Cool White Emitter = NO SALE... Which one(s) did you pass on?

Which light did you seriously shop for, but decided not to buy because it doesn't have a neutral or warm emitter available?

Maybe you had it in your cart but didn't pull the trigger...

For me the one that stands out is the O-Light M20

Hi Paul,

Actually, it's the opposite for me...warm emitter = no sale. I've passed on a few R2 based lights because the tint was too warm. Hopefully, my soon to be ordered JetBeam III M isn't too warm with the regular emitter.

BTW, thanks for the input on the JetBeam and yes it helped!

corrections operator said:

Hi Paul,

Actually, it's the opposite for me...warm emitter = no sale. I've passed on a few R2 based lights because the tint was too warm.

BTW, thanks for the input on the JetBeam and yes it helped tremendously!

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Are cool white emitters better for defense? Hopefully (for them) the cool light gets their attention, then you don't have to use that strike bezel! :naughty:

Fenix LD01 SS, but just pulled the trigger; can't help it. SS is too pretty to pass & the circuit is efficient.

Used to be Malkoff P60 drop-in, chose Dereelight drop-in but regretted it; it's not reliable e.g. 1/2 flickers (not PWM) or varible brightness.

EngrPaul said:

Are cool white emitters better for defense? Hopefully (for them) the cool light gets their attention, then you don't have to use that strike bezel! :naughty:

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If you're on the working end, I'm sure bright is bright whether it be a warm or cool emitter. I prefer the cool white because ... 1) personal preference and 2) my operating environment seems to absorb warmer tints more than the cooler tints. It's not just me, most of my coworkers feel the same way. We tested several tac lights for EDC and found that cooler tints provided more detail and usable light. My guess is the paints used in our facility absorb more of the yellow part of the light spectrum or reflect white/bluish light exceptionally well.

all cool edc size lights i have been looking at!

i really want to wait till they give warm tint leds to them. or i try my best to fight the urge to buy them before that.

1aa pocket light is currently my top "want it" list, and some that tingle me:
itp
nitecore d10
liteflux 5
jetbeam

second comes the others:
ra clicky edc (just bit too pricey at 99-150)
jetbeam III st (out of production?)
spartanian 2 (just "found it" here cpf and trying to figure it out. pricey too)
some others i cant recall atm.

one light that is close to get a "paypal sent" note is dereelight c2h..
so close, its sooooo close..

positives: ramp up (lo->hi), with 5a (q3) or r2(wh) led, clip, OP, no strobe..
negative IMO currently: runtime. momentary not possible(?) memory mode. (dont need/want one. i want the light to start the same way everytime)

i think positives might just run over negs soon.


BUT who ever gets it right first gets my money:
i guess this is almost right in priority wise.

1.price under 70$,
2.warm tint,
3.ramp up/programmable, with lowlow!
4.max 4 modes in general use (no more than 3 taps to go thru all modes)
5.good clip, (bezel down preferred, deep into pocket like SOG flash knives)
6.without sos/strobe (or hidden with programming),
7.f.clicky with momentary,
8.floody/op reflector,
9.runtime, (hour+ on max, a day on low)
10.size (under 120mm and 25mm, max about 100grams even with 18650),
11.works with primaries/normal batteries AND rechargables (rcr,18650 or aa),
12.no memory. (always starts at low)
13.smart ui with quick access to high (by momentary or by max 3 taps or click hold)

if some flashlight has all this, Tell me!

how i went around this (actually today) i ordered lummi raw with warm led. hope that will carry me thru for a month or two, in hope that some manufacturer gets it done.

and/or i can choose which would be best.

if i cant find a "perfect one" i can just as well stick with my cheap dx lights and fenix tk11 and the raw.

and then keep buying some more cheap (under 20) dx lights.. get 5 of them while waiting a perfect one.. and then i can play with new light every month

*damn im rambling/ranting again.. must be fever/flu that i have.. "my ideal edc flashlight" topic says most of these things already.*

**EDIT: forgot the obvious from the top13 list.. must be BRIGHT in HIGH! hah.. almost too obvious to include it into the list**

Finances have been really tight for quite some time. That and the predominance of WC tints has kept me from purchasing anything. If the future brings more neutral tints and higher CRI into EDC form factors I may just find something worth saving for.

I actually prefer cool to warm. My favorite bin has been the WC for is pure bleach white color (or maybe I have been lucky with the ones I received which do not really show any tint towards blue or cold).

I think I don't like the warmer more yellow tints because they remind my of older incandescent lights and when batteries start to drain (just one of those psychological things I guess).

I have a Lumapower with WD tint which is more "vanilla" and is a nice balance that I would not consider warm. This is probably the "warmest" I would prefer the tint to be. I think I would actually pass on a light that was listed as warm tint. But I do agree things start to shift the other way when using a light outdoors.

Heh, I'd refuse the sale if it didn't have cool white LEDs available

Meanwhile, I'm trying to hunt down the cool white ones..
Warm LEDs to me look like warm CFLs..kinda weird

Man I remember when I first found this place several years ago and everybody on the led section was going nuts for cool white. It seemed like everybody was out to bash incans for being yellow and most thought the pure white of leds better represented sun light. I was even advised by forum members to select a twoj lux3 for my first nuwaiq3 emitter upgrade. The twoj was cool and slightly blue and most people didnt have a problem with that back then. I think we all liked them so much because they gave a false illusion of super brightness.

Well, it's not hard to find Cool White in your favorite light... :thinking:

NigelBond said:

Man I remember when I first found this place several years ago and everybody on the led section was going nuts for cool white. It seemed like everybody was out to bash incans for being yellow and most thought the pure white of leds better represented sun light. I was even advised by forum members to select a twoj lux3 for my first nuwaiq3 emitter upgrade. The twoj was cool and slightly blue and most people didnt have a problem with that back then. I think we all liked them so much because they gave a false illusion of super brightness.

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I was thinking the same thing!

I'll stick with the neutral bins myself. I don't think I'd be happy with anything warmer than a 5A cree, or cooler than about a 3A cree.

My Olight M20 Premium came from the first batch and it looks like I got one with a Cree XR-E R2 WG tinted emitter. While WG is listed as a "cool white" tint, it appears warmer than WC. As far as Crees are concerned, I myself don't really care for the WC tint and they're widely abundant. Every once in a while I'll come across a WC emitter that looks pure white, but most of the time I see a faint bluish tone to them. WG at its best looks pure white too, but often has a greenish tone. Many people consider green just as unappealing as yellow, but personally I don't mind and actually like it very much. For one thing, the human eye sees the most shades of green and that's the reason why night vision equipment uses it. I haven't seen a WD tinted Cree yet, but I am told it's a vanilla white. If that's the case, Cree's WD tint should be very similar to Seoul's SW0 tinted emitters. While I've tried and own a Cree 5A emitter, I don't mind it's crimson tone and feel it's a fair compromise between the cool white of an LED and the warm yellow of an incan. I used to be big on the "HID look" of cool tints, but these days I prefer neutral white to a little warm.

NigelBond said:

Man I remember when I first found this place several years ago and everybody on the led section was going nuts for cool white. It seemed like everybody was out to bash incans for being yellow and most thought the pure white of leds better represented sun light. I was even advised by forum members to select a twoj lux3 for my first nuwaiq3 emitter upgrade. The twoj was cool and slightly blue and most people didnt have a problem with that back then. I think we all liked them so much because they gave a false illusion of super brightness.

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I remember this, I experienced this, I felt this, and now- well, here I am, a self-certified warm-tint lover.

The usual reason given for going with warm or neutral tints is color rendering. However, when you examine this premise more closely it usually falls apart. Most warm or neutral emitters are such simply because the yellow phosphor hump is proportionately larger than in the cooler tints. There is still a valley in the cyan region, and still a red deficiency. The CRI is only marginally better (perhaps high 70s versus low to mid 70s for a cool emitter). The exception to this are emitters designed for higher CRI such as the Nichia 083. And there's no inherent reason that cool emitters can't also be designed as such. It's just that so far there haven't been any. Once that occurs, we may see less interest in warmer tints.

For me personally a lot of the appeal of LEDs is indeed the whiter, crisper light. I'm not a big fan of the warmer non-high CRI emitters but by the same token I don't care for overly purple or blue cool emitters either. The only reason IMO for going with a warmer emitter is if it's purposely designed for higher CRI like the Nichia 083. Even here, I would prefer ~5500K over the highest available ~4000K but would tolerate the warmer light as it's a high CRI emitter.

I normally dont care what tint led, i tend to swap it to a hand picked led anyway.

i'm weird, for cree, i like WC the best, in dark/low light conditions they
apear as a very un-tinted uniformly white led. no yellow, green, blue or purple.

for seoul p4 and p7 i prefer the warmer SWO bins.

for high cri i absolutely love the S2 Bin P4 @4000K. i bought a decent ammount of these recently and am playing with them in a few lights.

i just noticed, all my import lights l2d, l0d, ld01, ex10 are all cree q5 wc...
while my domestic lights, mags, peaks, spy, ra twisty, gatlight are all seouls...
funny how that panned out.

For me, just about every light to come to the market in the past 6 months.

Once I compared a neutral (5A) white light to an otherwise identical cool one in an outdoor and moist environment. There simply was no contest.

While most warm white emitters are only in the low 80s for CRI iirc, they greatly enhance depth perception when you're searching outdoors. Especially in the thick green. And it is even more helpful when you're dealing with rain or mist or fog... any sort of moisture in the atmosphere or on the stuff you're searching in.

Things flatten out as you get blue, many pilots can tell you that (and then proceed to ramble on about why followed by a sometimes interesting story about it )

So let's see... lights I've thought about but skipped out on because they didn't offer it with a neutral (or at least around the Cree WH tint). I can't say it's the ONLY reason I skipped over them but it is a large factor.

Nightcore PDs
EagleTacs
Surefire E2DL
Zebralight H60
Ra Twisty
Jetbeam ST
Lumapower Signature and Encore
Liteflux 3xt (for the upcoming 2xAA tube)

And likely almost all of the new MC-E lights coming out to the market right now will be skipped over.

Malkoff and Dereelight are dear to my heart currently.

When you se simple emitter swaps for neutral emitters with common lights being bought up in the custom B/S/T you know what's up. And the manufacturers who don't adapt and offer the option for a warm or neutral emitter will loose business to those who do.

I think the watchword here is choice.

If you like warm tints then that's great and I'm happy that there are more options available for you these days.

But it's important to realise that not everyone likes them. Whether it's a colour perception thing or simply personal preference is largely immaterial.

Personally, I want the beam on my lights to be white - not yellow, or orange or :yuk: green. I don't want my LED light to look like an incandescent one.

I think it's great that the manufacturers are learning to control the tints better, and perhaps in the future we'll be offered more choice so that everyone can have the colour temperature that they want.

But if we end up going down the road of warm tints or nothing, then that's not giving people more choice, and is really no better than having only cool ones.