Funny thing about Zebralight hi CRI efficiency

You'll notice on the company page that at the lower power levels the hi CRI lights are giving more lumens for the same long runtimes than the Neutral or Cool 6000k+ lights.
The Cool lights are certainly getting higher lumens at maximum, and the Neutrals come in second, with the hi CRI lights coming in last on high output.
I think that's interesting, particularly because I run lights well below 60 lumens most of the time, and I'm interested in both neutral and hi CRI and particularly in long run times.

Examples:
H51Fc AA Floody Headlamp 85 CRI 27 lumen/10.5hr and 13 lumen/26hr
H51F AA Floody Headlamp 28 lumen/10.5hr and 7 lumen/26hr
H51Fw AA Floody Headlamp Neutral White 25 lumen/10.5hr and 6.5 lumen/26hr



As a side note, it is interesting that the reason given for the lower lumen counts of hi CRI lights is not that they are less efficient at putting out light but that they are putting out more light in the lower frequencies that our eyes are supposedly less efficient at perceiving. At the same time many people claim to see much better with these lights, it makes me wonder if the industry has taken off running with some incomplete data.

I notice all my cool tinted zebralights are current controlled at lower and mid levels and my neutral zebralights all use PWM at lower and mid levels (very detectable PWM). I suspect they use PWM in all the neutrals to avoid tint shift at lower power levels. Normally current control is more efficient than PWM which would explain the lower output/same run times of the neutral vs the cool. Not sure how that plays into the high CRI model.

Hi tre, I just checked my SC51c against a spinning fan. No sign of any PWM except on M2, the sub-level on medium. None at all on any other levels on high and low.

Maybe the older models had the problems with the PWM? According to the Zebralight website the SC51c only has PWM in the 63 lumen mode and 0.3 lumen mode. The new SC600 and SC600w do not use PWM on any levels. I hope the tint shift isn't bad on the SC600w like some reported about the 4sevens neutrals (I doubt it will be an issue).

My Zebralight SC51c has almost no noticeable PWM on any of the levels, while my SC51w definitely has PWM on almost all levels. However, PWM doesn't bother me as I am not sensitive to it...I like my SC51w better

Woodentsick