From KD, it is the 3 mode one and it came with a NANJG 1A max driver. This means that for those who accidentally ordered 5 mode it should be quite easy to change to 3 or 2 mode etc. The 3 mode one I have though seems to have been set by soldering the legs of one of the components on the inside, so harder to switch to a different mode set.
The LED itself is interesting, but in all honesty disappointing. Brightness is fine, it seems similar to my XP-Gs. But there is a lot of colour spread across the beam, way more than any XM-Ls I've seen, it gives the hotspot and spill a clearly yellowish corona with more blue central areas. The beam angle from the LED itself also appears to be very wide, it will not focus in an XP-G reflector and actually seems to work best with an old MC-E (very wide beam angle) reflector I had lying around.
On the whole, the drop-in seems well constructed and good value, and the new LED is a nice novelty. But I think the main selling point of these for CREE will be their low price/efficiency ratio (so big sales to light bulb/lighting array companies), rather than their accurate colour distribution or other characteristics desired for use in torches.
Of course I only have one sample LED, in a cheap drop-in, so these observations may not apply to all CREE XT-Es..
Interesting. Kind of what I was afraid of. I think these will really help make efficient cost-effective LED bulbs. The key to efficiency is underdriving, but that means adding more LED's to get the light output you want. So they need to be cheap.
Glad to see a NANJG driver, though not so great at only 1A. Would another 7135 have killed them? Interesting that the 5-mode is probably more versatile since it can be soldered without taking the driver out.
I got mine 5-mode today and I'm afraid I must agree with you. I did'nt notice at first but now I see the same bluish hotspot and I have a little yellow center in it.
I had great hopes that the new shape of the die (mountain-like) would get rid of the normal (for wide dies) yellow hotspot with bluish corona but they did it a little too much, I think so it's almost the opposite now.
The 5 mode is with the good old NANJG 47 (-A this time) with the small stars for programming on the back. It has the ATTiny13 (Hurrah) so I will modify with my own program.
The stock setup was:
Low-Medium-High-Strobe-SOS
20-120-360 lumens @ 56-330-1047 mA measured at 3.9V
16-106-360 lumens @ 42-280-1049 mA mesured at 3.6V
so the regulation seems fine (3x7135) but the PWM seems to vary with the voltage [ edited]
At 3.3V I measured 319 lumens on High (out of regulation).
So it seems to be a very efficient LED and it runs cooler than XP-G.
A pity with the mis-coloring.
I also got a "20"mm and a "14"mm star. They both gave 162 lumens at 350 mA so they are truly R5. The CCT was 5980K and they fit in bin 2B.
Yeah, with a diffusion lense you should get a nice overall tint I would imagine. My only diffused P60 lense is over a 2.5A regulated XM-L 5500k which I took out of my Olight S65 though and I'm not taking it off ;)
It's frustrating in the UK as due to the high humidity and cold nights you often find the inside of well-driven P60 lights fogging up. So when I get a very low humidity day (rare) I take my P60s out and re-assemble them outside. This normally fixes the fogging up issue but means I am stuck with leaving them assembled unless I really want to change out the drop-in or until another low humidity day..
Got mine today also. Exactly the same results with the OP reflector. The beam is a bit throwier than an XPG close to an XPE, but nowhere a replacement for an XRE. The ugly beam pattern can be easily forgotten outside though. It is a bright and throwy drop-in as is.
Have you really never had any problems? It's common for me, with my normal assembly being done inside with central heating on.
It only normally happens with drop-ins driven over 2amps when in use outdoors for more than 2-3 minutes continuously. It has also happened with well-driven lights in stock form as well and is very common with bike lights as they have a lot of airflow onto their lense. Another thing to note is that the wider the lense is the greater chance that it will mist up.
From the Cree datasheets, at 1 amp the XP-G R5 is 348-370 lumens while the R5 XT-E is 320-340. So the XT-E is acting a little more like an XP-G R4. However the XT-E output is rated at a higher temperature and if the XP-G were rated at the same temperature it would be a little lower too. So apples to apples, you could increase the XT-E output by 15% and get 368-391 lumens at 25 degrees C to compare with the XP-G. Now the XT-E is a bin brighter at 1 amp.
Around 260-300 OTF depending upon conditions and lense/bezel used according to my own measurements. The XT-E should be around 8-10% more efficient in total output.
At Vin of 3.3V, you are getting below Vf at 1A for the LED so the current draw is probably down as well. The driver is taking some of the Vin for itself.
I don't think the spec temperature means anything. It is just a setting at which they measure performance. Maybe some people complained that Cree was evaluating their LED's at room temperature when, realistically, the LED is going to get hot very quickly and it would be more realistic to measure the output when the LED is hot. The datasheets allow you to generate numbers at any temperature you want, it's just the default (100%) value is at 25 degrees for the XP-G while for the XT-E it is 100% at 85 degrees.