This bare LED sells $10 -$12 on Digikey - no heat sink. I recently purchased four LEDs, mounted on heatsinks, from an Aliexpress vendor that were represented to be Cree XHP70.2 - about $2.25 each. I’m thinking no way these Chinese LEDs are genuine Cree. Anybody want to tell us about their experience with the Chinese knockoffs. Do they perform anything like the real McCoy?
Thanks,
Larry
The Chinese are master copiers and duplicators. In China they copied the Apple iPhone, then the copied the entire Apple store to sell it in.
I am sure there are thousamds of phoney LEDs floating around. Mixed up in all the copies are few real ones.
If anyone really had a problem with it, they would protest and never buy a Made In China prodct again.
…but we dont, we continue to purchase Chinese goods with no end in sight.
We, fellow BLFers, are part of the problem. Myself included.
If you buy “original xyz” for 20% of the normal price on Aliexpress in a random shop and get a dupe this is entirely on you IMHO.
I oppose to collectively dismissing “The Chinese” as “master copiers and duplicators” - China gave us wonderful things like Emisar/Noctigon lights that are very innovative and affordable. Just inform yourself and think before you order something.
3 Thanks
Come again? If I buy a phone that says Apple on it, looks and works like an Apple phone but is completely FAKE, its on me?
If someone on Craigslist offers a bunch of original NIB Nvidia RTX 4090s for $300 and you order one and receive a brick then yeah, it’s on you. The InterNet is full of people who want to rip you off, as you are surely aware. The Chinese did not invent that - they just copied and mastered it, as some would say. 
I hereby accept your offer for RTX4090 @$300. New In Box of course.
All I can say is that you would feel different if you spent thousands or millions or even billions of dollars developing a product and someone comes along and copies it.
We tend to think theft happens only when someone walks into a store and takes something without paying for it. This is only one of the many kinds of theft.
There is nothing wrong with opening a hamburger joint and calling it Mcdonalds. But when you use the name and the golden arches to sell hamburgers that is completely illegal.
Why? Because Mcdonalds spent decades developing the brand and you spent nothing and your goal is to make money from someone else’s ideas.
This is taken very seriously in this country. Clearly not as seriously in other countries.