Newby with Surefire/Cree questions

Hi guys! I'm a new member from Australia and I have a Surefire 9P, G2, and a few Maglites.

I have two questions:
1. Has anyone tried the 225 lumen Solarforce Cree P4? There seem to be a lot of them on eBay, and they seem cheap. I'm considering one for my 9P.
2. What is the difference (in layman's terms) between the various Cree terms such as XR-E, Q2, P4 etc?

Welcome to CPF, Thunder Kiss! For your first question, no, I have no experience with that. As for the second:
X-RE is part of the name of the the diode produced by Cree corp that everybody is talking about. The full name is the Cree X-RE 7090 or something along those lines.
Q2 and P4 are bin codes. I don't know much about the actual codes, so hopefull a more experienced member will chime in. As far as I know, the codes are a way to sort individual dies of the same model.

Welcome to CPF Thunder, nope haven't tried a Solarforce and XR-E, Q2, P4 refers to the type of led, housing, bin code etc from the particular manufacturer. As it is latest leds are Q5 from Cree, X-Bin LuxV from Lumileds and SSC P4 from Seoul SemiConductor

1. No one has tried the Solarforce drop-in. I'd recommend waiting till someone has review the Drop-in before buying. There are also many other relatively cheap drop-ins at Dealextreme's DIY section, most are only one mode.

2. Simply put, the newer LEDs, Cree P4, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5(those are bin codes, arranged in order of efficiency), Seoul P4, and Rebel 100 LEDs have about twice the efficiency of a previous Luxeon I, III, V, and K2 LED so for the same amount of energy, you would get about twice as much light with the newer LEDs.

Welcome to CPF!

Can't help you with that led drop in, but welcome aboard from a fellow Aussie

thats too complicated, guys

Cree names their latest emitters XR-E
Seoul names them P4
Lumileds has the rebel

the output (= bin) of the
Cree XR-E is stated in a combination of letter and number (P3, P4, Q2, ..., Q5; Q5 being brightest)
Seoul P4 is in letter alone (T, U, U being brightest)
Lumileds Rebel: by now only with the mentioning of the ouput (Rebel 80, Rebel 100, higher number = brightest), as far as I have seen

welcome aboard,,