Hang on - that does not compute...PWM flashes on & off at full power - agreed.
But the led has to come up to temperature, be at full power, and go down in temperature, so it will run through whatever range of tints it has in it's arsenal.
How long it spends in the intermediate states I have no idea, but nothing happens instantaneously.
One of the advantages I recall about LEDs is that unlike other types of lights there's no warmup time. If you put full power through them they light up instantly at full power. So they don't go through a range of tints when you have a PWM light cycling on and off hundreds of times a second. This is one reason PWM is even possible. Other types of lighting methods (incandescent, fluorescent) have warmup times so can't use PWM.
If the LED is run heavily wtihout proper heatsinking, it will heat up and output may decrease... but this is something that happens much more gradually. It doesn't go from fully hot to fully cold at the PWM cycle rate.
For flashlights:
Advantages of PWM:
1.
No tint-shift. Many LEDs tend to shift towards green as you lower the current. My SC600 gives a beautiful white tint at max power and an ugly greenish tint at lower modes. In contrast, with a PWM light you get the same great tint at all levels. If tint matters to you and you run at lower power settings a lot this can be a big advantage in favor of PWM.
Advantages of Current Control
2.
More efficient - LEDs get more efficent at producing light when run at lower current. At max power both the PWM light and the current control light have the same efficiency. At lower power settings, current control pulls ahead. At very low power settings it can be twice as efficient as PWM, giving you twice the runtime.
3.
No whine - depending on the frequency of the PWM, you may get an audible whining sound from the driver. At 9.4 khz, a Nanjg 105c produces an audible while on medium modes. However, if you set the firmware to faster 16 khz PWM the problem is solved and there's no audible whine on any mode.
4.
No uncomfortable strobing effect when compared to slow PWM. - very slow PWM is visible to the eye and produces an uncomfortable strobing effect. This problem is easily solved by using faster PWM that's too fast for the eye to see. Good quality PWM lights all use fast PWM.
Personally, I'm a tint fanatic and a I hate green tint. I don't need the super-long low-mode runtimes that current control provides. As such, I tend to prefer lights with fast PWM over lights with current control.
Also feels like sc52 l2 has good heat transfer from led to body. Anyway, now i'm a fan of zebralight. Eventually going to replace D40A or simply add sc600 mk2, sadly not anytime soon. Not that easy to sell a flashlight in Japan.
