Lumens ratings for multiple LED lights anywhere near accurate?

tobrien

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So I'm mostly curious with regards to multi-LED lights. It seems most triple LED lights *seem* to have what appears to be:

LED lumens * 3

My question is really do multiple LED lights really have X times more light than a single LED? Like if we have a run of the mill single LED light and the manufacturer comes out with a triple version of that, is the rating really so simple as the original light's lumens multiplied times three?

I'm sure there's likely some decent loss of efficiency due to driving multiple LEDs and depending on how the LED PCBs are arranged, some loss of them being near each other and not isolated by their own reflectors.

Thoughts?


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TEEJ

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Jan 12, 2012
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It depends on how they're driven, etc.

Throw is sacrificed as the reflectors will not tend to be as deep or wide, etc....but the emitter lumens can be the same if each of the 3 individual LEDs are driven the same as one LED, etc.

The OTF lumens includes spill, so the reflector, etc, doesn't matter as much...just the driver losses, how many cells, if there's buck/boost circuitry, heat management, etc.
 
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