Should I return my green-tinted Quark X 123^2?

Farlark

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edit: Two months have passed. i've concluded that the greenish tint at lower outputs is just a natural effect of runnng an X-ML emitter at low voltages. There's really no fault with the flashlight or the emitter, and I'm quite happy with them both. (End of edit.)

First off, I'm a flashlight newbie, and this is primarily a question about consumer etiquette.

Yesterday, I got my first light with a price tag above $20, the Quark X 123^2 (regular) cool white, for use as a primary EDC light. I've carried it for about 24 hours, using it for various around-the-home tasks (and a little white wall hunting).

The build, output, and UI all leave me perfectly satisfied; the tint, however, does not. It's noticeably green, especially on lower output levels. It's such an irksome thing that I have found myself reaching for the Streamlight Stylus Pro as often as the quark, just to use the light with the better tint.

On the other hand, many members have posted in other threads that the manufacturers don't really have that much control over the less-than-ideal greenish and purplish tints. Some have suggested that it is simply a matter of lottery, and consumers must simply live with their undesirably tinted lights.

I have a hard time accepting that a $70 "cool white" light should arrive green and that I must simply deal with it. But, I don't want to be unfair to a reputable manufacturer either. So, I will leave it up to the advice of the experts. Do I return the unpleasantly tinted Quark? Or, do I suck it up and keep it?
 
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LEDninja

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:welcome:

I have a distinct feeling we are all going to have to live with a greenish tint from now on.

Both my Quark X AA2 Neutral (Cree XML LED) and Quark MiNi AA2 Neutral (Cree XPG LED) I got this month has a greenish tint. Not too noticeable on turbo/high but definitely in the lower modes.

I bought 3 Philips 'Bright White' light bulbs (Lumileds Rebel LED) earlier this month and all 3 have the greenish tint. (The remote phosphor is lime green instead of yellow!!!)

I suspect the LED manufacturers are switching to a new type of phosphor.

This is about the 4th thread that mentions the green tint this week.
 

Farlark

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Bill, I got the light from the 4Sevens website. I've already contacted them about another problem with the light.

LEDNinja, thanks for your input. Over the last two days the Quark had grown on me and I had decided to keep it. Unfortunately, tonight it smells like burning electronics and no longer works. Looks like it's going back to 4Sevens anyway :(. I hear their CS is excellent though, so I'm looking forward to another Quark soon.
 

jorn

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Got lots of green tinted lights lately. Even my 2 hi cri preons is slightly on the green side. Not so mutch that it becomes annoying, but almost annoying. I have had bad luck with the xp-g lights (exept v10r ti, it's really white), and good luck with xp-e lights (all have had really nice tints).

I would send it back if it's extremly green. You won't be the first to rma a light based on "extreme tints".
 

LEDninja

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Everybody go outside and shine their green tinted lights at the green grass in the lawn. That should make one feel better.

Under those conditions:
The pure white lights leave a blue haze.
The neutrals make the scene look dead.
The warms are too yellow.
 

Gregozedobe

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For less chance of "losing" the tint lottery (by getting a yucky green) look at those manufacturers that seem to only buy emitters within a fairly tight tint range. Most of my Zebralight, ShiningBeam, Maratac and ITP lights have nice "white" cool white LEDs.

Like many others, I've had less luck with one common brand, in fact a couple of them were quite unpleasant to use outdoors, all the colours seemed off. These days I only buy that brand secondhand these days, and I quiz the seller about tint before buying (thank goodness for the honesty of CPFers).
 

jorn

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Everybody go outside and shine their green tinted lights at the green grass in the lawn.
It's 40 cm with snow outside. Im making everything green again, almost like summer :) Nice tip hehe.
Wont see the sun for some months now. I miss summer, and a green lawn :)
 

vickers214

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I think it's perfectly acceptable to return it,i buy eagletacs as they pay extra for leds without the green tints, and all of the ones I've had have been pure white, paying seventy dollars for a torch and the maufacturer not doing this in my opinion is not on at all, hence why I don't buy them
 

kreisler

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huh. i would agree that my quark X aa² is greenish, especially on the lower levels. then again, i got it for an okay price during black friday blitz weekend sale -- since i didnt want to pay the full price for a neutralwhite or highcri. i pay for what i get (harhar).
i also agree that my Eagtac T20 (XML 720led lumens) has *the* perfect coolwhite tint: no greenish, no blueish/purplish tint -- and it does feel freezing cold brrrh.

i do have other XPG R5 lights which are horribly greenish (to a ridiculous degree) but it's not the quark.

so my recommendation is: whoever is willing to pay full price, should order the NeutralWhite or HighCRI from the very beginning --- i mean that's why 4Sevens offered them in the first place: so that buyers have that nice tint option.
 

OneBigDay

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Digging deep into the diplomacy bucket ...

The so called "tint lottery" is not as much of a mystery as it is made out to be. There are certain manufacturers that go out of their way to bring to market good tints, and because of their efforts they largely succeed. You can't please all of the people all of the time, but if you spend some time reading on the forum there are some very clear pictures painted if you really listen to what people are saying (not just hear what you want to hear). I'm not saying there aren't still some fuzzy spots, but the general landscape does emerge.

In my experience it is largely impossible to find an XP-G S2 or XM-L T6/U2 that doesn't have at least some faint hint of green in it - usually just surrounding the corona. But it IS possible to find high binned lights that you turn on and don't immediately think "ugh, it's green".

All that said, I agree it is perfectly acceptable to return it. I have too many times waited too long and told myself "it's not so bad". If it bothers you now it will always bother you and you should return it and get something you are happy with. I would advise not to just eat it because the general opinion on CPF is that the light manufacturer is "reputable". Your opinion is more valid than the general forum opinion because only you have to live with it :)
 

wrencher

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I just returned a Quark 123^2 because of the green tint. I have
I EDC a Quark AA^1 that is pure white on all levels. The replacement
for the 123^2 is a Pd32 that came today. Nice and white.
 

fnj

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I have a hard time accepting that a $70 "cool white" light should arrive green

I'm not going to tell you whether or not I think it is appropriate to return the displeasing light; besides which nobody should care much about my take on ethics in the first place.

But it is important to realize that the color temperature of an LED (cool/6000K, neutral/4000K, warm/2700K) does not inherently tell anything precise about the tint. It's not like a hot wire, which is close to a black body radiator and has a well defined correlation. If you look at this chart http://imageshack.us/f/199/ansiwhite.jpg/ for example, you'll see that the 6000K line is greenish at one end and rosy at the other end. Similarly the 4000K line goes through yellowish-orangeish, through orangeish, to orangeish-rosyish, and the 2700K line goes from pretty pure orange to orange with a hint of rose. And you can extend those lines beyond their arbitary limits to encompass even more tint variation. The whole length of an individual color temperature line is exactly the same color temperature. It seems notable that the cool line does encompass more tint variation, though.

This chart http://imageshack.us/f/30/creexlampcwfull.jpg/ is good because it shows that the tint bins for cool white have a lot of variation even within single bins, so even if you can buy a specific bin, all of your sample might fall on one edge or another, or vary all throughout the bin from individual LED to LED.
 

LGT

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huh. i would agree that my quark X aa² is greenish, especially on the lower levels. then again, i got it for an okay price during black friday blitz weekend sale -- since i didnt want to pay the full price for a neutralwhite or highcri. i pay for what i get (harhar).
i also agree that my Eagtac T20 (XML 720led lumens) has *the* perfect coolwhite tint: no greenish, no blueish/purplish tint -- and it does feel freezing cold brrrh.

i do have other XPG R5 lights which are horribly greenish (to a ridiculous degree) but it's not the quark.

so my recommendation is: whoever is willing to pay full price, should order the NeutralWhite or HighCRI from the very beginning --- i mean that's why 4Sevens offered them in the first place: so that buyers have that nice tint option.
I must disagree with the notion that buying a nw will eliminate any chance of getting a green tinted light. My quark x 123/2 neutral is quite green. Sometimes one doesn't notice the tint of their light until it's running side by side with another light. But with this one, I can see the green tint on all levels but high with no other light to compare it to.
 

LightWalker

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I just returned a Quark 123^2 because of the green tint. I have
I EDC a Quark AA^1 that is pure white on all levels. The replacement
for the 123^2 is a Pd32 that came today. Nice and white.

Did the PD32 have OP reflector? How does the beam look?
 

wrencher

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Smooth reflector. Beam shape like the Pd31 only no rings. A well
Defined hot spot and smooth corona. Nice and white on all levels.
 
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