4Sevens Quark Mini High CRI vs Neutral vs Warm (Photos)

Left - Warm, Center - High CRI, Right - Neutral. The photo is mostly correct, High CRI has more yellow which does not show in photos.







Top - Warm, Center - High CRI, Bottom - Neutral. The little difference between Warm and High CRI in the photos matches the eye precisely; High CRI provides slightly more blue over Warm with no other notable change. Note the orange crayons at the extreme upper right, which look roughly the same in Warm and High CRI, more distinct in Neutral.







Top - Warm, Center - High CRI, Bottom - Neutral. Explosive reds and oranges with Warm and High CRI, explosive blues with Neutral. Note the package illustration of the Lamborghini and the orange road it is drawn on; with the Warm/High CRI images, the road's orange appears to be a slight variation of the car's orange, but with the Neutral, the two colors are notably different.





Top - High CRI, Bottom - Neutral. More fluorescing red with High CRI, blue with Neutral.


Overall, I'm not seeing what makes this new Mini "High CRI"; it appears to be a nice midway between the previously available warm and neutral tints, but is otherwise just trading some blue fluorescence for red, there's no indication it renders any other colors any better than the other emitters.

Nice work. Thanks for sharing. I recently purchased a mini warm white and was considering the high cri model. Looks to close in tint for me to purchase one.


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thanks for sharing. the best photos ive seen so far. do you also have coolwhite light? (Quark X)
would love see a couple greenish photos!

i like the neutralwhite on your pix best!!

Draven451 said:

I recently purchased a mini warm white and was considering the high cri model.

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The warm is still my favorite power outage living room light; the soft peach rose color is very cozy and welcoming, guaranteed to be significant-other-approved.

shelm said:

do you also have coolwhite light? (Quark X)

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I've got lots of cool white lights, but they've seen very little use since I got the Quark Neutral. I'd certainly be first in line if the XM-L came to the Mini AA, especially in neutral format..

maybe i should get a Quark Neutral (they're on sale these days). i heard that the Quark NW's have greenishness nonetheless (when white wall hunting).

i got the Xeno E03 XML NeutralWhite and i dont like it too much. it's yellow light for christ's sake!! If i shine against a white wall, i want the wall to look white and not yellow, yuck!!

Xeno. actually it's not yellow. when i shine against a white piece of paper, then i see all sorts of colors on the paper: the hotspot, the corona and the spill have all different colors (tints). and THERE IS greenishness .. still. it's just that the amount of yellowishness outweighs the greenishness portions but one can see both! From a larger distance, if you had to name only 1 single color to describe the beam (on a white wall), then i would call it "yellowish". And there is nothing "neutral" to it. gotta hate it.

in your pix, the neutralwhite looks neutral (literally). i like it a lot. ( i would assume that there is still greenishness to be seen in the beam profile because of the dye. a Cree LED is greenish-yellowish on its dye. and you see it on a regular Quark when you change mode to Low or Medium. then you get the tint shift).

Good point, shelm! StarHalo, how is tint shift (in general) on your Quark Mini's? (Quark Mini's are PWM-regulated and tint shift shouldnt be existent)

Thanks again!!

I have a Neutral AA mini. I was thinking about getting the high CRI also. You helped me make up my mind. Thanks, Are their any high CRI AA lights you would recomend ?

Alright...you talked me into it. Just ordered a Mini AA HCRI. I have a Mini 123 HCRI, an older run Neutral, and 2 CR2 Warms, but no AA.

shelm said:

in your pix, the neutralwhite looks neutral (literally).

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But that's only because it's being compared to warmer lights; bear in mind that there is no true "neutral white", there is only what appears "white" compared to the color temperature your eyes are currently adjusted to. In most situations, the Quark Neutral looks like a very white incandescent light, there's still a tinge of warmth to it (no green at all, though, and it looks the same at all levels, as do all the Minis.) If you're looking for a stark white that isn't warm or green, look into the cool/standard Xeno E03 XM-L, though the beam does begin to shift to blue towards the outside, as a lot of the XM-Ls do.

LG&M said:

Are their any high CRI AA lights you would recomend ?

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I can only point you towards what I've seen tested, and people only test the highest-output versions of lights, not the alternate tints. The last really good test of a true High-CRI light I can recall is a McGizmo, and he doesn't do AA format..

bodhran said:

Alright...you talked me into it. Just ordered a Mini AA HCRI.

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You'll find the Mini AA is the easiest to pocket carry because of how thin it is; you can't tell it's there in cargo pants..

Very nicely done StarHalo! I also think you're spot on with your comments about how we perceive tints compared to other light sources.

I'd be very interested if you have any information on the LEDs being used for each light, for instance color temp. and bin.

The neutral is a R4, 4C~D. The warm is a Q5, 7A~B. And I don't know if any info has been released on the High CRI emitter; I can say it's just slightly brighter than the warm, but the neutral is notably brighter than the other two, the camera had to deduce a tenth of a second to the shutter speed for the neutral beam pics.