Help! Neutral White vs Cool White

I decided to buy a Thrunite T10T and when I went to order it online I noticed I had two options: Neutral White or Cool White. Out of my impatience I decided to buy both so I could do a side-by-side compare and then I would know in the future which one I preferred. They both arrived today but now I can't tell them apart because they're both identical.

I need help identifying which is which. I really don't understand the concept so I can't figure it out myself. Any help or explanation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Likely the cool white on the left.

TheeBadOne said:

Likely the cool white on the left.

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thats my guess too

Honest question, are you colorblind?

Sir Lightalot said:

Honest question, are you colorblind?

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No need for that. Maybe he just doesn't know the terms "cool" and "neutral".

Sir Lightalot said:

Honest question, are you colorblind?

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come on, thats not necessary. This user is obviously new to tints. And I've had cw's that looks nw and I've had nw's look like cw's. So even if he/she wasnt new to tints, you never know

Almost 1 in 10 men have some form of colorblindness and something tells me they might have a hard time distinguishing tints so its a legitimate question. However, I see now that he was probably saying the lights themselves were identical and not the beams.

akrapacs said:

I decided to buy a Thrunite T10T and when I went to order it online I noticed I had two options: Neutral White or Cool White. Out of my impatience I decided to buy both so I could do a side-by-side compare and then I would know in the future which one I preferred. They both arrived today but now I can't tell them apart because they're both identical.

I need help identifying which is which. I really don't understand the concept so I can't figure it out myself. Any help or explanation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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Tints are commonly associated with perceived color rendition. Cool whites tend to be above 5000k while warm tints tend to run anywhere from 4200k on down. But the kicker is what you think you are getting and what you see can be subjective. Warms for me seem to go below the 4000k more often than not. So if your an incandescent color seeker your going to want to be below 3200k. But again. Its subjective.

A bit of research can start one down the path of understanding. http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?368177-XML-LED-Tints

Welcome to CPF, akrapacs! :wave:

Start reading here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature

Howdy akrapacs, and welcome to the forum!
Yep, cool on left, "neutral" on the right. However, don't think just because you have those two lights that you'll know what you're getting next time around when a dealer says "cool white LED" or "neutral tint LED". Every manufacturer has a different definition of those terms, and the only way you can know, at least some what, what you're going to receive, is to find the maker of the LED, then tint bin information. Even then, it's always kind of a waiting game for the light to arrive to actually see what kind of tint you're going to get.

Generally, cool white LEDs will be brighter (more efficient) than their warmer cousins. Some folks prefer the warm LEDs because they feel they give better color rendition, which is where we come to CRI, which is a whole topic itself, but helps to define an LEDs color rendering characteristics, but can only be taken along with the Kelvin color temperature to give an idea of what kind of light the LED will give off. One of my favorite LEDs is a Nichia 219, which has a CRI of 92 (closer to 100 is best) and color temperature of around 4500 (with 5000 being consider daylight). So, it's slightly warm, and renders colors very well.

Since most cool white LEDs, which tend to be more efficient (brighter), generally have a CRI of 65-75, they typically don't render colors as well....... so........... as flashlight aficionados, we have to make a choice. The brightest light possible, or one that renders colors better but is not as bright.

Some folks prefer the cool white LEDS for their clean white light, some prefer warm LEDs for their pleasing color rendition, and some are always on the quest for that elusive "NEUTRAL" LED, one that is neither warm, nor cool, but simply white, with no tint at any level. For many, the holy grail.

You're lucky, you've got both lights, so you can play with each one and see which one you like more. Some folks like cool lights inside and warm lights outside. Have fun deciding.
Derek

It can be confusing as a "Cool" lights output is a higher color temperature rating than a "Neutral" lights output is. IIRC the color temperature is the color of light that a metal object raised to that temperature on the Kelvin scale radiates at. The higher the color temperature the more blue and violet is in the radiated light and the lower the color temperature the more red there is. To most eyes the cool light looks whiter and the neutral or warm light looks like there is more yellow in it. In your photo the left beam is the cool one and the right one, which looks yellower, is the so called neutral beam.

I prefer pure white light. In RGB terms that would 255,255,255. A test is, you take a blank sheet of white paper and pin it at a corner of your wall in a daylight-lit room. The room should not be very bright nor pitch dark but it should be dark enough with natural daylight illumination say a corner in a school library on sunday with no artifical lights turned on. Shine the light against the paper at such a distance that the hotspot covers the width of the sheet, not less nor more. With CW you will see nothing, just a blank pure white sheet. With NW you will see a tinted sheet of paper, as if someone painted the paper in some weird non-white color (a mix of green/yellow/orange/red/rose/white). You know that the paper is white but with the NW beam the paper does not look white anymore.

i don't like.

Derek Dean said:

However, don't think just because you have those two lights that you'll know what you're getting next time around when a dealer says "cool white LED" or "neutral tint LED". Every manufacturer has a different definition of those terms,

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Tell me about it. I recently ordered some cheap "warm" and "neutral" white flashlights from DX for the kids. They were all over 8000K when I measured them. One was 9300K !

I'm with you on this. warm whites are great for the market in overhead LED lighting because they imitate incandescent bulbs so well, but I'll take the higher output and pure white colour thanks. I've come to expect the white in my 10 years or so of LED flashaholism, I don't want to go back to incan colours.

shelm said:

I prefer pure white light. In RGB terms that would 255,255,255. A test is, you take a blank sheet of white paper and pin it at a corner of your wall in a daylight-lit room. The room should not be very bright nor pitch dark but it should be dark enough with natural daylight illumination say a corner in a school library on sunday with no artifical lights turned on. Shine the light against the paper at such a distance that the hotspot covers the width of the sheet, not less nor more. With CW you will see nothing, just a blank pure white sheet. With NW you will see a tinted sheet of paper, as if someone painted the paper in some weird non-white color (a mix of green/yellow/orange/red/rose/white). You know that the paper is white but with the NW beam the paper does not look white anymore.

i don't like.

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Wow thanks everybody! This is exactly what I was looking for.

Yes I can see the difference between the two lights but I wasn't familiar with the terms (or color temperature in general) and in my research I wasn't actually finding anything that used the same terms "cool white" and "natural white" so I just getting confused.

I really appreciate all the information and references! I now have a much better grasp on this concept so I can do what I originally intended to do and use these two lights to experiment and figure out which one I prefer.

:welcome:akrapacs,as said the cool is definitely left and neutral on right.I have a cool white T10s and a NW T10t along with a T10 CW on the way.

I find side by side the camera exaggerates the rendition a lot,also it fools my eyes some too.It makes the NW look very warm and sometimes the cool quite blue.

NW should look a more creamy white rather than warm in colour so the camera makes it look warmer than it is.

Separating the lights so use 1 then the other (not together).......
Use the CW,go outside,check some green colours etc etc out for a few minutes.Then swap lights,go out with the NW and check again,you should notice the colours are a little more exaggerated,or artificially more green(to me anyway). I prefer cool,to my eyes i get a more accurate rendition of the colours over the more greens/browns of what they would look in the day.This is all down to personal taste/vision/choices of what you like out of them. Some prefer NW others CW,no rights or wrongs,just what looks/works better for you:thumbsup:

Different uses may require a different tint/preference .

What bugs me is that the terms are inaccurate based on the physics of the situation. "Cool White" is the term used to describe a higher color temperature, equivalent to something radiating at 6000+ degrees on the Kelvin scale. "Neutral White" is in the 4500 to 5750 Degrees Kelvin radiating range roughly and "Warm White" is below 4500 degrees Kelvin. Thus the color temperature is directly opposite to the standard verbal descriptions. DUMB and confusing to the uninitiated as we see here.

As I recall the terms originally came from the Fluorescent light industry to describe fluorescent tube light characteristics and the terms were based on presumption that the color temperature of incandescent bulbs was what people found made them feel "warm and fuzzy" because it matched their home lighting while "Cool White' was chosen to describe lighting as found in a hospital, office work environment or manufacturing facility lighting. Basically the older original Fluorescent tubes light output. Cool and unfriendly lighting. Interestingly enough the sun's light on a clear day near noon is generally in the cool white color range so you would think that this would be the preferred light for most people.

LOL

Even more confusing/DUMB, is that color TEMPERATURE is not a "Color". Its supposed to be used ONLY for white light, such as sunlight, and to describe the difference between morning and evening light effects.

IE: Sunlight is white light, with the full spectrum (From the source). Despite that, an object illuminated with the dawn's light will appear differently than at sunset, etc...and that's the concept they were trying to describe.

It was not conceived to say what COLOR the light was tinted.




And, yup, at least the way the above pics shows on my monitor, the green spot is the cool one and the yellow spot is the warm one.

I would not call either neutral though, as Shelm pointed out, that should look WHITE.




That said, the way pics look on monitors, vs in real life, is almost never representative in practice, except by luck/professional adjustments.

I never knew it was meant to describe sunlight, but it works. It was very clear here today. I can see the top of Mont Blanc sticking up from behind the smaller mountains in front of it. It was white all day. At 9:30 it was pink.

This is was a new article to me. It is quoted from HDS systems website and is in their FAQs under "Are all white LEDs the same color?" It seems to me that 5454K would seem to be the "neutral" with no tint bias if I understand the info correctly. Maybe it's safe to say that everything under 5454K is on the warm side and everything over 5454K is on the cool side. Where WE say the warm and cool line is harder to say


QUOTE: "If you take an object and heat it to incandescence, that object radiates a certain spectrum of light; That spectrum closely approximates the spectral emissions of a theoretical black body radiator heated to the same temperature. A black body is an object which absorbs all incident light and thus is black in appearance at room temperature. As you raise the temperature of the black body radiator, the incandescent color shifts from infrared to red to the blue-purple part of the spectrum along a curved line which is typically plotted on the CIE-1931 Chromaticity Diagram. This line is known as the Planckian black body radiator line.; "White" is generally considered to start at 2500°K


The best white colors lie along the Planckian black body radiator line in the range of 4000°K to 7000°K with typical noon daylight being in the range of 5500°K to 6500°K depending on how much northern sky light is included. Incandescent lights generally lie in the range of 2800°K to 3200°K and have a distinct orange cast when compared to daylight. The definition of white is the equal energy point that lies at x=0.333 y=0.333 on the CIE-1931 Chromaticity Diagram and corresponds to 5454°K."