the most loved emitter

[jax]

What is your all time favorite emitter to date?

rules...
1) you must have OWNED 3 or more LED lights in the past.
2) not looking for 2 answers ie,one for flood one for throw..
looking for: in your total flashlight experiance which emitter
excited you most/felt the most love for/stands above all else
in the joy it gave you.
3) can be from any time period/ manufacturer,and any
type/bin/tint
4) brief description of why it got the most love/tickled your fancy
5) YOU MUST HAVE OWNED THIS EMITTER.
6) what light this emitter graced.

 

[mvyrmnd]

For me, the SST-50 is my favourite. I've had it in P60 dropins, Modified Maglites and custom EDC lights. I love it because it has great output, and the beam profile it produces is very smooth and pretty.

 

[flatline]

The high CRI P4 in my Ra Clicky is my favorite purely because it makes the world look so much prettier than my other lights.

Beyond that, I don't really know much about it. I know it's not the most efficient emitter out there, but I don't require extreme runtime or crazy brightness.

--flatline

 

[nakahoshi]

Im sure this thread will be over run with all the new stuff, but I really loved the Luxeon 3 Especially with a McGizmo Reflector. Just a Perfect beam that I have not seen with any cree or SSC Offerings. Before all the Neutral and Warm hoopla, a WO Tinted Lux 3 Was fantastic.

-Bobby

 

[sol-leks]

I mean kind of a silly question because its usually just whatever is newest or most efficient or the newest most efficient neutral or warm version.

However, I think Nichia deserves some love. It's so outdated and yet they still make great lights with them.

 

[tre]

It is between the SSC P7 or SST-50 for me. I guess I'll vote the SSC P7 for the beam quality, decent spill, decent tint, and brightness. Props to the XR-E for surface brightness though. I wish someone would come up with something that has the surface brightness of the XR-E (for throw - I love throw).

 

[swxb12]

SSC P4s in some of my older lights. Absolutely beautiful, flawless beams even with smooth reflectors. Fired up an old friend (MTE SSC 1xAA) the other day with an L91, and just wow.

 

[Pellidon]

I still like my Nuwaii QIII with the stock Luxeon of it's day. I like the beam, a little floody and the form factor.

 

[NCT1]

SST-50 for sure, I own 5 lights with the SST-50, and most of them are up there for my favorites.

 

[Black Rose]

Luxeon Rebel for me.

I have this LED (80/90/100) in several purchased lights plus a P60 drop-in I built.

I just love the beam quality.

 

[PowerLabs]

35W HID Bulb

Yes the Cheap Chinese knockoff light it comes in is almost the size of a pringles can, and yes the battery only last an hour...
But one time my friend left it on a wooden table turned on, and it almost set it on fire. It is unbelievably bright...

 

[jsr]

The emitter that wowed me the most was my XP-G R4 5B tint on my Kuku E-series tower module. The tint it what got me...a beautiful warm tint that reminds me of my beloved incans, while still being quite bright. Really brings out other colors aside from blue that the cool whites don't.

Close seconds would be SSC P4 for it's beautiful beam (nice hotspot with really smooth transition to spill) and ease of modding...I modded a lot of lights with SSC P4s, and the MC-E - even though it has a donut hole, I love the broad floody beam with decent throw.

 

[B0wz3r]

The emitter that wowed me the most was my XP-G R4 5B tint on my Kuku E-series tower module. The tint it what got me...a beautiful warm tint that reminds me of my beloved incans, while still being quite bright. Really brings out other colors aside from blue that the cool whites don't.

I would so LOVE to have a light like that... I too love the 5B tint; just the right balance between cool and warm. 5A's are too white and 5C's are too warm for me. But, to stick with lights I've actually owned, I have to say the XPE-Q4/5B is easily my favorite.

 

[kaichu dento]

For me, almost too predictable but it's what I like, the XP-G with it's beautifully flood-weighted beam pattern. I got them in my Quark MiNi AA's and CR2, my LF2XTi and my 007.

 

[qwertyydude]

I have to go with the xp-g, it's a tiny package stripped to the bare essentials but with excellent performance to fool anyone who dares stare into the light and turn it on. The xr-e was great, still is, but Cree rings really put a ding in it's reputation for me, tough to get a thrower if you have to also have orange peel to hide the beam artifacts. Orange peel is a crutch for the poor optics of the xr-e.

My cheap Uniquefire x8 has a large smooth reflector and manages a completely artifact free beam that throws well with a defined hotspot, smooth corona, and ring free spill. So I bet with a good design the xp-g can have the best combination of both spill and throw while maintaining an artifact free beam. What more could you ask for?

As for other brands, they seem to always be playing catch up. And one big plus with the Cree's they are readily available to us common folk. I'm looking at you Nichia :scowl:.

 

[kaichu dento]

I have to go with the xp-g, it's a tiny package stripped to the bare essentials but with excellent performance to fool anyone who dares stare into the light and turn it on. The xr-e was great, still is, but Cree rings really put a ding in it's reputation for me, tough to get a thrower if you have to also have orange peel to hide the beam artifacts. Orange peel is a crutch for the poor optics of the xr-e.

My cheap Uniquefire x8 has a large smooth reflector and manages a completely artifact free beam that throws well with a defined hotspot, smooth corona, and ring free spill. So I bet with a good design the xp-g can have the best combination of both spill and throw while maintaining an artifact free beam. What more could you ask for?

As for other brands, they seem to always be playing catch up. And one big plus with the Cree's they are readily available to us common folk. I'm looking at you Nichia :scowl:.

Looks like we have a lot of the same taste in beam patterns, but I'd like to clear something up about the XR-E and it's problem with rings, which was caused not by the emitter, but by poor matching of the reflector. This is why my XR-E equipped Draco's and EZAAw have such smooth beam patterns - their reflectors are matched to the emitter. Still a great performer, but with the XP-G's inherent attributes it's an all around performer.

 

[Chrontius]

the original Luxeon Star for showing us the possibilities. The forthcoming Cree XM-L for achieving them... it's running at something like 50% theoretical possible efficiency for a phosphor-white LED, and rivaling both hex- and quad-core emitters and hotwire superbulbs for overall output.

 

[J-FRAME]

XPG and SST-50

 

[qwertyydude]

Looks like we have a lot of the same taste in beam patterns, but I'd like to clear something up about the XR-E and it's problem with rings, which was caused not by the emitter, but by poor matching of the reflector. This is why my XR-E equipped Draco's and EZAAw have such smooth beam patterns - their reflectors are matched to the emitter. Still a great performer, but with the XP-G's inherent attributes it's an all around performer.

I still find issue with the fact that the Nitecore lights still use orange peel, it may be light orange peel but the closer the reflector is the more severe the effect of orange peel so you don't need heavy orange peel to hide the cree rings which judging from the beamshots I've seen of the EZ xr-e series they still suffer more than the generic xp-e flashlights I've seen on DX.

So either everyone is getting the reflector wrong, even Nitecore to an extent, or Cree rings are just the nature of the xr-e beast. I'd go with the former because all the single die lambertian style full dome emitters tend to not have rings even on generic smooth reflectors, this is true for SSC P4, Luxeon's I-III, and Rebel's. The only trouble you face with these is poor focus so you get limited throw but they still don't show rings.

 

[jtblue]

XP-G in my malkoff M61W