HDS Clicky 170: Golden Dragon tint

I just bought an HDS Clicky 170. I've never before had a flashlight using a Golden Dragon LED and I was surprised at the overall slightly greenish tint of the beam. I've used the Clicky on a couple of walks and I'm curious about CRI. Do greenish (-yellowish) tint LEDs have a higher CRI than bluish tint LEDs? Another curiosity is that at about six inches distance the beam pattern has three distinct components, a blue-white spill and a bright white or bluish-white central beam surrounded by a distinctly greenish corona. How does it comes about that green separates from white (and of course then blends at greater distances giving a greenish cast)? Thanks.

I have the HDS 170 Golden Dragon and it has no greenish tint in the beam at all, it has a smooth white beam with no artifacts, I am very happy with it.

I also have a greenish tint in the lower modes. The standard "turn on" level and below I can see it well.

Take a look at a beamshot (wall, 20cm) from my 170 here

It's part of the problem with the GDP emitters. Some have reported purplish tint, some yellowish, some greenish but very seldom pure white. A Nitecore Infinity GDP that I once owned has a rather bluish tint to it and my wife's Nitecore D10 GDP has a very nice white tint to it. My HDS 170T however is white on the centre of the hotspot and radiates out to a slight green on the highest output. On lower outputs everything just look slightly greenish but it does work quite well in an outdoors environment. No complains here. I love mine.

I heard from Henry about this issue. As always he is informative and to the point.

"Tints are in the eye of the beholder and peoples perception of tint varies tremendously from one person to the next...Due to the current technology of LEDs (blue emitter and yellow phosphor), you can have tint changes across the surface of the emitter, which can show up as differences in tint in the beam pattern...[that] varies between vendors and from LED to LED from the same manufacturer."

Not only an LED lottery, but a perceptual lottery too (which for all I know may vary with circadian rhythms). In fact, I much prefer blue-white tint to green, but in field use it is a non-issue. I still wonder about CRI but at this time I have only my own perception that colors with the Clicky 170 appear different than colors with an LF3XT or T20C2 R5. Which, of course, may or may not have anything to do with CRI. I'm also curious how greenish tint may effect the perception of brightness and resolution, since the sensitivity of the eye is high for those wavelengths.

Mine has the slightly green tint around the hotspot, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest. The hotspot is nice and white and I'm very pleased overall.

I had a 170 and a 140GT at the same time and both myself and my wife thought the 170 had a better color temperature. YMMV.

Hobbs said:

I had a 170 and a 140GT at the same time and both myself and my wife thought the 170 had a better color temperature. YMMV.

Click to expand...

True. The 140GT that I used to own has a bluish tint to it which I disliked. I wouldn't say it is all bad but my preference would be for something in the range of 5300K to 5700K, not 6000+K. Some may say that 6500K is closer to pure white but I just don't like it. Sold it off in the end.

That's just me. Maybe due to my frequent outdoor usage, I seem to have a preference for warm tints. Even a slight green or yellow is preferable to cool bluish white. When others are complaining about the greenish tint from their S2 version of Quark, I on the contrary love them a lot. Bought a Preon 2 S2 a couple of months back and it is quite greenish but I love it. Just out of curiosity and since there was a mother's day discount from 4Sevens, I bought another Preon 2 with R5 and I just don't like the tint color. It is cooler (still slight green) and noticeably dimmer even though there is only a 7% difference in brightness between the R5 and S2.