Looking for the best led I can buy out right now for throw
I’m looking for green and red also making 3 throwers of each color thanks for the help
The Osram CSLNM1 series (aka W1) are very good throwing LEDs that come in red and green as well as white. I’m not sure there’s a definitive consensus on the best throwing LED but the Osram CULPM1 (W2) and SFT40 are contenders as well. I’d also throw in the LMP W5050SQ3 as a good choice for white light throwers.
Thanks going to try the 40 led
SBT90.2. Only one true thrower led.
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The W2 and W5050SQ3 have been superseded by the new SFT25R in output and throw. The SFT40 is still an up-to-date emitter with a very good balance of throw and output.
This LED cannot be reasonably used in smaller lights (due to the tremendous amount of power required to get any reasonable throw out of this LED), and has lower surface intensity than all above-mentioned emitters. To match the throw of an Osram W1, the runtime would be cut by a factor of 9. Large, multi-cell lights are where this emitter belongs.
@op didn’t specify host preferences. Just asked about emitter.
I had an acebeam e10 green, amaizing little thrower, very little spill, very intense hotspot, they also come in red and white, but green throws the farthest. irc they use osram leds
has lower surface intensity than all above-mentioned emitters.
Hard to justify the title as “best thrower LED” when 5 different Osram emitters, Cree XP-P, SFT12, SFT25R, SFT40, and possibly SFT70 can all out-throw it in almost every host.
Question: I understand about surface intensity, but how does higher maximum output and larger LED of SBT90.2 come into the equation?
Let’s say same host, each LED driven to max output, and the questions (for me anyway to define the term “best” throw - tiny hotspot is a disadvantage) are:
- how far ANSI throw
- how big the hot spot
Doesn’t higher output of SBT90.2 make it throw further? Or its larger LED make the hotspot larger? That larger max output must provide some advantage somewhere, no?
The higher output of the SBT90.2 makes its hotspot wider; given the same surface intensity, under a well-designed reflector-optic, the emitter size/output does not impact throw. It may make readings at 1m higher as the beam has not fully converged to its final shape, but to an observer 1km away looking into the light, they could tell no difference.
If factors other than ANSI range, such as hotspot size, are considered, it is also reasonable to consider other factors, such as: how long can a light sustain its throw for? However, this metric is in conflict with the hotspot size metric: given the same surface intensity, hotspot size is proportional to output, which is inversely-proportional to runtime. Thus larger hotspot reduces sustained throw time, which one can argue makes a light a worse thrower.
It is true that the SBT90.2 LED offers something unique in a large class of lights, but that does not support the claim that it is the best throw LED, because lots of other LEDs can out-throw it in various ways.
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Noctigon K1, KR1 and DM11 enter the chat.
Now, can the KR1 and DM11 stand up to the heat of the SBT90.2? Not for very long. There are few lights that can. The K1 has much more thermal mass and can withstand the intensity of the emitter for longer. However, it will still only last about a minute before it steps down from heat.
The Convoy 3X21D might be able to withstand the heat better because it had more mass. As well as the Acebeam K75. But, how much longer? And with the Acebeam, is it long enough to justify nearly $300? I doubt it.
Edit to add that the Convoy and the Acebeam use multiple batteries, as well.
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Now I would like some flashlight education pls 
. I have SBT90.2 in Wurkkos TS30S. 4700 lm 1000m throw. Were I to put the smaller SFT40 into this host, am I correct to predict:
- Hot spot is smaller in SFT40 because of smaller size.
- Throw depends on a. output and b. surface intensity (is this the same as flux density?) so at Turbo turn-on, which LED throw more will depend on whether the higher output of SBT90.2 wins against the higher surface intensity of SFT40?
- Over time the SBT90.2 may step down more because of heat and lose its brightness advantage? TIA
The most practical throwy emitter that provides some usable spill is the SFT40.
The SBT90.2 is brighter and throws further, but it overheats quickly and has a low runtime.
The emitters known as W1 and W2 are very throwy, but they don’t provide much usable spill.
There are some modifications necessary other than just an emitter swap–the driver needs to be modified as well to drive the SFT40 at the appropriate current.
(1) Assuming that the reflector is of good quality, this prediction should be true. More specifically, one would expect the SFT40 hotspot to have 2/3 the diameter of the SBT90.2 hotspot–this is due to the side length ratio between the 2 emitters.
(2) Throw (defined as distance to .25 lux), under ideal conditions, should depend on surface intensity (yes, this is also flux density) of the emitter alone. But the real world is not ideal: reflectors are not perfect parabolas, and practical measurement distances are much shorter than distances needed to get accurate throw readings. So there is also some weak dependence on output. Assuming (i) a good-quality reflector and (ii) a sufficiently far measurement distance, ideally 20m+, the SFT40 will throw more, but not by a significant amount.
(3) Yes, the SBT90.2 must step down earlier because of the more-than-double power consumption compared to SFT40 to reach the same intensity. This translates to more than double the heat. Furthermore, the larger current load induces greater voltage sag, so the battery may become unable to supply full drive current even at a reasonably high voltage. From the Sofirn 21700 tested by HKJ, over 90% of the cell’s capacity can support 10A current (for the SFT40), where as for the 20-25A drawn by the SBT90.2, only around 50% of the capacity is usable before stepdown due to voltage sag.
With power draw and voltage sag both considered, the full-output runtime of a SBT90.2 would be (40%/90%)*(10A/25A) = 18% that of the SFT40, under the above assumptions.
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There is good reason to believe the SFT40 throws further when driven close to the maximum: koef3’s test indicates that more than 3000lm is reachable, which makes for a 3000lm/(4mm^2)=750lm/mm^2 of surface intensity. The SBT90.2, with the 9mm^2 die, needs to achieve 750lm/mm^2*9mm^2=6750lm to match the same intensity.
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If we could use actual numbers from 2 lights I own, I have my own measurements, but I’ll use 1lumen numbers:
IF22a @ Turbo: 1853 lm/4=463
TS30S @ Turbo : 4340lm/9=482
Is my calculation correctly done, using actual OTF output of a light?
But my question is not related to above, it is about the extra 2500 lm that SBT90.2 has. What happens to it? It has to go somewhere right? My answer based on our discussion so far, is that I will see this extra output
- In the form of larger hotspot?
- Assuming similar host, larger and brighter spill? Not sure about this one.
Sorry OP for stealing the thread. I think I do have something that is related to your question 
. Maybe opinions based on actual use. I have 3 lights (yes I know different hosts) that use SBT90.2, SFT40, and SST40 and use them often, especially the SBT90.2. Here’s the beamshot that will add to the informative discussion with QReciprocity42.
Note the different CCT’s, SFT is 6500k and SBT90.2 is 5100k (surprisingly warm and unique for a thrower - I like it a lot). The Wurkkos SBT90.2 throw actually goes past 1km once I use the “correct” battery - Nealsgadgets Lishen LR2170LH and add AR lens. In the IF22a host, the SFT40 “pencil” beam is very narrow, narrowest among all my lights. There’s a review of Convoy L21B with SFT40, and throw is impressive 1200m, but the narrow beam is also noted there.
LEP. Turn that d upside down.
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This comparison is difficult because (i) the lights are different and the LEDs are driven to different fractions of their maximum output, and (ii) the type of secondary optic is different: given the same size, a TIR tends to produce a larger but slightly less intense hotspot than a reflector, and tends to be more lossy in total luminous flux. It would be better to get the lumens straight from emitter tests to overcome these issues.
(1) Yes, you could expect a larger hotspot:
(2) Larger spill is not expected because the spill angle is solely determined by reflector geometry and independent of the emitter. Brighter spill is expected because spill comes from direct LED emission without interacting with the reflector, so its intensity is proportional to luminous flux and independent of surface intensity.
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That is a very nice tinted SBT90.2!
The IF22A has a 42mm head vs the 61mm head of the TS30S, which should offset the 2mm vs 3mm difference in emitter size and result in a beam of equal width or wider, since a TIR collects almost all of a reflector’s spill and turns it into hotspot. The fact that you observe a more narrow beam is suggestive of the TIR being very lossy, which seems consistent with the output numbers.
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