Asking cause the lower output doesn’t seem to matter much for my (shooting) use case, ODL20C vs SST20 Convoy S2+ actually didn’t seem like a big difference visibility wise @80 yards but the color and ability to tell things apart was better with high cri/r9
~800 lumens would be fine but I need a beam a little more focused than Convoy S2+ (sst20), bigger is better since heat dissipation and runtime matters
I wish low cri lights and emitters would die, so useless 
The SST20 in a C8+ (or M21A) host with the new 6A driver out tomorrow? SST20@6A should be ~1000lm, and 76RA according to maukka.
Ask from Simon a Convoy C8+ with an SST-20 4000k 95CRI.
The sad thing is that all the high CRI thrower LEDs seem to have major issues.
XP-L HI - not tint lover’s favourite and no cooler than 3000K
SST-20 - not tint lover’s favourite and needs dedoming (which is not particularly easy due to high bond wires) to throw
Luxeon Z ES - OK but not particularly good LED, quite obscure
Luxeon CZ - untested, should be nowhere near White Flat but for high CRI quite OK
That’s all I’m aware of.
There are some LEPs with high CRI. These may have potential but are quite immature so far.
The XHP35 Hi is available in 4500K 80+ CRI and looks just gorgeous. It’s not the highest, but it’s a good compromise.
The issue with Cree is R9, it’s more important than basic CRI. I don’t even know what the R9 on those is but this ODL20C’s XHP HI is definitely really low.
Check out the Nightwatch NS22 Seeker on Neal’s Gadgets. 27 euro, reflector is very good and C8 size, available in SST20 4000/3000K 95CRI, and even with dome (I bought the 3000K version) I found it remarkably throwy.
Don’t neutral white and cool white emitters tend to be more efficient than warm white hi CRI emitters?
Warm tints have a useful impact to the eye mostly for near field illumination. Long range, not so much. And with NW or CW producing more light… isn’t that the high priority, for longer range illumination?
That’s always been my understanding.
Warmer tints scatter less light than cool tints. If you’re looking right down the beam, that’s an issue.
It’s a balance. Less lumens with less scatter is good for throwers, up to a point.
Also, I think for the OP’s use (hunting), he wants high CRI for better color separation.
My understanding is that warm light is more appealing at low intensity, and cool for high intensity.
The problem with these high intensity low CRI lights is they aren’t useful for much besides seeing the outline. The color is just so wrong, and your brain takes longer to distinguish say, a young coon from a barn cat. A puddle of runoff from horse piss/poo was almost totally yellow with a tinge of brown to the XHP HI, while the SST20 was yellow+deep reddish brown like the puddle was in the morning daylight. Even up fairly close the coon’s color was washed out, and tinged blue. Low CRI blue lights are absolutely way worse than low cri warm lights, even though I prefer neutral/slightly cool.
Low CRI lights are horrible with red and brown usually. Even greens are off with the ODL20C.
Personally I prefer ~5000k but the only thing for that is the Optisolis nobody is using.
Completely agree. CRI 70 vs 90 is not easy to detect visually if R9 is the same. However, a high R9 vs low R9 is very easy to detect and makes a world of a difference. To me, negative DUV and high R9 makes the biggest difference in light quality.
OK, why would someone need to dedome an SST-20?
I mean, the SST-20 by itself throws 30% more per lumen compared to the XP-L HI, so a 95CRI version will not have any deficit in throw.
I didn’t know it, thanks!
I see that there’s CRI90 from 2700K all the way to 7000K. 
The challenge is to find a nice tint though….and then - there are still no great drivers easily available.
Any source for that? I’ve read that SST-20 is throwier. But I don’t remember seeing such huge difference.
And then - SST-20 maxes out at about half the lumens.
Emisar D4S specs are one published source. My own testing with SST-20 vs XP-L HI has shown that the SST-20 has more cd/lm, to the point where there’s no loss of throw with a regulated driver going from a low-CRI XP-L HI to a high-CRI SST-20. With a FET driver, the SST-20 has more throw because it has lower forward voltage and therefore draws more current.
Thanks for the input.
The way efficiency is defined is, in my honest opinion, wrong. Lumens are defined around a presumed luminosity function and is very subjective. If efficiency were defined by radiant flux or (for example) non-weighed 400 to 700nm emission the difference would likely be negligible.
I've built warm white throwers and couldn't care less about others opinion in this respect. They're a lot stealthier in the night, by the way.
Your honest opinion assumes that humans are a spectrometer, and you are completely ignoring biology.
If we use a flashlight, the usefulness is completely dependent on which wavelengths we see and which we do not see. It is a very good idea to include that in the efficiency definition, if you fail to do that, efficiency numbers would be meaningless as far as light sources for illumination are concerned (radiation sources for detection by machines is a completely different subject and not relevant in a flashlight forum). You can value the wavelengths that we do not see as much as you like, you will still not see them. That is what the luminosity function tells us. The luminosity function is not presumed, it is measured, and it varies only in details among the human population.
So the way that efficiency is defined may be wrong in your opinion, in reality it is right.
I tried to collect data on SST-20 throw.
I got the following:
DOMED:
Nightwatch NS22 Seeker SST-20 72 cd/lm
Nightwatch NS22 Seeker SST-40 31 cd/lm
.08585 cd/mm²/lm.
https://skylumen.com/products/emisar-d4vn-smallest-18650-quad
Emisar D4 SST-20 7.1 cd/lm
Emisar D4 XP-L HI 7.2 cd/lm (average of 2)
–1% difference, .08871 cd/mm²/lm.
https://skylumen.com/products/eagletac-d25cvn-the-micro-searchlight-r-1
Eagletac D25C SST-20 21.7 cd/lm
Eagletac D25C White 2 35.6 cd/lm
.09760 cd/mm²/lm.
https://skylumen.com/products/emisar-d4vn-smallest-18650-quad
Emisar D4 SST-20 7.1 cd/lm
Emisar D4 White Flat 21.6 cd/lm
.09922 cd/mm²/lm.
Convoy L2 SST-20 178 cd/lm
Convoy L2 XP-L HI 160 cd/lm
+11.7% difference, .10015 cd/mm²/lm.
https://intl-outdoor.com/emisar-d4s-26650-high-power-led-flashlight-p-932.html?zenid=c34625b9c0483c7ad0db13932650843f
Emisar D4S SST-20 13.74 cd/lm (average for 3 different variants)
Emisar D4S XP-L HI 10.47 cd/lm
+31.3% difference, .11773 cd/mm²/lm.
https://skylumen.com/products/eagletac-d25cvn-the-micro-searchlight-r-1
Eagletac D25C SST-20 21.7 cd/lm
Eagletac D25C White Flat 54.8 cd/lm
.11860 cd/mm²/lm.
SHAVED:
E2L triple shaved SST-20 8.1 cd/lm
E2L triple XP-L HI 6.6 cd/lm
+23% quite low for shaved…
.11029 cd/mm²/lm.
GT Mini shaved SST-20 256 cd/lm
GT Mini Black Flat 462 cd/lm
.14580 cd/mm²/lm.
Convoy S2+ shaved SST-20 25 cd/lm
Convoy S2+ XP-L HI 25 cd/lm
+78.4% difference, .15996 cd/mm²/lm.
GT Mini shaved SST-20 256 cd/lm
GT Mini XP-L HI 131 cd/lm
+95.4% difference. Note that this includes focus tuning that SST-20 likely received but XP-L HI didn’t.
.1752 cd/mm²/lm.
Does anyone know of other direct measurements? Stock vs dedomed SST-20 would be useful as well…
Anyway - for those capable enough to do it, dedomed clearly looks like the way to go. Especially that dedoming was shown to reduce SST-20 greenness.
The reduced green-ness probably only counts for the 95CRI SST-20 leds.
It would be useful to have the comparisons with the same current but you will have to do of course with what data is available.