Not Gonna Buy Cool White Again! [Join Club Here]

[low]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, allright allready. Neutral for me. Cool tint just does not work with Mother Nature. Besides, she knows best don't she?

Low

 

[chicken dave]

I'm on board. I've saved hundreds of dollars since buying a Zebralight H501w about a year and a half ago. Since then, lots of interesting lights have come along, but if they're not available in warm, I'm not buying. Also, my computer screen background has been a rich, warm red for years.

 

[mikeyx]

Me too...I've even went from neutrals to warm. What makes it tough is that new emitters are always first released in cool white...so you have to wait for the newest stuff. Sometimes, I can't (the shakes won't stop), so I have to buy cool.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Another fan of warmer tones here. It amazes me that I still see new LED strip lights being put into food coolers in stores and they choose cool white for the job. It makes the food packages look a little ghastly IMO. Warmer tints might not have as much output but I prefer the warmer color rendition by far.

 

[Glock27]

Warm and/or High CRI for me.

G27

 

[PayBack]

Not sure it's accurate to say cool white is the best. Some (myself included) would say more lumens are the best.

I don't work for CSI so as long as I can see red is red, I want more output.

 

[brightnorm]

Is it true that the lower the Kelvin temp the less efficient the LED?

Brightnorm

 

[think2x]

I only have VERY FEW white lights anymore and try to only keep the neutrals/warms. Even my Quark Ti 2x123 is now sporting an XP-E from a first run Neutral Quark AA2 now.

 

[Lite_me]

Count me in. My ZL SC51w is the perfect tint to me. It always looks right both indoors and out. I have scads of cool tinted lights and hesitate to even use them. Don't like the way they look anymore. They are now relegated to glove box, trunk, and back-up lights. If the new, must-have, fancy UI, high output, multi-featured, futuristic light doesn't come in neutrul/warm tint, I'm not interested.

 

[kyhunter1]

Im not in the club of never buying CW again, but I do prefer neutral tint's when possible. It all depends on the purpose I have for the light. My users must have a nice tint. Keep this in mind: you will never again buy a new Surefire. (Excluding SF P60 incans to upgrade to led). Im not ready for that proposition yet. The LX2 is really tempting me right now. A local buddy let me handle one recently, and it is definitely on the hit list now.....

 

[Stress_Test]

I've been thinking about "joining the club" and saying no more cool whites...

My last purchases were a Quark 123 Tac /S2, mainly because I wanted one in that battery type to cover all the bases. The other purchase was shortly after Thrunite released their XM-L p60 drop in, and I got one of those because, duh, never had an XM-L before.

The tint on the XM-L drop in is a bit yellowish, but fairly nice.

The Quark S2 was greeenish yellow. Again. I just haven't had much luck with tints on the XPG 4Sevens lights. I've got four of them with XPGs:

Preon 1
Quark AA Tac (really green!)
Quark Mini AA (really green!)
Quark 123 Tac (greenish yellow)

The Preon 1 has a nice kind of snow white tint that I like. All the others are pretty bad. Normally don't care about tint but come on! These were too green even for me. I won't send them back though. I was thinking about picking up one of the Turbo AA S2s, but given that I've only had a 25% success rate with good tints from these lights, I just can't pull the trigger.

Waiting on more neutral and/or high cri lights from 4Sevens before buying again!

I managed to get what I think might have been the very last R4 Neutral Quark head in their inventory, beause after I placed my order, it went out of stock shorly thereafter.

The XPG Neutral R4 is awesome! It seems brighter than the R5 cool white, probably just because the color is sooo much better.

 

[LEDAdd1ct]

If we buy a light with the intent to kindly ask for another's help in modding it from cool to neutral or warm or high-CRI, are we still allowed to join?

 

[burntoshine]

THIS IS THE CLUB FOR ME!

i weeded out all the cools long ago.

even if i really, really want a light, i will completely pass on it if it's only available in cool white.

 

[Napalm]

Is it true that the lower the Kelvin temp the less efficient the LED?

Brightnorm

Apparently yes. Most "white" LEDs work like this: the LED emits blue light, and its surface is painted with phosphor that converts some of the blue light into green and red. The thicker the phosphor the warmer the LED can be, but then the bigger the losses in raw lumens are (as the conversion process is non-ideal and some power is lost into heat). The good part is that you would want warm LEDs exactly for applications where you want gentle, non-aggressive light, so the loss in efficiency doesn't matter much.

Nap.

 

[plainsman]

This whole cool/warm controversy brings up an interesting perceptual issue. I happen to work in visual arts, and our monitors are always corrected to 6500K. Having been at this calling for quite a while, I find significantly warmer light more peculiar looking inside or outdoors. This seems to be pretty consistent with other friends working with digital photography and commercial graphics that I've queried. I wonder how much our own personal backgrounds affect our preferences for light temperatures.

 

[nfetterly]

NO COOL WHITES for me. Neutral or warm. In the last ~9 months or so I've been very happy with the neutrals (4500K SST50 & R4 XP-G). Just received a Malkoff M61HCRI (3000k, +90 CRI) and am VERY impressed with it. I ordered a custom build 2 weeks ago with a 4 week wait. Last week I ordered (after checking with builder) a warmer LED than the 5700K neutral offered.

 

[cm_mtb]

Only NW or warm for me, High CRI preferred. :thumbsup:

 

[cave dave]

Sold off most of my cools, don't plan on buying more unless I plan to instantly mod it. Even got rid of the Ti quarks because I would rather have aluminum Neutral Quarks.

 

[EngrPaul]

If we buy a light with the intent to kindly ask for another's help in modding it from cool to neutral or warm or high-CRI, are we still allowed to join?

Yes! In fact, saving flashlights from a cold life gets you to a gold membership faster

 

[low]

Yes! In fact, saving flashlights from a cold life gets you to a gold membership faster

Ha! I figured that might be the case. Save the earth, by saving one flashlight at a time.