when it comes to light bulbs, I don't like the new fluorescent, and I don't like the standard incandescent with the clear or white glass. I like the incandescent with the blue tint (think they are called GE Reveal?). If you happen to have one of those bulbs, which of the two Quarks most closely matches that?
GE makes two types of Reveal - one is
halogen based the other is a true tungsten
incandescent with blue tinted glass (links to GE web page on the products)
For reference the
standard Soft-White and the
Soft-White Compact Fluorescent
From your description it sounds like the latter that you have/like?
Unfortunately GE do not seem to give the color temperature of those bulbs - but generally a incandescent bulbs are in the range of 2700–3300 K (see
Wikipedia on Color temperature) -
I would think -
GE Soft-White would probably be around the 2700-2800 degK mark?
A typical halogen light can only reach about 3,200 degK
The blue tinted incandescent Reveal - my guess may be somewhere between the standard Soft-White and the Halogen? So 2,700-3,200 degK?
Either way these are much lower color temperatures than any of the
Cree Neutral Whites (3,700-5,000 degK)
they fall into
Cree Warm Whites (2,700-3,500 degK)
- please see the Cree XP-E
Binning & Labeling pdf
However for a flashlight one may find that the warm whites are much too warm/yellow looking more like incandescent flashlights - eg: the Xenon bulb SureFire 6P, G2, or Streamlight Scorpion which are about 3,200 degK.
If you actually like those incandescent lights then aim for a Cree "Warm White" at around 3,200 degK -eg: Q2 bin 7A.
Otherwise I would say the in between Neutral White as in this Q3 5A is actually very well chosen - any cool-white looks blue in comparison as shown in the beamshots.....