I'm curious about LED light quality

I am new to this forum and also to high-perfomance flashlights, having just bought my first, a SF E2E. Then I bought a 9P and love them both. I am looking at the LED flashlights from SF and also other brands and was wondering how the light quality was compared to the intense white light of the incandesents. I know that the older white LEDs were kind of blue looking, do the newer lights look like that or are they white? The only LED I own (so far:naughty: ) is an older Photon microlight which is bright but kind of has a blue tint to it. I'm tempted by the new lights but would be disappointed if the light were not what I see in the two I have now. Also I'd love to have reccomendations on good quality small and bright LED lights from you guys. I know Surefire is a good brand but I need to branch out a little and see what else is out there. Thanks for the help.

LED lights you might want to look into:

Fenix L1P
McLuxIII-PD
HDS EDC
Arc AAA

Greetings! Maybe this should be in the LED forum of CPF.

But you've got some "high performance" lights there I see. The only LED light I have from SureFire is the SF.L2, and it is bright and white! More of a wall of light as the saying goes around here. Other than that, I'm staying put for the time being in regards to LED from a very reputable manufacture.

There are many nice white LEDs out there. One is Streamlight 4AA ProPolymer Luxeon which is on sale now at Fox International located in the Dealer's Corner. There's also the pricey and most "coveted" light from McGizmo—McLux.PD! If you already have a Mini Maglite, there's the drop-in pills/sammies from The Sandwich Shoppe which are select binned LEDs. Try checking out LED-Replacement, Lighthound, OpticsHQ among others, which I'm sure you're already familiar with. Others here on CPF will be able to assist you too in your quest for that "high perfomance" bright and white LED.

Hope you find what you're looking for and Enjoy!

Someone is bound to recommend a KL1 LED head for your E2e. $56, I think, for that accessory. It'll give you more than two hours of intense spot beam - if that's what you're looking for.

YMMV concerning the color of LED's. Some may have a slight blue tint, some slightly green, etc. Lights from the better quality manufacturers will vary a lot less than lights from lesser quality manufacturers.

Sorry about the post, after I hit the submit button I realized that I should probably have posted in the other forum. I'm still finding my way around here. I have heard a lot about the Fenix 1lp and have looked into that one. The others I also have seen mentioned but don't know what they are. You guys toss around names and numbers like a foreign language that I am just learning to understand.:laughing: It sounds like the better lights are bright and white, I'll have to find someone that has one to play with. Thanks for the helpful info.

IMO, Surefire does not make bad LED lights... but there are so many good options it'd be a shame to just focus on Surefire.

I agree with the orange one....there are other makers of very good LED flashlights, better than surefire,IMO.

ScottyJ said:

I agree with the orange one....there are other makers of very good LED flashlights, better than surefire,IMO.

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Orange coloured or apples and oranges o.0 ? j/k.

Allnew2me, don't worry! Took me a fair while to properly understand all the jargon and acronyms used around CPF! Regarding an LED flashlight, have a think what you want it to do first and what features you want to see in it.
Eg. Small size, throw, flood, strong sidespill, long runtime etc. Create almost any combination and i bet some CPFers will have the answer for it .

www.flashlightreviews.com is great for checking out various lights too, in case you havn't been there.

LED quality is getting better. I've seen some pretty blue leds, and recently I've seen nicer whiter tinted leds. I don't think LEDs will ever look as natural as incandescent but they still do the job (they provide light, and you can differentiate between colours in that light, like for reading a map for example). However I don't think I'd ever buy another incandescent light, there are too many advantages to LEDs like power efficiency, regulated circuitry, [relative] indestructibility. I don't beleive output and throw is too much of an issue with LEDs anymore either, and they certainly will not be in the near future.

Names get tossed around alot at CPF that's true. It's also good because you see names for lights you've never heard of, then you go searching for them (either in here, google or www.flashlightreviews.com), and you find out more about them, and usually other lights at the same time. You get educated and it helps when shopping for a new light. For example, I found out about the Arc AAA on flashlight reviews, then I came here and looked it up and found out about Fenix, from there I found out about Jet-I Beam, etc.

Allnew2me said:

I am looking at the LED flashlights from SF and also other brands and was wondering how the light quality was compared to the intense white light of the incandesents.

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LOL. That's funny to see you call it intense white. Most of us LED people think incans look yellow, not white.

Allnew2me said:

I know that the older white LEDs were kind of blue looking, do the newer lights look like that or are they white? The only LED I own (so far:naughty: ) is an older Photon microlight which is bright but kind of has a blue tint to it. I'm tempted by the new lights but would be disappointed if the light were not what I see in the two I have now. Also I'd love to have reccomendations on good quality small and bright LED lights from you guys. I know Surefire is a good brand but I need to branch out a little and see what else is out there. Thanks for the help.

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So let me help you here with the issue of "blueish" LEDs on the Photon. This color tint comes from the manufacturing process from a specific brand of LED light called Nichia. Photons use Nichia LEDs. Nichia's process to make a white 5mm LED is to actually take a blue 5mm LED and use a phosphor coating on the interior to change the color. Nichia brand 5mm LEDs seem to have the highest output coupled with the longest runtimes, so manufacturers looking for a highly efficient LED tend to use them. Nichia recently improved their process a little with the CS LED. The light is twice as bright as before, but still has a cold blue white tint to it.

There are other brands of LEDs like Luxeon 1, 3, and 5 Watt LEDs that can be had in very normal white color. Or there is a Snow "White" 5mm LED that Peak uses that is very white, but it is not as efficient as the Nichia and run-times will be less.

The actual color of the LED varies for every single one produced, and there is a process of sorting them by color or "bin". You will see this when people are discussing LEDs, they will describe the "bin" or color variation of the light. For example, with 1-watt Luxeons, R-bins can be very white light, but there also is allowed variation of color even within bin.

Your mention of the Fenix L1P is a very good choice. Fenix uses only R-bin 1-watt Luxeons. For ~$35, its very hard to beat the performance and size of this light.

I am finally getting to understand some of the terms you guys use here. It is all beginning to sound more familiar.
Anarchocap, do you really consider the light from an E2e or the 9P to be yellowish? I guess I am not used to all the great lights you guys have because I found it to be pretty amazing. I'm still new so I may just be easily impressed. Would you say that a good top bin LED is even more white than any incan is? I just don't like that blueish tint of the LED lights I have seen, but they were not the high end stuff like I am starting to find.

Before I tried a newer one, I thought that LEDs were junk, like my old lights. I decided, though, to try out the River Rock 2xAAA 0.5 watt light at Target, and it started the whole thing. Spent about $100 in a week on various lights after joining CPF...

I'd suggest, go to Target, and try that one little light out. It's only $10, and is a great LED. The Inovas are good, too. I'm a huge fan of the Inova X5T (Just labled as X5, but newer ones are called X5T here at CPF).

Plus, if you like that one, you'll be stunned by some of the higher-end ones.