What new lights or advances in lights will have us all excited 6 mo's from now?

Do you believe that the next 6 months will bring advancements or refinements to led lights at the level that has happened at the last 6 months? In other words, will the lights 6 months form now make a Fenix P3D look like a P3D makes a MMag 3AA look now? Or has the technology hit a platau for a while?

If you do believe it will be that much better, what will make it so?

Higher-efficiency LEDs.

IMO there is only one thing that could give us the explosion that happened in our hobby over past several months is LumiLEDs releases an actual product that outperforms CREE. Possibly a direct lumen per watt challenger or maybe something like 4 rebel dies in a single package a la LuxeonV.
If Lumileds simply releases a product thats "on par" with Cree, SSC, Edison LEDs there won't be a tremendous buzz.

Beyond LumiLEDs... Cree will continue to refine their XREs and improve their bins. Right now as we get ready to make the jump to R bins soon :naughty:. Thus SSC will also see a slight performance jump soon. This won't have nearly the effect that we've witnessed over the past several months of Cree completely kicking LumiLED's hind end though.

So yea unless LumiLEDs comes back strong in the second half of the year with actual products, not vaporware, things will quiet down a bit.

How about Cree Q10?

Multi-LED lights hold promise for outdoor use.

For example, the 3-Cree Peak First Responder which is modular in design allowing for the replacement of the LEDs+driver (see results of beta testing in this thread).

Then there's the F-XR03: GearLite CREE x 3 Scepter Light which is discussed in this thread.

Since multi-Cree lights can now rival the output of midrange incandescents, there will doubtless be others.

Also, I think there is likely to be a modest push to get LED-equipped bulbs and lights into households such as for nightlights, reading lights, and task lights to replace less efficient lower wattage incan bulbs.

Eu

Next 6 months?

- I do not think we will see a huge jump in efficiency. The huge jump we saw was from a fundamental change in the way the LEDS are made. That could happen, but I am not holding my breath over the next 6 months.

- We will see Lumiled with parts in the range of the efficiency of Cree. I look forward to upgrading all my old lights with parts that have good color and good efficiency and nice beam patterns.

- I am looking forward to high efficiency so called neutral white parts. Personally I think they are better when I am camping\hiking.

- We should see 100 lumen/watt (real world) in 6 months at 350mA. Lumileds has promised a new technology that will have high efficiency at high power. I could handle 300-400 lumens at 5-6 watts.

Hopefully someone will surprise us!

Semiman

So far, the exciting thing for me is the drop in prices - especially the HK vendors selling drivers for <$3, reflector kits, and emitters and stars. I can buy 2 or three of everything, and worry less about letting the magic smoke out. Similarly, li-ion esp. protected li-ion, are moving from "expensive and exotic" to "inexpensive and exotic". As an engineer, I love to see tech move from high-end, expensive into "ubiquitous".

Cree recently announced intent to sell 100lm/w XR-E emitters (R2 bin) by the end of the year. With some luck they should show up in completed lights in six months.

Im waiting (probably in vain) for cree or anyone to step up and make their emitters plug and play. Think about it, you spend say $150 on a new flashlight, it's the newest super cool, blah blah. In a year, you buy a replacement led, put it in with no soldering/warranty voiding modifications, and your light is once again the newest technology.

I bought my P2D as the newest thing and now im about to pull the trigger on a novatac 120P, it's hard to justify that kind of money every few months, at least for me. Make led upgrades as simple as a magled upgrade.

and how about higher-capacity Sanyo Eneloop NiMH cells ?

:twothumbs

scottaw said:

In a year, you buy a replacement led, put it in with no soldering/warranty voiding modifications, and your light is once again the newest technology.

Click to expand...

It's not going to happen. Easy upgrades are unprofitable for manufacturers.