What's so hot about the Rebels?

I've had a look at the numbers, and if I'm not wrong (I may well be - it's almost 4 am here ) they are still less efficient than Crees. So why is everybody talking about them?

With new toys comes excitement!

If the product is good and continues to evolve like the Cree, then we will all be rewarded with better and better LEDs.

Philips/Lumileds is known for quality LEDs, except the K2 flop.

I'm still trying to figure out what was so great about seoul's. The Cree seems to suffer greatly from a higher price if nothing else

Fallingwater said:

I've had a look at the numbers, and if I'm not wrong (I may well be - it's almost 4 am here ) they are still less efficient than Crees. So why is everybody talking about them?

Click to expand...

The currently released bins may be a little less efficient, but now we have two major players in the LED game, both capable of throwing massive amounts of money at development. This is a good thing. :thumbsup: The other reason people are interested in the rebels is their extremely small footprint. This makes them difficult to work with without a PCB, but consider this: they can fit 3 rebels on a star the same size as a regular luxeon star. That's nothing to sneeze at, especially as the bins get better and tri-lobed optics become available. Driven and heatsinked appropriately, that kind of arrangement might allow a rebel-light to compete directly with tradition incan hotwire lights in terms of raw output in a small package!

HIGH HIGH price for the 100~110lumens at 350mA xr-e.

CHEAP CHEAP for rebels at 90~100lumens at 350mA.

they are cutely smallish too.

How is the tint of current/typical Rebel bins? :thinking:

One thing I notice about my couple of Seouls and Crees is that they are a very white light with a slight blue/purple tint. I like this, but I know some people are sensitive to LED tint. These people would never consider using 5mm nichia lights, for example.

The one Luxeon I have is a 1W Taskforce (Lowes) light ... which has a terrific, warm yellow-white tint. Looks almost like a high-end incan.

If the Rebels can put out 100+ lumens of warm tint reasonably efficient, they'll be winners for sure. :thumbsup:

Nitroz said:

Philips/Lumileds is known for quality LEDs, except the K2 flop.

Click to expand...

Can you kindly explain how K2 was a flop?

I don't think 'flop' is fair. The K2 is better than a Lux I/III or V in many ways. The K2's suffered from too many production delays then got out-performed 6-9 months after they actually hit market. If the Cree, Rebel and Cree die based products had not come out when they did this place would be all about K2's and what output/color bins could be obtained and how to install them in luxIII lights.

The K2 was a flop as it was a step backwards in efficiency compared to lux I and III as they where getting better at about the same time.
Only good thing was that you could cram a lot more brightness out of a single package for cheap compared to lux III. However it came at the price of nearly double the vf depending on bin.
It made it even worse that it was hyped to death and then delivering nearly nothing new.

Rebel however is a compleatly now thechnology (for leds) that allow it to be without bondwires = clean beam when using optics. The tint is also more consistent.
IIRC they need a certain voltage to lit up tho.

At least this is how I see it. At the moment.

The Rebel has horrible thermal management and expansion handling, whereas the Cree has 8x more area for sinking, and a floating dome for expansion handling. Other than that the Rebel seems like a nice led with slightly higher output and a better beam quality in reflectors.