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

sadly that’s going to become the painful reality now even with buying bare and flowed emitters from overseas sellers, is that most of them may end up being these crap, low-output, horrible tint Latticebright style knock-off garbage leds.

Do you need to unscrew the aluminum cylinder that surrounds them first?
Also anybody know what is HT-PE marked on the LED star? (Edit: I found it from some previous post. It is a fake Cree XP-E. :frowning: )

Another fake cree XP-E
Appears to have that hole in the corner other fakes have but this one keeps the phosphor only on the die.
Why I will never buy from TMART again post# 6

Yes. Unscrew the aluminum housing from the outer aluminum case. I used my leatherman to poke into the aluminum to get it started. Note: VERY BAD IDEA!!! Snap! Goes the tip to my beloved cutting tool. :frowning:
Maybe you could use some snap ring pliers to push out in both directions to get a grip on the aluminum cylinder? Or something like that

Which leatherman?

I couldn’t find where, but I think somebody suggested to drill two holes on both side of the aluminum housing first the unscrew it using snap ring pliers or the tool for openning watch’s back plate.

The Wave

Latticebright XP-E clone:

Unfortunately, I don’t have a known-good XP-E on hand to post the comparison shots.

The leatherman was a gift and it was engraved with my name. I just heard that I still may be able to send it in for repair under a 25 year warrenty. I’ll look into it

Their warranty is suppose to be really good. :bigsmile: Though I would only expect one free shot with sometime like a broken knife point that is usually from improper use.

I ordered 20 CREE XML RGBW “Warm” White LEDS from TopLightLED.com for $5 a piece. They were titled warm but they have the same specks as the neutral white. They came from China and arrived in 4 Days!!! I hope they are real? They look legit, but if someone knows how to spot the fake, please let me know.

its difficult to say with those RGBW emitters you have there, until we can see the LB fakes up close to compare then to a genuine Cree version.

BIG MISTAKE!!!
It’s TopLEDLight.com not TopLightLED
OOps



What about these? They are off a SRK 10 emitter light.

The bubbly base as well as the circle hole rather than square hole suggest that they are genuine. Now, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. This is just repeating what I read earlier in this thread.

Do the bond-wires pads look round or square? for some reason the die size looks smaller than a genuine Cree XM-L, its difficult to say from those photos even though the pad coating looks stippled like a real Cree XM-L. You may need to try to compare them to any higher quality light you have with a genuine Cree XM-L.

I would need a better picture than that to say for sure.

I’ll try with my camera. Only had the wife’s camera that day.

I just made a new picture of a XM-L colour (neutral white die) for comparison (this one is bought from IOS a year ago, so it sure is real), and your XML colour leds looks extremely like the real deal except for the bits sticking to the side on the silver background that are not present in my led. Is this just a Cree variation or is that a indication of fake? At least it looks like your leds looks more like Cree than like Latticebright:

Cree:

The orientation of the bond wires looks different in the Latticebright and the substrate is visibly whiter:

Yes… It is like mine.