Cool White vs Neutral white

berry580

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Hey guys, I think I'm still pretty new to these things. Can someone help me? What are the pros and cons of a cool tint and a warm tint?

I just don't get it. Some people to just seems just crazy over warm tints even though they know it won't be as efficient in terms of output/runtime compared to LEDs with cool tint.

Whats the deal here?

Thank you in advance :popcorn:
 

hyperloop

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Hey guys, I think I'm still pretty new to these things. Can someone help me? What are the pros and cons of a cool tint and a warm tint?

I just don't get it. Some people to just seems just crazy over warm tints even though they know it won't be as efficient in terms of output/runtime compared to LEDs with cool tint.

Whats the deal here?

Thank you in advance :popcorn:

i just got the new Romisen RC N3 warm white, take a look at the beamshots in comparision with the Romisen RC N3 II Q5
 

kramer5150

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Its a matter of preference... what color tint do you prefer to look at? I have always preferred Incan and warmer tints, but I can get by with just about anything, so long as its not blue/purple.
 

Burgess

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and just FYI . . . .


Runtimes are usually identical, regardless of which "tint-bin" you choose.



Dont' put all yer' emphasis on "ultimate number of Lumens".


Often, a "nicer tint" can make for a MUCH more pleasant viewing experience.


:cool:
_
 

berry580

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In what way would it improve your viewing experience?
I think I heard that certain colors can be hard on your eyes etc. But if its too harsh, then you can always lower the output... can't you? I tend to use lights with continuous variable modes.

Is there something I haven't accounted for? :S

Oh, and so far all the lights that i've had has a cool white tint.
 

qip

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its just like having a stock incan mag but instead its led and efficient but color is same , yellow
 

R@ndom

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Cool white LEDs makes outdoor colours and skin tones dull and grey. How bright a light is is dependent on how much light is reflected. Outdoors a warm white will appear to be brighter. The bin difference isn't visible anyway. Get that RC-N3 warm. You'll see what I mean once you get it.

Incan and warm tint is different. The difference being CRI. How evenly distributed across the spectrem. The warm white LEDs aren't as good as incan or sunlight in this regard. It's as bad as cool LED's in Cree's case but the light falls into a more useful range. For example warm CFLs might be just as warm as incan but look at reds and browns under it and it looks weird.
 
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xenonk

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What are the pros and cons of a cool tint and a warm tint?
In what way would it improve your viewing experience?
Caveat: When most people talk about their warm tints, they actually mean neutral according to the manufacturer (around 4000-4500K CCT). We just call them warm by habit because they're warmer than the cool tints. There are even warmer tints as well, though IMO those go too far in the other direction.

Your typical white LED is actually a blue LED covered in yellow-green phosphor. It has gaps in the colour spectrum it emits and an uneven distribution overall. This causes colours to appear unnatural under the light and makes it more difficult to distinguish boundaries and colours than it would be under sunlight.

For cool white there's a gigantic spike at blue, a gap at cyan, and then a spike at yellow-green with a rapid falloff to a gap towards red. Neutral white slops on more phosphor to convert more of the blue, which reduces efficiency but gives better red coverage.

Reds and browns are very common in nature so the colour distribution of warmer tints can be more useful than getting fractionally more lumens from using a cool tint. Especially outdoors.
Increasing red light and reducing blue also has the added benefit of cutting through fog and smoke better, since blue tends to scatter easily.

There's a thread dedicated to analyzing the spectral distribution of all kinds of things here:
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/220118

eg: Cool white LED
atscw3.gif
 

glockboy

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If you want see the things you shine the light to, get the cool white, white and bright, like HID.
If you want to look at the color of the trees and sidewalk and skin tones, get the neutral white, yellow and dim, like M@glight.
 

lolzertank

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Neutral white is awesome! You won't notice the brightness difference, but you WILL notice the tint.

If you want see the things you shine the light to, get the cool white, white and bright, like HID.
If you want to look at the color of the trees and sidewalk and skin tones, get the neutral white, yellow and dim, like M@glight.

A lot of HID lights are 4300K now. Neutral white doesn't have to be dim either. Just build a triple MC-E Mag in neutral white. :thumbsup:
 

maxilux

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In my opinion cool white looks brighter as neutral white, this is for most people so, because of the human eye.
Much people told me that they see better colour difference with neutral white, i cant see it. So take that what you like.
 

Illum

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Cool White
ad in: alot of light
ad out: Limited useability due to limited color rendition ability

Neutral White
ad in: Very useable, sufficient output for most tasks
ad out: somewhat insufficient as accent lighting due to adequate [but not superb] color rendition

Warm white
ad in: Very high CRI compared to cool white, wonderful light out in the woods or areas with alot of green vegetation.
ad out: Not the brightest LEDs [in XRE form] compared to NW or CW

To give you a good idea of the different variations from an observational standpoint, consider these pictures and the amount of yellow phosphor in each

Neutral White


Warm White


W100 "Q4" cool white


Generally, cool white is used in flashlights more often than not...so there's not really much preference in selecting tints. I personally use Neutral White and Warm whites in combinations for household fixed lighting.

I have a L4 modded with an [M bin?] 5A tinted MC-E and outdoors it is amazing. It rivals the tint of an incandescent and really breaks the long rigid perspective about the cold CCT nature of LEDs. Its pretty hard to describe the feeling, as if warm white LEDs aren't LEDs and fit in their own category. Since the beginning when McGizmo spoon fed us with details on the Nichia 083 parties of the forum has been raging on CRI for many months now...specifically in the effects of observing the world around us through improved color rendition.

Consider these series of shots
[1: CW on top, WW on bottom], Lights used: two MCE modified L4s on 17670s


[2: Surefire A2 on top, WW on bottom], Lights used: Surefire A2-WH, MCE modified L4


[3: CW on top, A2 on bottom]


the wall is very light green [there are no white walls in this house, or at least vacant white walls] and the cameras daylight balance may have distorted the tints. But you should be able to tell that the WW CREE is at least comparable with the A2's xenon with the absence of a central hotspot. In the picture where the WW is taken with the A2 the A2s beam came out very realistic due to the fact that the camera is not being flooded by the CW's intensity. What the WC fail in color rendition is compensated by increase in intensity relative to WWs, so for many it doesn't seem that big of a change.

This example kind of reinforces the sentence in italics. The CW just gave out so much light that using a fully automatic camera its impossible to gauge rendition readings without the camera stepping back to protect its CCD chip. From left to right [Control][CW][WW][A2]


Then try saabluster's shots mentioned in his DEFT thread
R2 WH----------------- Q2 5A----------------- MCE 6C
Note the color rendition differences as you proceed to warmer LEDs?


I hope someone with a manual camera can take shots outdoors, because thats where it really matters
 
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Tekno_Cowboy

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You all seem to be forgetting about SSC and Nichia neutral whites when it comes to CRI. Both rate mid-90's for CRI, and render colors head and shoulders above the Cree Neutral whites. (especially the Nichias)

In my experience with neutral white LED's, the shift of the color into a typically more useful range is fairly effective compensation for the loss in output. This is especially noticeable outdoors. In many cases, a Neutral LED binned 1-2 bins (dependant on brand) lower than it's cool counterpart will appear to be comparatively bright to the human eye when the LED's are driven at the same current.

I have links to several discussion threads on the topic in my mod thread. (Linked in my sig) They're a pretty good read.
 

fixitman

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Hey guys, I think I'm still pretty new to these things. Can someone help me? What are the pros and cons of a cool tint and a warm tint?

I just don't get it. Some people to just seems just crazy over warm tints even though they know it won't be as efficient in terms of output/runtime compared to LEDs with cool tint.

Whats the deal here?

Thank you in advance :popcorn:

First off, while lumens are important, they arent everything.
Really, the if you compare a Q5 cool tint, to a Q3 neutral tint, you really wont see that much brightness difference. White wall hunting, the cool tint will likely look better, and slightly brigher (only very slightly), the cool tint will most likely look "whiter".

Take both lights outside, and check out dirt, rocks, trees, flowers, and wildlife. The warm tint will most likely look MUCH better, give better depth perception, and better contrast. The pictures available in various posts on the subject give some idea of this, but seeing it for real the difference is HUGE.

Ive compared 2 pretty much identical lights, eagletac P10A2's, one cool, one warm, in an outdoor test.
The cool tended to make everything a bit gray, harder to distinguish details. Also, colors tended to be way off. Red flowers were purple, yellow flowers were very pale. There was very little difference between the colors of rock, dirt, twigs, and dead leaves. Everything was a bit washed out looking.
The warm tint was much better at color. Red flowers were red, yellow flowers were yellow. Much better contrast between rocks, twigs, dirt, and dead leaves.

The most notable difference between cool and warm came when spotting a rabbit.
With the cool, the rabbit was gray, and hard to make out against the background. I could barely see it.
With the warm, the rabbit was actually more brown, and stood out well against the background, and was easy to see.

I guess it comes down to what you do with the light, and how your eyes are.
White wall hunting, Cool wins
Indoors, both are ok, but for me the warm is slightly better
In nature: warm wins, bigtime for me anyway

overall, the brightness difference between a warm and a cool isnt that much, usually 15% or so. Most people cant see the difference.
 

Outdoors Fanatic

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Cool White
ad in: alot of light
ad out: Limited useability due to limited color rendition ability

Neutral White
ad in: Very useable, sufficient output for most tasks
ad out: somewhat insufficient as accent lighting due to adequate [but not superb] color rendition

Warm white
ad in: Very high CRI compared to cool white, wonderful light out in the woods or areas with alot of green vegetation.
ad out: Not the brightest LEDs [in XRE form] compared to NW or CW

To give you a good idea of the different variations from an observational standpoint, consider these pictures and the amount of yellow phosphor in each

Neutral White


Warm White


W100 "Q4" cool white


Generally, cool white is used in flashlights more often than not...so there's not really much preference in selecting tints. I personally use Neutral White and Warm whites in combinations for household fixed lighting.

I have a L4 modded with an [M bin?] 5A tinted MC-E and outdoors it is amazing. It rivals the tint of an incandescent and really breaks the long rigid perspective about the cold CCT nature of LEDs. Its pretty hard to describe the feeling, as if warm white LEDs aren't LEDs and fit in their own category. Since the beginning when McGizmo spoon fed us with details on the Nichia 083 parties of the forum has been raging on CRI for many months now...specifically in the effects of observing the world around us through improved color rendition.

Consider these series of shots
[1: CW on top, WW on bottom], Lights used: two MCE modified L4s on 17670s


[2: Surefire A2 on top, WW on bottom], Lights used: Surefire A2-WH, MCE modified L4


[3: CW on top, A2 on bottom]


the wall is very light green [there are no white walls in this house, or at least vacant white walls] and the cameras daylight balance may have distorted the tints. But you should be able to tell that the WW CREE is at least comparable with the A2's xenon with the absence of a central hotspot. In the picture where the WW is taken with the A2 the A2s beam came out very realistic due to the fact that the camera is not being flooded by the CW's intensity. What the WC fail in color rendition is compensated by increase in intensity relative to WWs, so for many it doesn't seem that big of a change.

This example kind of reinforces the sentence in italics. The CW just gave out so much light that using a fully automatic camera its impossible to gauge rendition readings without the camera stepping back to protect its CCD chip. From left to right [Control][CW][WW][A2]



I hope someone with a manual camera can take shots outdoors, because thats where it really matters
Tint is not the same thing as CRI, so saying that warm white = high CRI is totally incorrect. The LED with the highest CRI on the market only reaches 83 on the color rendering index, incandescent are a full 100 CRI. A "warm" LED is just another low CRI emitter with a lower color temperature. Kelvins degrees is not the same as CRI.
 
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Swedpat

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We can now see how the neutral white more and more becomes popular, and soon this tint likely will be available for every light. I even suspect it may be the main tint and be more popular than cool tints. Some people dislike it because they mean it's much dimmer than the cool. I don't agree, because the around 20% less output is a moderate difference. Though the difference under some circumstances, like when shining at white and blue objects appears bigger than so, the usefulness of the warmer tint is to prefer in the most cases I think.
Also I understand many people experience a warmer tint to be much more relaxing for the eyes in the long run.
Well, the time will show if I am foreseeing right...

Regards, Patric
 

Tekno_Cowboy

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...The LED with the highest CRI on the market only reaches 83 on the color rendering index, incandescent are a full 100 CRI...

Nichia High-CRI LED's are rated at 92CRI, and are tested by McGizmo at closer to 96CRI.

SSC P4 High-CRI emitters are rated and tested at 93CRI.

Both are much better than the 83CRI you're talking about. IIRC the Cree Neutral LED's are 83CRI :shrug:
 

lebox97

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My take is that for indoor/urban use - the cool (6000K+) seems (and might be 10-15%) brighter, but for rural/outdoor use you "see" more with neutral (4300K+).

My whole household is lit using 5500K+ CFL and I love it, but not for outdoors use. My old eyes get "annoyed"/irritated after a while of looking at browns and greens with a cool LED say in a forest as everything looks blue-grey...

There is a simliar thread here somewhere here where someone talked about color sensitivity with age as well.
ie. as our eyes age - certain colors will look better, or worse depending on the tint - so that needs to be factored in as well. What looks good for my 50YO eyes won't necessarily look good for 20YO eyes, and vice versa.

take a look at my outdoor vs indoor pics of cool/6000K vs neutral/4300K light comparison in my sig below...
(specially focus on the color targets, and which are easier to "identify" quickly)

.
 
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EngrPaul

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Here's a comparison of three tints in an equal host.

All were (and maybe still are) the best flux bin within the given tint bin that I could get my hands on.

All are Cree XP-E emitters in a Fenix E1 (which originally used a Nichia surface mount power led) with a freshly charged NiMH AAA.

Left is a cool white, flux bin R2, tint bin WG

Bottom Right is a neutral white, flux bin Q2, tint bin 5A

Top Right is a warm white, flux bin P3, tint bin 7A

Enjoy!

IMG_3348.jpg


IMG_3349.jpg


Now for people (not in this thread) calling cool white WD and WH LED's "neutral" PLEASE STOP.
 
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