Considering upgrading an emitter, need advice

I have a cheap Trustfire S-A2 1xAA flashlight which has become my new favorite flashlight of the week.I dug it out of a drawer where it had languished pretty much since I bought it when I was preparing for the hurricane.


A google search brought up a mod; instead of hi-med-strobe, I was able to modify the driver to a much more grown up hi-med-lo, and the new configuration is great.
The modes are really well spaced, and the new low is extremely useful.
I hate strobes unless they are completely hidden, so the new setup is very near perfect.


The light currently has an XP-C emitter, and now I have these new modes, I'm considering an emitter upgrade.
I prefer neutral white emitters, even at the expense of lumens.
The current emitter has a slightly blue tinge, but not enough to really upset me.
It's quite bright as it is, but a little extra brightness wouldn't hurt, and I could improve the tint at the same time.


I am considering a neutral white XP-G rather than an XM-L, because I think that the beam characteristics would be better suited to this light.


So my question is, all other things being equal, driver, power source, reflector etc, what would I gain by swapping the XP-C for an XP-G in terms of brightness, runtime, and beam characteristics?

A wider beam pattern with similar runtime. The slight brightness boost is usually hidden in the wider pattern. I have a Mini Mag.Pro next to my LED minimag. Triple the lumen, same throw, wider spot. there's no free lunches. Try the Nichia 219 instead of that XP-G. It's daylight in a chip.

Wow, I just wrote a really long reply and it disappeared when I hit the post button!

In a nutshell, thanks for the answer, that Nichia sounds very interesting and I'm going to read up on it now.

If you are into neutral tints then you owe it to yourself to try the Nichia 219, it's simply beautiful and a real pleasure to use daily.

AnAppleSnail said:

Try the Nichia 219 instead of that XP-G. It's daylight in a chip.

Click to expand...

This is the best description ever​.

think2x said:

If you are into neutral tints then you owe it to yourself to try the Nichia 219, it's simply beautiful and a real pleasure to use daily.




This is the best description ever​.

Click to expand...

Daylight in a can? But only once it's in a light. But yeah, Illumination Supply usually has them on a few PCB sizes that are easy to work with. It also has the same footprint as XP-G* so it can be easily swapped if you can reflow LEDs.

*My memory is porous. Check this claim!

The Nichia also has a smaller viewing angle of 120 vs the 125 for the xp-g. Here is a thread with comparison shots of different emitters that might help you decide.

Might be worth mentioning that if the tint's the main issue, a cheap an easy mod would be to add a filter?

You can't filter more red and green photons into light