Would like to stir up a little discussion. Opposing ideas (especially those with experience) are welcomed as long as they're respectful. ZL was one of the sacred cows of CPF, and I do admire George's creativity, so I'm still a little gun-shy. (Another post-traumatic-CPF disclaimer: I'm posting in the general LED flashlight forum, since the issue here is not about headlamps nor flashlight design, but tint choices by manufacturers.)
I'm miffed that Zebralight is calling the H51w "Neutral". It's listed right on ZL's website as 3700K! That is WARM in my book. To me, and I'm not an 'expert', but to me, Neutral is 4500-5500 or so. That's even if Cree lists 3700 as the very lowest number which can be considered neutral (on the borderline of warm). You can see it in Youtube comparison videos. It's a little hard to see, but to me, in those videos the "W" consistently looks slightly orangey. Not a nice yellowish which would be reminiscent of an incandescent (which would still be 'warm').
I mean, the "W" does not stand for "Neutral" after all, it stands for Warm! So why come up with a model name "H51w" (H51Warm), and then name it H51 Neutral! That kind of disrespect to the consumer's intelligence is not what I'd expect from Zebralight.
What got me miffed in the first place? Well, I bought one of the limited-edition "Warm" 4Sevens Quark Mini's. I was expecting an 'incandescent-like' experience. What I got was a light as if shining through a pumpkin (no hole in this jack o' lantern). Distractingly orangey. Very artificial. In no way like an incandescent.
The difference? 4Sevens DID actually sell a real Neutral version (looks like they don't anymore, unfortunately), which is what I should've gotten in retrospect. That said, their Cool is quite nice, no hint of blueishness. Zebralight doesn't offer a real Neutral. Just something ambiguously-named and, on paper, amgibuously binned between warm and neutral, but in my opinion much more like warm in real life (while calling it neutral).
ZL's "warm"(?)/neutral/whatever looks to me not as orangey as 4sevens warm, which is good. But, if I were dropping $64 for a flashlight, it had BETTER be what I want, and even more importantly, what it claims to be! And I think it's bizarre that ZL doesn't offer a "true" warm AND a "true" neutral too. I'd think there'd be more demand for Neutral tints than ZL thinks--but what do I know? Then again, if they can choose tint, why not make EVERYTHING neutral, because... it's... neutral. Which is what the eye expects. That's why they call it neutral. I guess cool provides better numbers on paper, but ZL's are not built for paper racing.
Such great designs, each to me had their own Achilles Heel. H30 was small enough for keychain, but could be turned on accidentally in pocket. H50 was twisty but not very bright for the price. Then they came out with recessed switches and updated emitters, but used XP-E's (argh!) instead of the next big thing at the time, which was XP-G's. Remember long after XP-G's came out, they only had XP-E's. There was no excuse for designing (traditionally floody) headlamps around the XP-E, of all things, especially when George acknowledged that they couldn't just switch to XP-G's due to die differences, hence... no XP-G's for you. Somewhere along the line, despite the 'best interface ever', I heard reports of the soft switch being overly easy to activate... which negated the usefulness of a recessed switch.... And when they finally got XP-G's (requiring a whole new design, and the wait), I thought that their naming their Warm model "neutral" was a slap in the face to those whose purchase decision would actually rides on that. (And if you're purchasing the "w" version, whatever it stands for, over the cool version, isn't that the basis of your decision?) The easy-press soft switch wouldn't have stopped me, but throwing in an orange LED and calling it Neutral is putting lipstick on a jack-o'-lantern. Albeit a very bright jack o' lantern.
4Sevens and Zebralight to me have interesting similarities. Both are owned by a Chinese American male who comes up with innovative designs and then gets the manufacturing offshored in China. Both provide good quality control, support, and have a personal interaction with customers (via CPF, unfortunately). George once personally answered a forum question of mine. Their secretary has answered my technical questions reasonably, or got the answer from someone who knew if she didn't (she usually knew). I really want to like their products. I wanted to be an owner. But I never took the plunge, and it was never over price alone.
Tangent: I think I remember reading a few years ago 4Sevens (David?) talk about an innovative headlamp design which he said got "stolen", and then produced by others. I always wanted to ask if that was Zebralight--but--that was CPF--I didn't have the guts to ask . If anyone has any info on this, I'd definitely be interested to know. Regardless who it was, I think he should've pressed forward, as if the many Zebralight knock-offs have shown, there's room for more than one in the headlamp pool. I later also 4Sevens declare on their website that the design for the Quark Mini CR2 or 123 was being 'counterfeited'. I never was able to figure out who that was, or know if you can really counterfeit a flashlight design as long as the name is different (if so, Surefire is owed a lot!). I mean, really, at the end of the day it's just a small, well-designed twisty, which is the selling point. I wonder if it was iTP's A1 EOS? Strikingly similar, yet again no real breakthrough in features if you ask me.