Even if they are not 100% clones they can still appear as CREE LEDs, remember the XP-L fakes (not actual clones), I believe even to his days those flashlights sell like hotcakes.
I’m looking to purchase some LEDS for a project but I am worried that I wont get genuine product. I want to purchase:
10 CREE XM-L RGB+ Neutral White Emitters order code: XMLCTW-A0-0000-00C2AAAB1
And
6 CREE XM-L2 T6 5A Neutral White Emitters order code: XMLBWT-00-0000-000BT60F5 or XMLBWT-00-0000-000BT60E5
There are not many venders to choose from but I have found just a few.
HOW CAN I BE SURE I GET THE REAL THING?
If you stick to trusted sellers, you should be alright. Mouser, Digikey, intl-outdoor.com, Mountain electronics, Illumn.com, to name a few. And sellers like ledDNA (not my favorite) should also still be ok. Actually any seller that sells bare leds I would still trust. The problem sofar seems to be complete flashlights with false led claims.
One thing I am having trouble with is determining what is actually being sold. For example topledlight.com is selling the xm-l rgbw in cool white and in warm white. Now Crees database only lists a cool white and neutral white. So there is no warm white order code. So in this example topledlight.com uses two valid order codes from Cree. The cool white and the neutral white. So they are using the neutral white order code for their warm white(3200k) listing. When I asked them about it he said that he forgot to remove the order code after copying and pasting information from another listing. And that the warm white option is not listed in the Cree database because it is a custom ordered item… I want the neutral white, but I guess I could settle for warm if I was sure it was genuine.
Does that sound right to you?
When I have been looking I see that this is very common among many venders. IDK what to think?
I need to take some pictures to show you guys, but I have recently received several "fake" LatticeBright XM-Ls in lights and even a few fake XP-G2s. If you've seen a lot of genuine LEDs you can spot the difference by eye, but they are really pretty close. It is obvious that they are attempting to make them look like the real deal. Pretty sketchy.
I remember reading a few threads about fake XP-G2s a while back...I think they were probably LatticeBrights, even though we didn't know it at the time. Thread 1.Thread 2. Until these we hadn't seen fakes that were that good.
A few months ago I talked to a Cree rep. and this is what he had to say:
If we can somehow acquire one of each of these Latticebright clones, to take Macro-photos of them along side the genuine CREE emitters to display the differences would be good to help us identify them apart.