Well with the growth of LED bulbs in appliance/home/architectural lighting, I’m sure we’ll see more attention being paid to color rendition and tint. Though it will still be a long way from overtaking priorities within bigger markets like applications in LCD displays and mobile devices - where I think efficacy and pricing are still the top priorities.
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of flashlight sales are made to people who don’t even know what a tint/color bin is. Us enthusiasts make up only a tiny portion of the market, and so I guess a lot of manufacturers don’t bother paying too much attention to our preferences.
Some do of course, but I suspect that the level of interest in NW emitters appears greater than what it really is simply due to the fact that they’re not as widely available. The small number that are get snapped up quickly by the small number of people with an interest.
I too have a feeling though that tint “awareness” is on the rise, which is a good thing if you ask me.
They're usually made in smaller quantities. I forgot who it was maybe it was 4sevens I'm not sure, but I remember someone from a big deal flashlight company saying that CW sales dwarfed NW sales, and that even when made in limited runs NW don't sell all that fast.
I think most people count lumens.
Probably. I mean, how many times have we seen a statement like,"I really want to try the NW, but I don't want to give up 10% lumens to do it." It seems like every other thread about NW is about that in one way or another.
By the way, every single time I’ve demo’d different tints for people who are new to high powered LED flashlights, they’ve liked the NW tints better. Some immediately, some after a little consideration (no, I didn’t talk them into it). Becoming a lumen junkie is something that can happen later, and I think it’s largely irrational.
I reckon there’s a huge number of casual flashlight users out there who prefer NW emitters, but just don’t know it.
Can Chevrolet make a Ford Focus?
That’s the equivelent of what you asking.
Cree could make a similar spec LED but it would never be a Nichia.
Nichia is the name of the manufacturer not a type of LED
The number of flashaholics in the world is relatively low. The number of flashaholics who want a high CRI led are even lower. We all claim to want high CRI but in reality, we prefer max lumens and high CRI lights tend to give up lumens.
I would guess that the number of people who really want and woukd pay for a high CRI led like the 219 number in the hundreds across the world. Most people are more than happy with NW tints.
I meant the same. There LEDs are not widely available.Perhaps as someone said above,the volume plus the end market makes them hard to be available for hobbyists. Even Cree’s primary focus is on fixtures and back lights for panels, don’t they?
IMHO,with the amount of R&D Cree does can’t they do a high CRI 5000k with added cost benefits(remember initial cost of XM-L vs MC-E)?
On a different note, have anyone tried Cree’s MX series on a flashlight setup? when I was DIY’ing a home fixture, i found them to be around 5000k and spec says minimum 80 CRI.
I think the would probably be one of the best answers. I know if i gave some the choice between nichia and a cree after they turned the light on it would be hands down cree for the brightness factor alone.
Flashlights are a small part of the LED market and people who are willing to sacrifice lumens for a better tint and CRI are a small part of the flashlight market.
That said, some of the flashlight makers out there seem to be able to quickly adopt whatever LED is available (particularly EagleTac) and since the 219 is prettly much a direct replacement of a XP-G, it seems like somebody would have done it by now. Maybe Cree gets exclusive deals to protect their market?
I would think the Nichia 219 would be used in cameras. What's used in camera flashes, particularly cell phone camera flashes?
I can imagine that Cree is simply not yet able to make a high output 4000+K 90+ CRI led and it may not be their main focus. As I understand the phosfor-mixes produced by the different companies are highly guarded company secrets and Nichia may just be better in high CRI-leds than Cree (with Lumileds in between?).
Had to read the whole lot to check, but my simple answer is as stated before,
Lumens Sell.
And even as a neutral tint snob myself, I do find that a Neutral white Cree XP-G in the same torch as a Neutral tint HighCRI 219 is different. The output of the Nichia is apparently equivalent to a Q4? while the XP-G neutral is in the R4 region, a Whole brightness bracket above. And it is somewhat visible (also the different Vf helps to make the difference larger in the V10R, with the Cree causing the driver to drive it harder). The difference of 70/80 CRI to 92 CRI is also noticeable, but in isolation, not hugely different.
Between the two, its a tough call, but not a huge difference. I guess as a flashlight manufacturer, even if both emitters are the same price, the one with more lumens will sell better on specs for a torch. Our eyes perceive brightness on a logarithmic scale (i.e. diminishing returns), however when reading a lumen number on an advertisment, we read it in a linear sense, so those extra 10-20% lumens appear to be alot on paper, but practically, are barely visible.
If torches were sold in person, I would guess that there would be more neutral tints around, but many are buying on paper, or on a computer screen these days, so the lumens still sell well.
Nichia’s aren’t really expensive or necessarily hard to get:
vs.
I think most consumers aren’t discerning and just pick the biggest number given same price. Making people care about features can be very marketing intensive.
For example, the “daylight” bulbs for home lighting were so much better than the old really yellow incans but were still massively outsold.
I think when folks mentioned Nichia in this thread, they're talking about Nichia 219 H1 neutral tint high efficacy emitters specifically, and not Nichia 219 or even Nichia 219 H1 emitters in general. The 219 from ledrise have either standard CRI or super warm tint/low efficacy.
I just installed a Nichia 219 4500k 92 CRI emitter from Illumination Supply into my Olight S10.
The tint and color rendition are incredible. Far better than any of the XM-Ls I tried in the same light. The only light I have that comes close are my Eagletac D25s with their 4500k XM-Ls. The D25s color rendition isn’t quite as good, but on IMR cells they are 3x as bright as the S10 with Nichia.
Emitters tried in my S10s:
- Default cool-white XML U2 - not pure white. Noticeable greenish tint.
- Default 5200k neutral XML (stock for titanium S10) - lemon yellow tint. Everything looks yellowish.
- CNQuality Goods XMLT6 5000k neutral - looks almost the same as the 5200k. Everything looks yellowish. (same LED in a light with a 2.8 amp light did not look nearly so yellow)
- XML T4 4000k - everything looks orange/yellowish.
- Nichia 219 - perfect color rendition. Tint matches that in my much more heavily driven 4500k Eagletac D25c. No hint of yellow at all. Great color rendition, but lumens are lower than all of the other emitters.
The 219 makes some nice light, but it’s mostly about the lumen levels.
Just run the numbers compared to an XP-G2 R5 (5000K 3D is a nice tint here.)
At 1.5Amps:
XPG2 does 472 lumen at 4.63Watts, 3volts Vf.
Nichia 219 does 310 lumen at 5.73 Watts, 3.82 Volts
(barely gets there with a single li-ion)
That’s a tough sell in this lumen hungry market.
Yes, you do have a good point. The 219 looks great but isn’t very bright. My Eagletac D25 neutrals with 4500K XML looks almost the same as the 219 but is 3x as bright.
Maybe I should try making a triple 219 light. I’ve never made a triple before, but I noticed that Illumination Supply has 219 triples mounted on 20 mm stars.
If I’m going to try that, what would be a good flashlight or host to modify that accepts 20mm stars? I prefer very small EDC size flashlights with clicky or electronic switches.
The XP-G2 beats a regular 219 for efficacy-no bones about it-but the fact is CRI kills efficacy. It’s not quite an apples-apples comparison since converting blue light to longer wavelengths (of which the HCRI 219 produces more relatively) becomes less efficient the greater wavelength difference is. Eyeballing those relative spectral power distribution curves:
The XP-G2 neutral has a larger spike around 440nm. The Nichia also does not so strongly favor particular wavelength regions between 470-650nm. I believe the smoother (somewhat less discontinuous) curve in that region contributes to superior CRI.
For example, the green RSPD curve represents a Neutral 4A or 4D XP-G/G2 (4500K), and I think one of those bins shares some chromacity coordinates with the Nichia SW45 tint bin. In this case the Cree and Nichia produce similar tint but have different CRI values.
