Brightest 5mm white LED ?

This has no doubt been asked before but technology moves on, so what is the brightest readily available 5mm white LED when run at a modest current such as 10ma.

By "brightest" I refer to the total light output in lumens and not to a high candlepower rating that is achieved only over a narrow beam angle. Most relatively high power LEDs have a published output in lumens. But 5mm and other low power LEDS tend only to give a peak beam candlepower output.

10ma is about 30mw depending on the forward voltage, so at the now commonplace 100+ lumens per watt, several lumens should be available from a single LED driven at 10ma.

Colour temperature and colour rendering are relatively unimportant.

Whatever emitter is in the Nitecore Tube is pretty darn fierce for a 5mm. I think Vinhnguyen54 figured out what it was, IIRC.

The brightest used to be a nichia LED I have a few of them and the tint is purplish. 5mm LEDs used to have all sorts of tint issues and ugly beams too I found the cree 5mm LED had a lot nicer beam and the tint was closer to white a little bit bluish.
What I would love to see is a 200 lumen/watt 5mm LED but I'm thinking that there aren't any more efficient than about 80-100 lumens/watt out there so one may have to consider mounting a cree XPE-2 on a tiny heatsink and drive it as low currents.

Hi,
I don`t know the low-current operation specs,
but take a look at the Xhp50, wich is 5x5mm small and makes up too 2500lumen.

From what I`ve heard, the Xhp70 can make over 200lumen/watt

Also the Xhp series have all sorts of tints.

Can anyone top 22,000 mcd? http://www.ledsupply.com/leds/5mm-led-warm-white-15-degree-viewing-angle

12,000 mcd: http://www.electron.com/high-flux-piranha-led-cool-white-940pwc.html

Piranha vs 5mm : http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/piranha-super-flux-vs-high-brightness-5mm-led-review/

more_vampires said:

Can anyone top 22,000 mcd? http://www.ledsupply.com/leds/5mm-led-warm-white-15-degree-viewing-angle

12,000 mcd: http://www.electron.com/high-flux-piranha-led-cool-white-940pwc.html

Piranha vs 5mm : http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/piranha-super-flux-vs-high-brightness-5mm-led-review/

Click to expand...

mcd ratings for LEDs are almost meaningless. I have some 22,000mcd LEDs from over 5 years ago that don't compare to cree or nichia offerings in output

m.pille.led said:

Hi,
I don`t know the low-current operation specs,
but take a look at the Xhp50, wich is 5x5mm small and makes up too 2500lumen.

From what I`ve heard, the Xhp70 can make over 200lumen/watt

Also the Xhp series have all sorts of tints.

Click to expand...

I think they are looking for the typical 5mm LED package with leads sticking out etc.

I don't know but I think the Nichia 570GS k1 is up there. At 10mA it is 2.6V, and it is 160 lumen watt at 30mA. I think. Can't remember the specs off the top of my head.

It is 25 lumen at 70mA but the efficiency is around 120 lumen watt. Where are the guys on here that used to test these? I miss their reviews.

Mr Floppy said:

I don't know but I think the Nichia 570GS k1 is up there. At 10mA it is 2.6V, and it is 160 lumen watt at 30mA. I think. Can't remember the specs off the top of my head.

It is 25 lumen at 70mA but the efficiency is around 120 lumen watt. Where are the guys on here that used to test these? I miss their reviews.

Click to expand...

I miss the reviews also but realize the trouble they go through just to procure the better LEDs that they test as the latest nichia and cree LEDs you almost have to buy them in bulk to get any and that gets expensive. I bought some LEDs from one guy who reviews them the cree leds IMO are the best as nichias are typically an ugly purple/yellow tint I prefer blue/white tint myself.

a little late. but the brightest 5mm style led , not the best lumen per watt, and not the lowest mA usage , is any led with mutiple dies internal to it. even long ago there were leds of the 5mm type with "quad dies" which could have drive currents of 4X a normal led. they could be drven at 40-80 mA for a (sort of) normal kind of drive for them, and overdriven to 100-120. the only ones i have seen of that type were very bluish. Dropped into the same curcuit stuff would not nessisarily make them brighter, but given enough current they could put out visably more light.
Because drive current vs output has a graph, it is possible that a quad die led run at >20ma would be good in lumen per watt, even if you can only get cheap quad die leds. Driving more "emitter" at a lower rate, but the ones i applied would not be great at lumen per watt otherwise, because they were cheap.

From what I've seen the trend is going away from the 5mm LED to SMD type LEDs even Cobb type arrays of SMDs as the output of 5mm LEDs is not that great for "throwing" a beam of light such that too often they have arrays of them and use them akin to flood type beam which SMDs IMO are superior in quality of output. I'm not sure however the SMD type LEDs (non power LEDs) are as efficient as the better 5mms are I suspect that they are either close or better though.

Any thoughts on the "nicest" 5mm white out there and readily available? Something with decent colour rendering and not blue/purple? I've got several things lying around that could be much nicer with a clean white 5mm replacement rather than the el-cheapo blue/purples that are in them.

RoGuE_StreaK said:

Any thoughts on the "nicest" 5mm white out there and readily available? Something with decent colour rendering and not blue/purple? I've got several things lying around that could be much nicer with a clean white 5mm replacement rather than the el-cheapo blue/purples that are in them.

Click to expand...

I haven't checked around myself but the two best "white" 5mm LEDs out there were a cree and a nichia and the nichia was an egg shaped purple/yellow tint while the nichia had a nicer beam with a tint leaning towards bluish. There are probably nicer tints in 5mm LEDs but the problem is too often those offerings don't hold up well long term they fade in use.

RoGuE_StreaK said:

Any thoughts on the "nicest" 5mm white out there and readily available? Something with decent colour rendering and not blue/purple? I've got several things lying around that could be much nicer with a clean white 5mm replacement rather than the el-cheapo blue/purples that are in them.

Click to expand...

Looking for good warm white 5mm.

The "RL5-W18030" is rated for 18000mcd and 4lm. Not bad for a T1-3/4.