AFAIK SST-40 is 5050 footprint, and the “40” refers to the die area. Just like SST- 20 are 3535 and SST-10 are certainly not 1010 pad (couldn’t tell you what their actual pad size is though!)
Finally got a chance to try one of these out, pre-mounted on a 20 mm from Convoy. I modded a Nitenumen TK-35 a while back with a SST-40 5000K and FET+1 driver. Figured I'll swap the LED in this one so got a more or less apples-to-apples comparison.
Wow this LED is impressive! Not a fan of the tint, but the numbers don't lie.
The TK-35 has a 53 mm diameter head. Lumens taken at start and 30 secs - maukka calibrated #'s, throw taken at 5 meters:
It doesn't even look well focused, not a well defined hot spot, messy corona. But the throw #'s are pretty crazy. I'd have to check how a Boost HX compares to this thing.
The more I play with it, guess the tint isn't so bad for CW. 5000K is about the coolest I go, lately preferring 3000K-4000K. The beam tint is rock solid consistent at least, and don't see green at all, maybe a bit blue compared to my other warmer tint lights, but only more noticeably blue at higher amps.
Would love to hear other tested results. Haven't seen much posted, and Simon rarely included throw specs on his lights, and his lights are all "amp limited", not that it's a bad thing but we are not seeing the full potential of the LED, as djozz's test shows. 8-9 amps seems like the sweet spot for this one.
thanx,anyway. strange, as once that is dedomed sst40, this led should have 5000k option. i like its perfprmance, so, i hope, sst40 5000k should be way more attractive from the staindpoint of tint and overall throw usability
It's a different design from a SST-40, as djozz explained in the OP. Definitely not a straight re-packaged, de-domed SST-40. Looks like a new generation and the resulting output proves that. If the manufacturer dedomes (XPL-HI), or you manually dedome, you always lose a fair amount of lumens but this SFT-40 holds it's own with a SST-40 domed, and in fact handles higher amps better.
Agree though - I'd love to see this in 5000K, or warmer. I wouldn't hold your breath over a 5000K version. Look at freeme's group buy thread on a FT03 w/SFT-40 started in 2019 -- still not available!
It sounds like the luminance of the SFT40 is similar (but not better!) than the SBT90.2 . Think twice before swapping it into the WT90, you win runtime but maybe not throw.
Yea, thinking it's a draw at best for throw. Hard to do apples-to-apples compare with variables such as the reflector, focusing, etc. I'm sure a reflector that's good for a SBT90.2 is not always the best for a Boost HX, etc...
The more I think about it, probably the best comparison is in an aspheric, and I got a couple with SBT90.2's, the 1504 for example, with swappable pills.