CRI at all, I have several High CRI lights.
But that being said, it is just not the be all end all it is cracked up to be “as far as I am concerned”.

Sure, as was mentioned; in some situations High CRI may give an advantage in color recognition. But honestly, in real life; I rarely encounter those situations.
As mentioned above, I am more concerned with tint & beam profile. To each their own. :wink: :white_check_mark:

I think its more of a combination of the sound setup. Quality of the speakers. Sure, party speakers can get really loud, but they sound like garbage compared to studio monitors. Even a cheap garbage tier 2.1 setup sounds much better than built in TV speakers nowadays. Also its almost impossible to discern 256Kbit MP3 from Flac on most music on good sound setups.

Party/Outdoor Speakers = High output but low sound quality (Low CRI high output LEDs)
Studio monitors = Output not as high but much better sound quality (High CRI LEDs)

I’d much rather have studio monitors for listening to music.

compare xpg2 and 4000k 219b… Chicken ala CRI:

otoh, Low CRI, on the left, makes green things look nice and greener:

That oversaturated skin tone is why I have a love/hate relationship with 219b… 103 rg :frowning:

Sunlike much nicer, good sst20 bins too

the LH351d is a popular alternative
it does not have the sw45k signature hyper pink feature/bug

glad you dont find them too green… :beer:

Someone should do a poll/survey comparing colorblind vs not people and whether 70 vs 90 CRI is perceptibly very different.

For me, it’s such a huge difference. Even before owning any neutral white LED flashlights - let alone 90+ CRI! - I hated the color quality. Reminds me of the worst florescent lighting I’ve seen, and really felt like it “blended” the colors of things together, making it harder to distinguish different things of even fairly different color.

The only comparable I have seen is high voltage Thrive/ Optisolis/Sunlike, and sst20 FA4 which is lower CCT and still +duv therefore not in the same class, nevermind the aforemention high voltage issues

Lh351d has too awful r9 to be in same class. I would argue e21a is better, but is still oversaturated a little

That’s kind of the point though? It’s the very low duv of the “k” binned 219Bs that causes that skewed color rendition/perception. You can always fine-tune that with -green filters w/other emitters anyway (and still be close to 219B in lm/W). Optisolis definitely doesn’t have a duv anywhere near as low, because it’s meant to most closely match a blackbody radiator.

SST-20 and LH351D are nice because you can slap them into just about any light, with any (3V) driver and just let it rip. E21A needs proper board and has tint shift without frosted optics (and donut-hole in quadtrix setup w/o frosted) and 219B still requires limited drive current.

Although I do see your point, it’s a known fact that it’s virtually impossible to tell the difference between a $5000 sound system and a $50,000 sound system. The people that spend $50K like knowing their specs are hard to beat but the human ear really cannot tell the difference.

I laugh when I read reviews of a turntable that floats on a cushion of air, has a 50lb platter, and cost as much as a house. Then the person that buys it claims Dark side of the moon sounds incredible on it.

Dark Side of the Moon sounds best when it is playing in my head. But it is not me playing it in my head, it is someone in my head but it’s not me.

CRI? As long as the ting is not grey, I am happy.

Makes sense that my eyes aren’t trained to see it. On the flip side, I’m a trained musician and HQ audio does make a difference for me. Maybe not in a specifically describable way, but CD-quality and above just feels smoother on my ears.

I still like the light quite a lot and it has more value to me than just CRI.

I found this helpful. :white_check_mark:

I found this extremely interesting. :white_check_mark::white_check_mark:

Answers… Don’t cheat. :wink:

We all noticed the difference when the CD was invented I believe. Friends of the turn-table argued that its specific sound was more pleasant, not necessarily more natural. Not sure if we all heard by how much the sound was degraded when mp3 players came out. I did immediately, and I still find mp3 terrible.

You had a difficult start into HCRI with the Samsung LH351D. I don’t like their tints down to maybe 2700K, where it is more yellowish than greenish. But I guarantee you’ll be able to identify a 219B sw45k light. I see it the other way round as has been described here: It is an eye opener after you were exposed to Cree lighting. It’s like switching from TV tube to HD LCD panel.

We can kinda guess the results of the poll but I’d be half interested in seeing it. I only have very mild colour blindness (a little of green and yellow) but it probably explains my low interest in high cri. Sure I see a difference when comparing low and high cri but I’m more of a practical type where any light is better than no light.

I often shop by “high CRI”. Even if it is missing some of the red spectrum or it isn’t perfect, I’m more likely to find lights that look nice to my eyes in that category. That said, a light done well is good thing.

Now that we are getting into summer, I’ve been able to find some nice wooded spots with pretty leaves, different bark tones, little flowers or fruits, etc. Switching back and forth between SST-20 at 2700K, LH351D at 3500K, Nichia 219C at 4000K, and XHP50.2 at both 3000K and 4000K; they all look decent. I don’t know that one blows the others away. They all look a little different, with the biggest differences being at the extremes of that spread. Of course, the differences are also more noticeable when switching back and forth or shining side by side.

Going for regular nature walks at night, I tend to enjoy just grabbing whatever I feel like taking. It adds to the experience. There are only a few quirks I’ve noticed. Really warm lights seem to look best when the world is green. As the world gets more brown and tan, I don’t like how things look with the 3000K and 2700K lights mentioned above. I’ve also found that 4000K looks great in concert with strong moonlight. I often reach for my Nichia 219C lights when the moon is shining.

sometimes the CRI is inflated

you may have been expecting warm white, which is more yellow than actual balanced CRI

i personally don;t care about going warmer or higher CRI than ‘neutral white’

because
a. color at night, what does it matter? and
b. anything that is less blue, is also less efficient

I would get high CRI lights, but high CRI emitters make compromises that I don't like.

Sometimes they're not as bright at lower CRI emitters, and the bigger problem is that they don't handle heat as well as some lower CRI emitters.

“Warm white” and “neutral white” refer to color temperature, not CRI. CRI is separate.

Most high-CRI leds used in flashlights tend to be 4000K or warmer. However, it is also possible to have cool white that is high CRI.

I see a clear difference in high CRI LH351D 4000K and the SST20 4000K vs. cool white Cree XP-G and XM-Ls. There is a difference not just in colour rendition but in depth perception on a subtle level (such as a PC aluminium fan grating, if it is partially full of dust I see the difference in where what I see is, i.e. behind it and at the front (dust level), whereas with the cool white LEDs it looks to be all at the front, flat like a photo. This was quite interesting. I had tested long ago with cool vs. neutral white LEDs outdoor in relation to use on bicycles, but now, for inside the house I found high CRI to be better in this respect here too, and something else: low CRI LEDs give me a feeling that something is off (missing in colours).

For me inside the house high CRI is more important than outside…

I tested with various LEDs, e.g. with a yellow spirit level (Stanley Fatmax): 1. 6000K, 2. ca. 4000K neutral white (XP-G 5B1), 3. 4000K neutral white 90 CRI LH-351D, 4. 4000K neutral white SST 20 95 CRI. The result is that between each of them there is a clearly visible difference of increase of vibrance of the yellow. It looks most washed out with 6000K and most vibrant with the SST20 4000K.

The SST20 lights up everything in a manner that is pleasant, I don’t care much for the LH351D though it’s better in some ways than the low CRI neutral white LEDs but it has a weird yellowish tint shining on white, whereas with the SST20 I don’t get that impression at all.