CREE R5 hue

After a couple of weeks pouring over these fora (refining what I wanted out of a flashlight, revising [and re-revising] my upper limit for price) I finally took the plunge and invested in a Fenix LD10 R5 - my first 'real' flashlight.

I am in love with this little sucker. I sprained my shoulder from patting myself on the back about this choice. I have impressed my friends. I have been smug.

I've also noticed the light has a greenish tint, and I'm not sure if it's normal. A quick search for 'CREE R5 green' turned up the phrase 'the dreaded green,' and I'm posting to ask if it's a defect and I need to send the light back.

Is it? Do I?

If I missed the answer to this in my search, I apologize, and hope someone is kind enough to point me in the right direction.

Thank you all for building this community and this amazing resource.

A few weeks ago I received my XPG-R5 RRT-0 (also my first 'real' light), and it also had a slight green tint. I exchanged it for an XPG-S2 version, which also has a slight green hue. It is kinda weird because my jetbeam BA20 (also R5) is more on the purpleish side. I don't know what it is, might have to do with being XPG, but don't take my word on it. If others can chime in with their personal experiences, that would be awesome.

Perfectly normal.

When LEDs are manufactured, they strive to produce them as consistently white, efficient, and high output as possible. But of course they can't do that perfectly - there is always some variability from batch to batch (or even within batch). So they test samples in order to "bin" them into categories. Most common bins are output bins (i.e R5, S2, etc), as that is what matters to most. They also do tint bins, and sell the the best tints as "premium" tints (at premium prices). Coding for tint bins varies depending on the manufacturer and emitter class, but is done against a color output chart (search around for examples).

It is very hard to get premium tint bins in high volume (as is required by the larger makers). So most purchase just based on output bin and hope for the best when it comes to tint. It is therefore hard to predict what you will get.

The confusion between outpin bin and tint comes in because you can often find a predilection for certain tints in certain batches of emitters (sorted by output bin). A good recent example is the introduction of XP-G S2, where it seems an unusually large number of greenish-tint were available. I recall something similar when the XR-E R2 was first introduced (i.e. greenish tints). Some people opted to go back to Q5 bins, as premium tints were available in reasonable quantitities.

But again, there is no guarantee as to what you will get (even if a certain tint is more common at a certain point in time for a given output bin). Your experience can vary from the "typical" - again, unless specifically binned for tint, you don't know what will show up.

ffoghorn said:

[...]I've also noticed the light has a greenish tint, and I'm not sure if it's normal. A quick search for 'CREE R5 green' turned up the phrase 'the dreaded green,' and I'm posting to ask if it's a defect and I need to send the light back.[...]

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Greenish tint is not a defect. It is normal for LEDs to vary in tint. That is not to say you can't return it. It is a personal preference. See this post for an example of selecting a light not only on tint, but also on voltage tolerance. You could return it, but...

ffoghorn said:

[...]I am in love with this little sucker.[...]

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...you seem pretty happy with it.

i just tried my 1st R5 in a preon II. it's nice. i like it. the example i have has a "clean white" hue in high mode with a nice neutral in low. before that i had a preon II warm tint and thought it a bit too warm. lost it. regardless of that i wish i still had it.
form and function are more important. if you like the LD10 for these things then tint would be a secondary concern.

this may sound odd but, to me, i find that i am less caught up in the tint thing than i use to. it gets worse, i'm not the lumin junkie i once was.

My TK12 R5 also has a green tint.

On my TK45 which has 3 R5 emitters, you can see that the tint of the 3 LEDs are different.