- The Fake-Cree LED Awareness Thread - The new "low" in Budget lights.

Thank you for your insight. Right now, I am convinced that probably none of these cheap flashlights has authentic Cree LEDs. Can someone tell me where I can find AA/14500 LED flashlights with Cree LEDs fore sure?

Whats your budget?

Say < $10.

RMM looks rather hard at his stock and is looking for authentic emitters, he knows the lottery is strong.
His SK68 clone is out of stock right now but a likely bet for what you want:
http://www.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=319

Thanks.
The only thing I am not like particularly is that it has cool white tint. My old SK-68 is neural white. I just cannot find anything as good nowadays. However, I may get one anyway for comparison when it becomes available. If I don’t like I can always give it to someone.

The tints & lumens output of the fake Cree Latticebright LEDs are horrible. i just checked a camo SK68 i recently received that has a eye-searing blue-white and poor output and its a Latticebright XP-E fake.

Same with the Latticebright led of post 113. Unknowingly that the led was not Cree it even features in a luxmeter comparison test that I did in september last year, (I estimated 7000K so I was aware there was something horrible about it :-D )

This is all really frustrating and disappointing. How did it happen so quickly?

Not so quick, it's been going on for at least a year already, we were just late to notice, and discover them all over the place now.

Yeah. Guess so.

Not really a fake Cree, looks like fake LG, but I found these for sale at dx, looks kind of interesting with the 2-banded die, http://www.dx.com/nl/p/3w-180lm-6450k-white-r3-led-emitter-for-flashlight-dc-3-2-3-6v-5pcs-398686#.VdGL0Bp1FDs :

And these, http://www.dx.com/nl/p/3w-warm-white-3200k-flashlight-led-emitters-set-dc-3-0-3-2v-10pcs-398671#.VdGOBxp1FDs :

And this one is creepy, a two-led bicycle lamp for just 19 dollar, with no mention of Cree, brand name is N/A, but the leds in the pictures look XP-L alright. But I can not find a convincing counterfeit XP-L in the Latticebright collection.

yet..

http://www.dx.com/nl/p/xp-l-v5-2-led-2000lm-5-mode-cool-white-bike-light-bicycle-lamp-black-light-green-396827#.VdGQQhp1FDs

Confirmed: The GearBest Camo-SK68 has fake CREE LEDs. Boy, am i angry about that! They always refused my complaints about the horrible tint and poor output They wrote, their manufacturer claimed the tints are on par with “their” specs. They only offered some minuscule refund, which i finally accepted. Should have made a full refund reclaim via paypal, for fraud product… :frowning:

Hmm, I’ve already dedomed my gearbest sk68. The tint is better but not sure about the throw. The dome didn’t fall off as easy as it usually does with cree leds, but if it had a fake led that might explain why…

Just this morn I got a full PP refund from GB on fake 18650 AWT cells - I'm in shock btw... Took lots of goin back-n-forth, but they finally gave in just before I was escalating it to a claim. Polite insistence, polite threats - think they understood it finally. GB is great at whining about their 1,000's of product listings they can't confirm specs on, and 1,000's of submitted daily reviews they can't get to posting (only time for positive reviews I guess).

Yeah, I got one of those “camo” SK68s too. Trash-binned the emitter immediately. Even the aluminum looks bad, more like pot metal.
I figured it was just a lottery loss, but I guess it was — what’s the word for it? Bait and switch, I guess, at a mediocre level. When you expect a junky clone, but get something worse than you expected.

I got a couple of the camo's from GB too - was gonna swap the LED's anyway, but the paint on the body doesn't bode well for any decent level of amps. It's clearly paint - can tell from the inside. Feels like a rubberized coating almost, it's so thick. Not used to seeing it on flashlights.

The 2-banded die ones are something i never seen before, as you mentioned they could be knock-off LG / 3535.
The lower 10-pack almost look like warm White XT-E or XB-D emitters.

Hi, Tom:
Can you give me some advises or references about how to swap replace the LEDs in these SK68 imitations and where and which LED I should get? I just don’t want to play lottery again!

..or this Latticebright TD one:

!{width:100%}http://www.latticebright.com/UpLoadFiles/file/TD(4).jpg!