what makes a better LED flashlight for our eyes Kelvin & HCRI wise ?.
is it between like normal 3000-4300K, or say if I had a 4500 / 5000k HCRI, would that compensate somehow being HCRI ? or would that brightness be something our eyes find harder anyway HCRI or not ?.
thing is, I see these new 2013 BMW’s with adaptive LED lighting, at 5000K-BMW tell me, but then how could that be so good for driving, and better than say 3700-4300 which many say suits our eyes way better?. isn’t 5000k too much ?.
would they be 5000HCRI or something for better rendering or is that nothing to do with it ?.
I have a pd32ue at 5000k and im sure there is no HCRI as its just at 75, but is this light still good perception to the eye?.
what would be the Ideal K along with a HCRI?. thanks.
BMW’s adaptive led lighting isn’t about CRI (and it’s just CRI not HCRI)or color temp at all. It’s just a way of projecting the light on the road to make driving easier by turning the lights in the same direction as the steering wheel using speed and yaw sensors to vary the amount the headlights are turned.
As for what is best, 5000k isn’t best but when it comes to led’s cooler means brighter so you’re not gonna find warm white led headlights, they’d just be way too dim. But a cool white light of even 75 CRI would be actually quite acceptable in terms of color rendering, you’d be hard pressed to really tell much difference in colors unless you had a comparable high CRI light source of the same color temperature on hand to compare. Certainly you can pick out colors more accurately than a 100 CRI at 2800k.
But that’s not as much an issue when you’re driving. At night bluer lights simply strain your eyes more and are less effective in low visibility situations due to glare which is why many fog lights have a yellow filter on them. A lot of this is just relative to use, sometimes cool white is good to use, sometimes warm white.
But most of the time I’m betting the only thing people are thinking is, gee I do like those fancy blue tinted led headlights like I saw on the BMW. And if BMW is using it, it must be good. When in reality BMW is just trying to cut costs and keep headlights bright by using cool leds. It’s the same thing that happened with HID’s people thought “Wow!” and they go out and buy 8000k hid retrofits thinking “If I like bluish headlights even bluer must be even better,” and find out they’re really not, they end up being dim because unlike led’s hid’s are brighter as you get warmer.