The colored XP-E2 emitters are brighter than they seem like they should be. I put a red XP-E2 into a little 1x16340 host running at 700mA, and even at that low power level it puts out more lumens than my Zebralight H51w. It’s kind of overkill for my purposes, a tail light on a bike, so I run it at like 3% power.
Also, pictures really don’t do justice for the colored emitters. They look sort of white-ish on camera, but in person are just an amazingly strong color.
I measured one with my spectrometer, as sort of a calibration check. Much to my surprise, the result was within Cree’s spec! I guess my calibration can’t be too far off… (peak wavelength is spec’d at 620 to 630nm, and mine showed 629nm)
The emitter itself looks like this:
