Cree led assembly

I am just getting into the flashlight game and this site has been very helpful. I've never messed with the high quality lights until I lit my buddies surefire up and I was hooked. My question is, obvioulsly cree makes many light assemblies. So is there a huge quality difference in them? I have found many different assemblies for ea. from Wolf eyes to Ultrafire and others. I currently have a Wolf eyes and am very happy with but I see you can get other crees for about half the price. My wolf eyes was 49.99 and I have found some others for 20ish so is there a diff. Are the price difference in the reflectors or what? I dont want to comprimise quality. FWIW I am comparing equally matched assemblies on performance, they both have similiar lumen output. Can you guys give me the run down on the all these assemblies.

By assemblies do you mean the entire flashlights themselves? The kind of LED in a light? An LED drop-in assembly? Cree makes LEDs that are used in a lot of quality lights, ranging anywhere from 10 dollars to hundreds. Wolf eyes and Ultrafire just make the lights that have these LEDs in them. These flashlights can have huge quality differences, and the price is usually a good indication of that. Different price can mean different reliability, durability, UI, LED, battery life, brand name etc. Sorry if I didn't answer anything or if I'm just stating the obvious, but I'm not entirely sure what's being asked.

To clarify I am wondering if there is a big difference in the drop-ins. I guess I mainly want to know which ones are good to go and whjich ones to avoid. Which drop in manufactures are of the best quality.

Sorry but I don't know much in that area. I've read good things about Malkoff and Nailbender before, and I'm sure you can find lots of good threads on the subject.

What do you want to put the drop-ins into? There are a lot of different voltages, outputs and sizes. There's a lot to choose from. The most common are the 6p type drop ins. Do you currently have a light your trying to match up with?

Best advice I can give is that you search the forums and do your math. (I dont mean that in a bad way) but In order to answer that question you've got to understand the "drop in" module and realize all the different parts and their respective responsibilities. For starters, heat is a huge deal affecting not only runtime and output but efficiacy and lifespan of the emitter,batteries,etc. The different manufacturers use different materials and designs concerning heatsinks and thermal transfer. Then you get into drivers and the different circuits, reflectors and their roles, UI's and oh yeah, the emitter.

Rudy,

As Jack pointed out, the search function is a great place to start, you'll find TONS of info about drop-ins; price, quality, output, etc.

Short answer to your question. Nailbender, Malkoff, Ando all make very high quality drop-ins. The Malkoff is a propriatary design, NB and others make their premium versions of the SF P60 format. The best answer is; you get what you pay for.