I think Tint is affecting peoples judgement here .whenever you put two lights side by side you'll almost always choose one over the other and even your favorite high color rendering light suddenly looks green when side by side compared to a "Better" emitter. So everyone knows what subjectively they think is a better light . John is just comparing his own lights against his own lights and noting what he subjectivly thinks he likes best .
The somewhat green hi cri sst 20's and the high cri 219C's made everyone rethink what they thought was true of hi cri . The rosyiness of the 219B 45k made lots of people equate red or rosy as being high cri .
Being able to fix a tint with a Lee filter ..and doing it to a green tint that almost everyone considers as just plain nasty is a pretty easy and quick n dirty fix .
the issues of the uv coated lenses that Olight and 4 7's used for so many years that created foul green tints hasn't even begun to be addressed . Or the fact that the newer emitters in general seem slanted towards green too.
My simple thought is that high cri is paramount ....output is relative and pretty limited in most cases and tint can be fixed or modified . but low cri is only fixed by changing the emitter .
I used to love to bring up the inverse square law to illustrate the point that your brain can't see moderate increases in power .Visually the differences between 300lumens and 600 lumens is minuscule ,it looks like someone made a bad mode spacing choice on a driver .... but you can't miss the difference between low and high cri ..My point was.. I want to pay for what I can see ..Not what I can't .