Ive been on the NW drugs since I joined this forum, and have been trying to get others on the neutral bandwagon, or to at least try it out.
Most common observation is the concept of tint is commonly discussed by many people, and the question of wanting a "neutral" white is commonly agreed upon, however its the definition of what constitutes "neutral" that varies between those who Have seen a warmer colour temp tint, and those who have not.
Those who have only seen CW tints, will be referring to the more greenish, or the slightly pinkish tints, and will find some of their torches more "neutral" than others, but once you have seen a true 4-5000kelvin tinted emitter, the concept of neutral is completely blown away and mostly then begins to refer to the colour temp as well as green/pink shifting. What was once your "neutral" cool white tint, becomes a ghastly blue colour and something that isn't as nice as it used to be.
This was my personal experience, but It was during the times when XP-E and XP-Gs were new to the block, and in those days, cool whites were Really cool. At least todays XM-Ls CWs are not as crazy blue.
So what am I saying? Everyone NEEEDs to give a Neutral white a go. That means tints from the 3-4-5 bins from cree. (or the 4-5000 kelvin colour temp)
I gave up on the total lumens rat-race a while back, and now concentrate more on a great beam, which gives me more natural colours.
And it is hard for LED's as LED's intrinsically have a narrow emission region. LED manufacturers spend a lot of time and money to try to duplicate the wider distribution of a well-driven incandescent bulb. When spending time outdoors at night, a well regulated bulb still reins supreme for my eyes (a SF M6 with my own PhD-M6 regulated pack driving an MN61 is perfect), but the Neutral White LED's are improving, every day getting better.
I recently got the Nichia 4500, 92 CRI LED's, and they are the best I have seen so far - really good for being an LED, and I converted my Sunwayman V10R Ti+ to the Nichia 219 as soon as I could
Thanks for the review. Been thinking of a neutral drop-in and decided on a whim to give these a try. Will admit that they seem a little pricey for what you're getting. But, I pulled the trigger and now have to wait the 2-3 weeks for it to arrive. We'll see how it turns out.
Is there any PWM on low or medium with this dropin? The Manafont Ultrafire has super annoying PWM on low and medium, been looking for a replacement for a while.
There is small PWM on medium, very fine and fast when I shine it directly at the camera and almost nothing on low . . . which tells me there is no PWM to the eye.
What a shame, I really don't want PWM at all, just a decent current controlled circuit. Also the Low and Med output levels are too high. I'd like to see a P60 dropin with 1/10/100% levels in neutral white tint as that would be more suitable for outdoors use.
If I understand it correctly, 1% current controlled requires a very complex driver. AMC based drivers can be current controlled in 350mA steps tho.. but I'm not really sure about that. Havent heard of a lot of current control drivers.
True linear current control (NON-PWM) would be quite stupid with an LED. The efficiency of anything in the middle range would be absolutely horrible, and the linear driver would have to dissipate a tremendous amount of heat. PWM is an absolute necessary evil with an LED. PWM, however, can be done at very high frequencies (1khz+) and then it will be completely invisible to the human eye.
what about zebralight, sunwayman and the likes that use current controlled drivers? just asking cus my sc600 and h600 run a long time on medium and low..
ps. I agree with you on PWM at high hz..it's almost non existent..
Why would they be stupid? If you adress 3 AMCs for mid that would be ~1A. Or would the chips have to dissipate a higher voltage into heat because the fordward voltage of the LED would be lower?
maybe you meant something else? or were referring only to linear drivers?
because, as others have already suggested, that is not true for boost or buck drivers. a good boost or buck driver with current controlled modes gives much better runtimes on mid and low modes than a driver with pwm based modes.
Correct, as Vf gets lower (because of lower current), the voltage that the linear driver has to drop gets higher. Thats why linear drivers in our applications are most efficient at very high drive currents (low voltage drop * high current) or very low drive currents (high voltage drop * low current) but not very efficient at medium currents (medium voltage drop * medium current)
So what do you guys think for the 1.5 vs 2.5 amp dropins? I know I want one of them, not sure if I want to take the output hit from 2.5->1.5 amps... The manafont dropin has ridiculously bad runtime and pwm... Probably partially cuz I only use my 60 18650's pulled from laptops....
There are quite a few flashlight drivers that are current controlled and have no PWM output at all. Fenix, Quark, Eagletac, Klarus, and many others make lights with fully regulated drivers and NO PWM. My Lumintop ED20 uses PWM only for the Low mode, and current controlled for Med and High. The PWM is at 800Hz and not noticeable until you hit a fan or running water with the light on Low. I also have a couple of Quarks that are fully current controlled, even on Low and Moonlight modes - NO PWM at all, and they have buck and boost circuits.
PWM is easier and cheaper to make, which is why you tend to see those drivers in cheaper flashlights. In more expensive flashlights you tend to find better driver circuits that do not use PWM. You can find flashlight test reviews that check for PWM and they clearly show which lights are current controlled and which use PWM to control output.
