applevision
Flashlight Enthusiast
***LOTS OF GOOD COMPARISON PICS ADDED AT POST #20!***
Hi team,
Just received my Preon 2 High CRI from 4Sevens... I am very excited about this light!
I have been using the warm for over 1 year and I love it, absolutely love it. It pains me that we haven't seen a re-run of the warm in awhile, however, and I constantly worry that if that light eventually breaks, I have no backup. I use my Preon 2 warm every single day: it is my most relied upon tool as a dermatologist. The warm tones really help me see the redness of skin lesions and get a sense of the contours of a lesion when I sidelight illuminate. So when I heard about the High CRI, I was sold!
Here they are, together! (Note: the perspective is a little funny--they are identical in size and construction)
I want to make a quick note about fit and finish of the new High CRI--it is OUTSTANDING. My old light is very good, but the threads on the new one are even better: buttery smooth out of the box! Otherwise, it is just as we expect from 4Sevens: gorgeous anodizing, excellent clicky, a wonderful UI.
Now onto the light!
Warm on the Left and High CRI on the Right.
You can see from the beamshots that they are very similar in profile. However, there is no doubt that the High CRI light puts out more light--it's actually fairly impressive vs. the warm. In this photo in particular, you can appreciate how clear/clean and neutral the High CRI light is. As we understand here on CPF, high CRI does not necessarily mean a neutral tint, but in this case they have a very nice tint, thank goodness. My warm is a bit more brown on beam tint.
But what about where rubber meets the road?
Well, this is the hardest thing to show since cameras/monitors/user error all play a role in making this difficult to share and measure properly for us non-professionals.
So I think the key thing is going to be my impressions... but I wanted to show a series that captures my experience well:
1) Natural early afternoon sun shining on a checkerboard with red and black pieces, an orange bench and off-white walls.
2) The warm Preon 2 really bringing out the reds and giving a full, rich color to the orange.
3) The High CRI Preon 2 giving good color, washing things out a bit because it's so bright, but certainly appearing more--how to say--reserved. But clearly doing a great job.
Impressions:
I feel a little like one of those folks who leaves his camera on "vivid" knowing that it is not TRUE but looks prettier. It's phony in a way, it's inaccurate, but we often find ourselves preferring more "pop". At the end of the day, despite its lower output, I prefer my old Preon 2 Warm due to this "pop" and enhancement of those colors which are so important to me in my line of work: reds, pinks, browns. This holds despite the dimmer, browner beam, and despite it's many hundreds of hours of use. BUT, and this is a big but, the High CRI is a GORGEOUS light, that is head and shoulders above my stock Preon in terms of color. (I know, I should have added that to the mix, but I can assure you--it's WAY worth it to go High CRI vs. the regular bluish one if you care anything about color rendering over sheer brightness--my question was which would be better: warm vs. this particular High CRI light for my purposes).
Discussion:
Things we cannot say: Warm is "better" than High CRI. Why? This is preposterous, as these are two totally different concepts. Ideally, I think, we'd want a super high CRI light in a very neutral tint to most reflect sunlight. Until that day comes, however, we have different options to weigh and trade-offs to make. In this particular setup, and with my specific units (there is probably some tint lottery as well...), I find that the warm best suits my needs. That said, my High CRI HDS EDC trumps my Preon 2 warm in both tint and color rendering--that's the best of all I have, though it's not ideal for my daily EDC light given my needs.
I am delighted with this light, however, and know that it will scratch an itch felt by many of us here. I can safely recommend this over the base Preon 2 unit without hesitation: still nearly as bright (minimal trade off to my eye), but SIGNIFICANTLY better color than the blueish hue of my stock unit.
Final image showing just how similar the High CRI and Warm actually are (these are subtle differences):
Brighter High CRI
Slightly dimmer Warm...
I'm very curious to hear everyone's thoughts!
-Applevision
Hi team,
Just received my Preon 2 High CRI from 4Sevens... I am very excited about this light!
I have been using the warm for over 1 year and I love it, absolutely love it. It pains me that we haven't seen a re-run of the warm in awhile, however, and I constantly worry that if that light eventually breaks, I have no backup. I use my Preon 2 warm every single day: it is my most relied upon tool as a dermatologist. The warm tones really help me see the redness of skin lesions and get a sense of the contours of a lesion when I sidelight illuminate. So when I heard about the High CRI, I was sold!
Here they are, together! (Note: the perspective is a little funny--they are identical in size and construction)
I want to make a quick note about fit and finish of the new High CRI--it is OUTSTANDING. My old light is very good, but the threads on the new one are even better: buttery smooth out of the box! Otherwise, it is just as we expect from 4Sevens: gorgeous anodizing, excellent clicky, a wonderful UI.
Now onto the light!
Warm on the Left and High CRI on the Right.
You can see from the beamshots that they are very similar in profile. However, there is no doubt that the High CRI light puts out more light--it's actually fairly impressive vs. the warm. In this photo in particular, you can appreciate how clear/clean and neutral the High CRI light is. As we understand here on CPF, high CRI does not necessarily mean a neutral tint, but in this case they have a very nice tint, thank goodness. My warm is a bit more brown on beam tint.
But what about where rubber meets the road?
Well, this is the hardest thing to show since cameras/monitors/user error all play a role in making this difficult to share and measure properly for us non-professionals.
So I think the key thing is going to be my impressions... but I wanted to show a series that captures my experience well:
1) Natural early afternoon sun shining on a checkerboard with red and black pieces, an orange bench and off-white walls.
2) The warm Preon 2 really bringing out the reds and giving a full, rich color to the orange.
3) The High CRI Preon 2 giving good color, washing things out a bit because it's so bright, but certainly appearing more--how to say--reserved. But clearly doing a great job.
Impressions:
I feel a little like one of those folks who leaves his camera on "vivid" knowing that it is not TRUE but looks prettier. It's phony in a way, it's inaccurate, but we often find ourselves preferring more "pop". At the end of the day, despite its lower output, I prefer my old Preon 2 Warm due to this "pop" and enhancement of those colors which are so important to me in my line of work: reds, pinks, browns. This holds despite the dimmer, browner beam, and despite it's many hundreds of hours of use. BUT, and this is a big but, the High CRI is a GORGEOUS light, that is head and shoulders above my stock Preon in terms of color. (I know, I should have added that to the mix, but I can assure you--it's WAY worth it to go High CRI vs. the regular bluish one if you care anything about color rendering over sheer brightness--my question was which would be better: warm vs. this particular High CRI light for my purposes).
Discussion:
Things we cannot say: Warm is "better" than High CRI. Why? This is preposterous, as these are two totally different concepts. Ideally, I think, we'd want a super high CRI light in a very neutral tint to most reflect sunlight. Until that day comes, however, we have different options to weigh and trade-offs to make. In this particular setup, and with my specific units (there is probably some tint lottery as well...), I find that the warm best suits my needs. That said, my High CRI HDS EDC trumps my Preon 2 warm in both tint and color rendering--that's the best of all I have, though it's not ideal for my daily EDC light given my needs.
I am delighted with this light, however, and know that it will scratch an itch felt by many of us here. I can safely recommend this over the base Preon 2 unit without hesitation: still nearly as bright (minimal trade off to my eye), but SIGNIFICANTLY better color than the blueish hue of my stock unit.
Final image showing just how similar the High CRI and Warm actually are (these are subtle differences):
Brighter High CRI
Slightly dimmer Warm...
I'm very curious to hear everyone's thoughts!
-Applevision
Last edited: