Is there a chance to come to a fair comparison of led vs. incan?

I doubt not, because:


Incan Guy:

man, these led ppl are so brain washed. These "leds" are sooooo boring dim, the beam (if there is any) is blue and offers no depth of view or good color rendering ...
My "normal" incan is so much better


Led user:

these incan guys dont get it. A Led light can be so much smaller but still brighter than these incans.
And what do they mean with "beam quality" or "color rendering" and such? Have they even used such a light in their live?
One does not even notice if its on or not, when my small but bright white led shines




So what is REALLY a good feature to compare?
size?
runtime?
brightness?
cost?
material used?
finish?
machining method?
country of origin?
number and kind of batts used?


IMHO we should use power the light runs on.
(Thats where my car headlamp example comes into play: is the handheld light worse because it is not as bright? Did it have a real chance before the comparison started? (PS: in no way, of course))

Any incan should only be compared with a Led light on the same power and this means multiemitter.
Even a 6P uses double the power a led can stand and thus its great that a single emitter is in league with these lights.

f.e. what do You guys think the outcome of this pair would be?


if the bike light would not have the emitters set to the sides, I would do comparison beamshots and am sure which light would be "better" (whatever better is), but in this case the LED should be stronger from the beginning. It runs on more power (14 to 10 Watts).
its not finished, therefore the tape over the reflectors, the scratched plastic lens, ...

yellow said:

I doubt not, because:


Incan Guy:

man, these led ppl are so brain washed. These "leds" are sooooo boring dim, the beam (if there is any) is blue and offers no depth of view or good color rendering ...
My "normal" incan is so much better


Led user:

these incan guys dont get it. A Led light can be so much smaller but still brighter than these incans.
And what do they mean with "beam quality" or "color rendering" and such? Have they even used such a light in their live?
One does not even notice if its on or not, when my small but bright white led shines

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:lolsign: I loved that part!!!


My take on the whole LED vs Incan, Surefire vs. Fenix, etc. debate is this: The BEST light is the light that works the BEST for YOU, for YOUR particular situation. Plus buy lots more just for fun.

FlashCrazy said:

My take on the whole LED vs Incan, Surefire vs. Fenix, etc. debate is this: The BEST light is the light that works the BEST for YOU, for YOUR particular situation. Plus buy lots more just for fun.

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Yep.

It's (mostly) a matter of opinion and preference. Try em out, and use the one that you like the best and that works best for your application.

Then sell the others in the Marketplace.

I doubt it. "Fair", like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. People - even very technical and rational people - often believe what they believe for emotional reasons and then apply their technical skills to defend that belief against contrary beliefs. It's just human nature.

In a professional setting, you would go through a complex analysis of customer needs AND culture to come up with a meaningful set of objectives - including their emotional makeup. Then ditto for the constraints (which will ALWAYS include cost), then extend that to the technical life cycle of the item, and THEN start looking at technical solutions. Or you will take what you know how to build and just try to convince the customer that this is what he really wants - sort of like the above but backwards. Too much work to be doing for fun...

I think the passionate here like to prosletyze and spread the joy of their beliefs. Some are defensive enough to try to bash competing beliefs, which creates counter bashing, and so on. In that context, "fair" is not easy to achieve, although it is fun to try, and yours is a good start.

Maybe it's just me, but it also seems that for some (not many, but some...) the incan vs. LED thing is a sort of proxy of the Surefire vs. Fenix/Lumapower thing, which is in turn a proxy for the US vs. China in global economic competition thing. The latter is an important question, but it just won't be affected one bit either way by who buys Fenix or SF or incan or LED...

no, they are 2 completely different things. they serve different purposes (well, they both emit light, and thats about where their similarities end)
therefore, neither is better. one can be better for a specific task, and the decision which is best lies with it's end user.

:laughing: Great post!

Okay - apples on the left, oranges on the right...and no fighting!

Oh %$#&, let's get the hell out of here. It's HID guy!

All is fair in love and war. :nana:

Ok, time to put the on.

-Bill:duck:

Man, where are all you rational people on the other posts? Bravo to the "all good, just different" crowd. There's no best type of knife, and there's no best type of light. Thanks for bringing a lot of humor to the situation, Yellow.

Any incan should only be compared with a Led light on the same power and this means multiemitter.

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in situations where minimizing size and spare cell quantities is important, (like backpacking, caving, etc), The power to light ratio is extremely important, and this method of comparison is 100% logical and reasonable. But if you are sitting in a guard house with AC power available, chargers hanging on the wall, plenty of storage space for cells, etc etc, then the efficiancy doesn't matter at all, so that comparison becomes a moot point.

Reality check for efficiancy
small: LED wins
medium: tossup between HID/LED
large: HID wins

hotwires don't even make the chart, but for all of their lacking in efficiency, no HID or LED can compete with the color spectrum of an incan. Whether or not the output spectrum is important is up to the end user to decide and judge for him/herself. There's no right or wrong answer.

No, it is a pointless comparison since both are based on different technology. To put it another way, a lose - lose comparison, the winning solution is not to compare.

I think the only thing that comes close to generating as much heat and as little light on this forum is the "Strobe vs. No-Strobe" argument. Although the "Fenix vs. Surefire" debate gets pretty rough sometimes, too...

unless the sun burns out,there is no use comparing incan,led or some other lighting product.

Ta heck... It's always funny to hear the "what's the best ______?" without a "for _______".

Simply put, when comparing things, we need to know the intended applications.

For some LE applications, perhaps an incandescent SF is the way to go. The duty cycle of the light isn't usually all that high and if you are betting life and limb, money counts less. OTH a cable installer using a light hours a day will likely find LED lights better tools since they are generally more rugged and he can carry two for le$$ than the price of one SF and he never has to worry about a bulb.


But it really depends on the application(s).....


And incandescents vs. LED's. Well it just depends on what for. Incandescents can get brighter and have much better color rendering, but typically shorter battery *and* (the often not mentioned) short bulb life and to get a lot brighter, need a lot of power and generally handle variable output poorly. LED's way surpass incandescent's in terms of bulb life, are usually easy to throttle and have come up on brightness/power (efficiency =~ battery life), but still don't get as bright as the brightest incandescents and while color rendering has improved over the years, still isn't nearly as good (IMO) as incandescents.

Incandescents are far more mature in the development game. It's doubtful we'll see huge leaps in technical improvements. LED's likely have more future as far as improvements.

Who knows when we'll see an efficient, long life and rugged, extremely high, but variable output photon machine with outstanding color rendition?

knot said:

Oh %$#&, let's get the hell out of here. It's HID guy!

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Its nice to have the whole battle put into perspective.

Its nice to have the whole battle put into perspective.

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Nah!
I dont have a better pic right now, maybe make a new one soon,
where only the one Cree McR 19, the 9N and the WA-10 W HID are shown

Never liked the low power HID but maybe I have a bad model
(the Edisons I have seen so far were not much different, a tiny bit eventually, but not much)

I was just wondering, aren't flashlights like Surefires made so tough to protect the bulb from blowing out from impact? It seems to me like a lot of the over built toughness in incan lights is to keep the bulb from being knocked out, and to protect the batteries as well, etc. So wouldn't it make sense that a LED light needs less "armor" around it since the LED is more durable?

WadeF said:

I was just wondering, aren't flashlights like Surefires made so tough to protect the bulb from blowing out from impact? It seems to me like a lot of the over built toughness in incan lights is to keep the bulb from being knocked out, and to protect the batteries as well, etc. So wouldn't it make sense that a LED light needs less "armor" around it since the LED is more durable?

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most incan's don't have any protection for their bulbs. in fact, the aluminum body's of most increase the likeliness of a failure compared to plastic for example.
the only flashlights if know of with built in bulb protection (at least in the case of impact and recoil of a weapon) are the surefire M series and their weapon-mounted counterparts.