20.11.2023
Here is a short test of a special variant of the already well-known “Yinding 5050” LED, because a cold white high CRI variant of the “Yinding 5050 glass” LED has recently come into circulation!
This LED generally appears in this familiar design on the Chinese market from time to time under different names, sometimes as “Lumenpioneer” (LMP), sometimes as “Yinding”, sometimes as “Sanan”. The latter is probably now some sort of generic term in China, like Cree-LED here, which is used to describe powerful emitters also in flashlights.
The design of the LED is familiar. Although it looks slightly different to the “Yinding 5050 glass” already tested in June 2023, it shares the same LED chip.
This chip is almost certainly manufactured by Sanan, a large company to which Luminus also belongs. It is very likely that there are three LED chips with a round luminous surface, a small one with 1-1.5 mm² (like used in ‘YLX N3535B’ - test here), the middle one shown here with 2.5-3 mm² and a chip with over 5 mm², which is often found in “L70” or “L90”.
The special feature of this LED is its extremely high color rendering. This LED first became known through a post in the BLF, where a very high color rendering value of Ra 92-96 was determined using an Opple device.
Unfortunately, this LED is not available in Germany. This LED was not advertised by the Aliexpress store “Shenzhen Silver Ingot” with high color rendering or other specifications - in principle it appeared by mistake (?) or as a random find in the wild.
Visually, this color rendering index also seems realistic - because normally LEDs with low color rendering have a yellow-green phosphor layer, while the variants with high CRI have a more reddish-brown phosphor.
On the left of the LED board is the variant with high color rendering, on the right the low CRI variant, which I had already tested. The LED chip is identical to that of the previously tested low-CRI version. The substrate and the patterns on it, including the plus symbol, are slightly different. It is unlikely that these LEDs were assembled by the same manufacturer. The phosphor is covered with a kind of “glass cap”, which also serves as a lens. The surface of this cap is made of anti-reflective glass (AR).
At low operating current, a highly granulated luminous surface is visible. The phosphor coating is applied very thickly here; this appearance at low current is typical of high CRI LEDs.
As is to be expected with high color rendering, the performance is lower than with the standard 70 CRI variants. The efficiency is lower, by around 20-30 %.
At 1518 lm @ 8.4 A @ 4.03 V is the limit. The maximum achievable current corresponds to that of XP-L HI or the other “Yinding 5050 glass”.
The retailer or some resellers state a maximum current of between 4 and 6 A for this type of LED. For this LED, 6 A is relatively ambitious, as the increase in luminous flux is very limited above 6 A and only increases by around 10 %. I would not want to supply this variant with more than 5 A.
The XP-L HI offers slightly higher efficiency, but also uses a significantly larger chip. However, the Vf of the XP-L HI is no longer up to date and is very high.
Both “Yinding 5050” have a similar Vf. The luminous flux characteristics are virtually identical, except that the variant with high color rendering is more inefficient. The LED chips are identical, only the packaging and the phosphor mixture are different.
The “LMP W5050SQ3” appeared in the Convoy store some time ago. Its performance is very similar to the “Yinding 5050”, but with an even lower Vf, especially at high operating current.
The luminance is lower than that of the variants with low color rendering. As the size of the illuminated area is identical and the optical parameters of the “Yinding 5050 glass” LEDs are otherwise the same, the luminance here depends primarily on the emitted luminous flux. But nonetheless, the luminance is not bad for an emitter with small LES and very high CRI.
The quality of the light pattern when used with optics corresponds to that of the “Yinding 5050” with a low color rendering classification. Depending on the reflector, there may be rings, but these do not occur with well-calculated reflectors or Orange-peel ones, and the light image is free of color distortions or other artifacts.
The spectral measurement confirms that this is a variant with high CRI!
Ra of 94 and R9 of 87 is an excellent value and is in the range of Nichia emitters and also the Getian GT-FC40. Although the color temperature is very high at almost 6700 K, this in turn makes this LED special, especially when daylight-like lighting with a very long range is required. The tint is also excellent, it is almost perfectly on BBL and is therefore perfect for all those who value white light that is as true to color as possible. It is a pure cold white light without annoying greenisch tint and with extremely high color rendering!
All in all, this is an extremely interesting LED. Unfortunately, the sources of supply are quite dubious (it is probably never 100 percent clear which LED batch you will finally get from this store on Aliexpress), this sample is not available here in Germany and nothing else is known is really about this emitter. However, with an extremely good light color and color quality and the quite high luminance, this emitter is definitely something special and has no direct competition.
Thanks for reading! 
Best regards, Dominik
. There might be only one reel of these things, so I’m getting some more before these unicorns disappear completely.
