Some say 1000ma. I have one hooked up to a 1.4a driver and although its noticeably brighter it does throw much farther. But then again maybe its at its limit of throw in a p60 host. Will it handle 2 amps with proper heatsinking?
OK some claim success at 2A and beyond , but I have personally never seen more than 1.7A / 1.8A at the tail [ My best XR-E R2 ]
If you had access to a large enough lot to sample , you might find a good one . + remember , the Emitter draws current , so even if you were to use a 3A driver , it simply may never come close , unless of course it goes into thermal overload [ Been there ]
Even the XREs I pulled from cheap chinese lights easily did 2.5A. Pretty badass little bastards..
Wow , the cheap nasty ones - Lucky to do 1A for me .. Last XR-E I got only does about 700mAh , pop in a XM-L and it goes 2A + , bad luck for me I guess .
That's true. XR-E has been around for a while with huge current tolerance difference, with newer ones handling current much better.
I tested a new EZ900 Q5 (or R2, who knows, these factories mix/match everything), it only start to turn blue'ish at 3.1A emitter current (NOT tailcap). They're that good now.
But of course, no guarantee what you'll be getting.
EZ900? Do want! Where did you get it?
PM e1320 about his 2.8 amp XR-Es. No comparison to them!
He’s had some hard times lately, but when he gets to making more, you’d be blown away!
Is he coming back to making them? I tried to get some a couple months ago and thought I was just a couple weeks too late.
The XRE R2s that LCK LED carries put out 2.8A easily. I haven't pushed them any harder though. They're $4 a piece + shipping. I have one in the SSun ZY-C10, C8, and in a couple of p60s. Definitely worth the upgrade.
Won the cheap eBay C8 lottery 
. Better try the LCK-LED route if you want it.
Ordered a XR-E R2 / Xp-G2 / AND a XM-L U3
They dont have EZ900..
so today i swapped the driver in the tf-r2 to a nanj 2.9a driver… but its still only pulling 1.96a at the tail. ive got 4 solder points to the pill, and set to three mode. any idea why?
also the spring on the driver is too short, any quick fix for that?
xre-r2 that match tested was from lck-led
XR-E Vf is high, when you drive at 2-3A Vf near 4V.
Completely untrue. You can drive an LED as hard as you want, you must simply provide enough voltage. You could put 100A (yes, 100) through an LED (XPE, XRE, XML, XPG doesn’t matter) if you had enough voltage. It wouldn’t survive for more than a microsecond, but you could do it. LED’s don’t “Draw” current, they simply conduct as much current as the voltage presented causes them to.
PPtk
Yep, exactly. To drive an XR-E harder than about 2A, you’ll need to use a switch-mode buck driver and power it with (most commonly) 2 Lithium Ion’s in series.
A single LiIon can’t maintain enough volts to push more than that through an XR-E. An XM-L can be driven much harder with a single cell because it has a lower Vf.
PPtk
so the marginal .15a boost wasnt worth the trouble lol… could always go with 2 rcr123a and get a good buck driver. what would you recommend for a decent driver? if i go rcr123a, itll be lifepo4, so voltage would be 5.6-7.2 roughly. under load im sure it will drop down to about 4.8-5.4v. these cells have huge voltage sag under load, atleast with ecig use…
this is going to be my “thrower”… so 1, 2 or 3 mode preferred with no blinkies (yes, i have a slim collection, and my led mag is my best thrower… im hoping to take that out with this light if possible)
also… thats supposed to say 2.8a driver
edit: so this light right now is basically being direct driven right now? and is there an easy way to tell if its an ez900? i did a quick google but didnt come up with much on that
Been there, done that. Actually lasted at least a millisecond…