But you don't have the sun in your hand if it emits a sickly cool beam lacking in green, yellow, orange and red compared to sunlight. At this time, you do have to sacrifice lumens for color spectrum, but the new high CRI LEDs such as the Nichia 083 with a 93 CRI or the Seoul 93 CRI LED (model #?) or the Cree 5A LEDs, which put out about as much as a Luxeon III. And even though they have CRI<100, the output is close to sunlight, and is not saturated with red and deficient in blue like incandescent (again, compared to sunlight).
You can now choose color spectrum or brightness, and for most applications people would choose brightness. I understand, I have ridden on the brightness bandwagon for a couple of years now. But until you actually use one of these new LEDs (I have only used the Nichia 083) you don't quite know what you are missing. I switched my primary EDC from a WH Cree to the Nichia and had to sacrifice some output, but no way will I go back! The light from the Nichia is more than adequate to be useful for my EDC uses, and the color spectrum actually makes it useful in ways that it was not before.
It really depends upon the application and personal preferences, but as the technology advances, the gap will close in brightness due to the geometrical response our eyes have to light intensity and to improvements in phosphors.
