Standard LEDS vs. Luxeon LEDS

I see on flashlight packages that Luxeons are 25x brighter than standard LEDs. If so, would a 1W Luxeon be brighter than a 3W standard LED? Don't laugh, I'm kind of new at researching all of this. I am concidering purchasing a 3W AA mini maglite. Would I be better off getting a 1W Luxeon light? Thanks for any info.

I think by "standard LEDs", the ads are referring to 5mm LEDs which used to be the standard flashlight LEDs 3+ years ago when no Luxeons were available. They nominally ran at about 0.1 W (25 mA at about 3.5V) so a typical (earliest version) 1W lux would have been powered 10 times higher. Nowadays among high power LEDs (Luxes and their equivalent clones/competitors), the wattage rating (1, 3, or 5) refers to the power at which it's more or less designed to run, although the flashlight may actually drive it with more or less (usually less) power.

Given all this, what most of do is look to the various web sites where flashlights are technically compared and measured to find out what a model is really capable of. The best of these sights are flashlightreviews and LED museum.

What he said.... advertising (inflated, deceptive, even false) is everywhere including flashlights these days. You have to take into account so many factors when comparing lights that it isn't as simple as saying this 1watt LED light should be 1/3 as bright as this 3watt LED light. There is reflectors/optics and the differing quality of LEDs involved which added together you can get lights rated as 1watt outperforming 3watt versions.
Checking out reviews are a must for someone not familiar with brands and their way of putting together lights, that is why there is so many review threads that are of interest here with continuing opinions and beamshots that both the members and manufacturers read to get the *right* light or the light *right*.

Lynx Arc makes a good point about deceptive advertising. For instance, the 3 watt AA mini-mag (2-battery version) with fresh alkaline batteries CONSUMES only 1.5 watts, meaning the output is probably closer to 1.2 watts due to the efficiency loss of the DC step-up converter. That being said, power consumption should only be used as a reference for relative brightness in comparison to other flashlights. The mini-mag LED is a fairly good light for the money, but if you are willing to spend more, there are better and brighter 2-AA flashlights.

The minimag LED has a 3 watt Luceon in it. Not 'standard' 5mm LEDs.

My minimag conversion has three 5mm LEDs, not a Luxeon.

Having ordered 5MM, 10MM "standard" LEDs, and a 3W "Power" LEd from 1 manufacturer in the past 2 months, my observations are....
They are roughly the same output, for the same wattage consumed, at their "typical" ratings.
How does that relate to marketing? It doesn't, really....
compare a naked 700mA 3.4V "power" LED to 20mA 3.4V 5MM LED.... 700/20 = 35 standard LEDs to equal the watts of a power LED... so if you put 35 10MM LEDs into an integrating sphere and measured, and put 1 3W "power" LED into that sphere, both driven at 700mA total current at 3.4V (or 2.38 watts), the sphere would roughly see the same light total for each type of source. That may not be precisely true, but it gives an example of the general situation. In fact, the Cree XR-E uses the same die technology in it's 700ma version as the 20ma version, just designed and scaled up significantly.
How does that relate to off-the-shelf performance, etc? Not at all, marketing, measurement methods, optics/reflectors, etc all have a huge influence on the package and results. It is going to be much harder to collimate the output from 35x25-degree LEDs spread over 3sq inches of area into any kind of tight throw, than it is the output of 1 3sq=mm LED, so low-power LEDs even in large arrays are limited in "flashlight" abilities.
For usable flashlight output in a 1W plus light, a single LED package is going to be preferable from a design standpoint, all else being equal. But at the end of the day, 35x5mm at 700ma total is electrically equal and roughly output equivalent to 1x"Po-Led" at 700ma.
(In actuality, the 35x5MM LEDs probably would be BETTER than the power LED due to higher efficiency of operation, the Cree XR-E is the first "power-LED" that really scales much more linearly into the 350+ mA range (in other words, as the milliamps go up, the efficiency drops, rapidly in some cases... the XR-E is about the same efficiency at 350mA as most LEDs are at 20mA, which is a huge jump in efficiency).

doc redbone said:

I see on flashlight packages that Luxeons are 25x brighter than standard LEDs.

Click to expand...

Is this true?

And if so, is this why regular LED's have a much better run time?

doc redbone said:

I see on flashlight packages that Luxeons are 25x brighter than standard LEDs. If so, would a 1W Luxeon be brighter than a 3W standard LED? Don't laugh, I'm kind of new at researching all of this. I am concidering purchasing a 3W AA mini maglite. Would I be better off getting a 1W Luxeon light? Thanks for any info.

Click to expand...

Welcome to CPF, doc!

Doc, in the simplest and most general terms, a Luxeon III will be brighter than a Luxeon I, and both will be considerably brighter than a 5mm LED (a "standard" LED). That said, brighter means you will get less runtime from your batteries (because the emitters are sucking more power out of the batts, Celica).

I hope that answers your initial question. Things get confusing and slippery from here on because real output depends on a lot of factors: drive current, opticalware, etc. So, let me go back to your second question and ask you:

What do you want this light for? Tell me about your needs and expectations, and we'll go from there. Sometimes it's best to ignore the technobabble and go back to the basics.

Someone said something about reviews, go to flashlightreviews.com and get some research done!

Hi Doc and welcome to CPF.

The others have given you some solid advice - don't let wattage alone be the determining factor in a purchasing decision -remember wattage is a measure of the rate of power consumption, not light output.

As to buying a first LED light I'm not a fan of the '3W' AA minimag because they fail to take advantage of the LED used in them and the 3W moniker is more of an advertising slogan than anything else with regards to that product.. If you want a great first light I highly recommend a Streamlight 4AA ProPolymer. We sell it for $27.95 and it's one of the highest rated lights at flashlightreviews.com.

CELICA XX said:

Is this true?

And if so, is this why regular LED's have a much better run time?

Click to expand...

It's all about power. Brighter usually means more power. More power means less runtime. What LED manufacturers (Lumiled, Cree among others) are striving for is more efficiency, as in the lumens/watt figure of merit. Though that figure of merit is sometimes abused and manufacturers quote really incredibly high numbers but if you read the fine print, it's at some miniscule drive level like 20mA.