I agree with killingtime. I don't think they'll ever totally dissapear because of their simplicity. No converterboard required at all. Unless leds get really good and somehow integrate control boards into their tiny bases...That would be interesting.
For cheap throwaway flashlights there's always the option of direct-driving the LEDs with a small resistor.
Illum_the_nation said:
Regardless of the lumen count, if you can still see better with an incan that has a lower lumen count, there's something seriously wrong with today's LED's. Until they produce LED's with a decent spectrum, they will always be second string for me.
I think LED's are still in their infancy.
I absolutely agree. There is also a huge difference between good LEDs and poor ones. For example, many of my cheaper lights I upgraded to Cree LEDs which have good color rending for LEDs. The combination of efficiency and better color rendering means I can actually see just as well or better with Cree lights running at less than 1/3rd the drive power of some the old LEDs!
This phenomenon also shows up with Sodium lights which produce a huge amount of lumens but absolutely suck at useful lighting when compared to metal halide lighting.
The color temp/color rendering issue is by no means insurmountable however. There's no reason from a technology standpoint that we shoudln't already be seeing LEDs as good or better than the best fluorescents. I don't doubt in 5-10 years they could make LEDs that would be almost indistinguishable from incandescent by using the right combination of phosphors and emitters to fill in any gaps in the spectrum.
What I would actually prefer to see though is an LED with nearly 100CRI at 3500-4100k color temperature (hotwire mods can begin to push 3500k, but those last a matter of a few hours as the tungsten is on the brink of melting), or right in beteen typical incandescent and typical LEDs. That's the color temp of fluorecents I have all through the house and I generally prefer that to ~2700k incan, and 5000k+ LED.
Maybe incans will keep up - tho' I can't see it, purely because companies like Surefire are concentrating their R&D in LEDs - but either way, I think the gap between what is sold in the big-box stores and what is raved about here on CPF will continue to grow. . . with CPF become the reserve of mail-order-only lights. The public isn't going to pay more than $30 for a light, no matter what is does.
I do agree with this. I suspect in a few years they will still be selling crappy, long-since-obsolete LED lights in stores as people won't know/care about the difference. For one thing, they don't have standardized packaging like they do with lightbulbs where they give the lumen output, power consumption, lifetime, and CRI right on the box. If they had such a standard for flashlights I think you'd see a lot more quality LED products.
