Brightest Small LED Light?

OK, I just received the Premium ARC AAA. It's quite a bit brighter than my regular ARC AAA.
So this got me wondering, what's the brightest of the small single LED flashlights available?
Sorry if this has been asked before, but I just don't have the time to search through the forums.
Thanks,
Lenny

If you are talking about a single 5mm LED, the Photon or other coin cell light using 2 x 2016 batteries is generally considered the brightest, at least with fresh batteries, because it is overdriven the hardest.

But it seems like LEDs get better and better over time, so brightness might vary by date of manufacture for many lights.

There's no way my white Photon is as bright as my ARC AAA Premium.
Lenny

[ QUOTE ]
lenny said:
OK, I just received the Premium ARC AAA. It's quite a bit brighter than my regular ARC AAA.
So this got me wondering, what's the brightest of the small single LED flashlights available?
Sorry if this has been asked before, but I just don't have the time to search through the forums.
Thanks,
Lenny

[/ QUOTE ]
I would say that of the single 5mm LED lights, the coin cell lights like the Photon II have the highest lumens per cubic inch. See this link for a high lumens/cube Luxeon light. In the first post there are calculations of lumens/cube for several lights including the ARC AAA: Lots O'Lumens

Ok Doug S, we all know and love your amazing little "Super Light", but he did mention "available". /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Yeah, Yeah, what HarryN said!
I'm talking about something like this
Major lumens in a small package.
Lenny

[ QUOTE ]
lenny said:
Yeah, Yeah, what HarryN said!
I'm talking about something like this
Major lumens in a small package.
Lenny

[/ QUOTE ]
Hey, I've haven't seen those but they look like they might be a good value. I do wonder where they are getting their " American-made Luxeon™ LED chips " Last I checked they are made in Malaysia.

I guess it depends on your definition of "small". Those look to be a 2x123 and 3x123 package. I would think the Longbow micra is quite a bit smaller than the 1 Watt pictured and probably at least equals it in output.

Those little belly button or ear ring led lights I see selling at Ebaby are as small as you are going to get and the flashing emitters are very bright.

OK, maybe I should rephrase my question.
I'm looking for max lumens. 115 lumens on the 5 watt Cabelas light is impressive. And I guess it's small enough than your traditional Mag Light size. Are there any other 3x123 size lights that come close.
Next, I put fresh batteries in my white Photon and compared it to my Arc AAA Premium. The Photon is very close to the Arc. Almost the same brightness, but a less well defined ring of clean light. How does Photon do it without any circuitry? Keep in mind that I am an electronics doofus. So keep the explanations simple please.
Lenny

Yeah, those are cool. CountyComm sells the same (or very similar) lights with just a magnetic back as their 'emergency strobe' lights. 5 for $5, and includes spare set of 3 tiny watch cells.

Unfortunately, the blue die doesn't like to run super-bright for more than an hour or so on fresh cells (but if you let the batteries rest, they're good again for a while). But it is tiny and it's cool, mostly because it's so bright! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Hi Doug S

Regarding Luxeon's and "Made in USA" vs "Made in Malaysia", some of this depends on your how you define Country of Origin.

My personal method is to access the content of the following:
- Corporate Ownership
- Product Design and Engineering
- Manufacturing location of the "actual device"
- Manufacturing Equipment Source
- Assembly and Packaging Location
- Raw Materials Source

The only aspect of these that is Malaysian, is the Assembly and Packaging stage, but our more simplistic concepts of trade definition do not access the jobs value of the other aspects.

From my understanding, nearly all of the other content aspects of the Luxeon are either American or European, which is approximately the same as a Cree device, and certainly a much higher percentage than any other LED on the market.

Just as a comparison, this is also a substantially higher content percentage (either American or combined American + European content), than an Intel or AMD microprocessor.

Sorry for the thread diversion.

[ QUOTE ]
lenny said:

Next, I put fresh batteries in my white Photon and compared it to my Arc AAA Premium. The Photon is very close to the Arc. Almost the same brightness, but a less well defined ring of clean light. How does Photon do it without any circuitry? Keep in mind that I am an electronics doofus. So keep the explanations simple please.
Lenny

[/ QUOTE ]

The photon type lights do it without electronics by using more batteries (or a different type) to get a higher voltage. They depend on the battery internal limits to keep from blowing the LED.

The Arc AAA, on the other hand, uses a single battery that is cheaper. The AAA battery also stores more power than the batteries used in the photon. The circuitry boosts the voltage to the level required by the LED. The circuit limits the power available to the LED so that it does not burn out.

In the parlance, the Photon is Direct Drive, and the ARC uses a simple voltage boost.

Daniel

[ QUOTE ]
HarryN said:

The only aspect of these that is Malaysian, is the Assembly and Packaging stage....

[/ QUOTE ]


To throw in a bit more confusion and to drag things further off-topic, the Die used in Luxeons are sourced from a Japanese company.

Toyoda-Gosei

I don't know what you consider "small", but a Surefire L4 is pretty bright (2x123, 5 watt) while being about half the size of most 3x123 lights.

If you want something smaller, try the Firefly with a T flux led and an MM+, so it will run in the 2 watt range. It's about the same size as an Arc AA, or about half the size of the L4, but 2x the size of the Arc AAA. See DSpeck's forum hereon CPF for more info.

Smaller still, there are some custom Luxeon mods for the Arc AAA, usually running around 0.5 watts, which will be around 3x as bright as the stock AAA. These show up for sale on BST sometimes. There's a new TNC N-cell light which will be comparable to that.

There are also some very wonderful custom Luxeon 1xCR2 lights (like smaller Fireflies), but those rarely if ever show up for sale.

If you're looking to buy a practical, ready-made light small enough for easy pocket carrying without going all-out to win miniaturization contests, the Firefly is your best bet. I'd say get the default BB650 configuration with the two-level switch, even though it won't be QUITE as bright as the MM+ setup. It will have flatter regulation and it won't overheat as fast.

Lumileds is a partnership between Agilent and Philips. Agilent (HP Optronics) is generally credited as being the first company to commercially produce LEDs. There are still scads of HP LEDs on the market.

I don't doubt that Lumileds has outsourced some of the manufacturing of their die to other companies, but they developed the high-power LED die and all the associated packaging/thermal management.

If you are talking about Luxeon s, I am fairly certain that "Most" of the die are made internally in San Jose, CA.
TG makes reasonable LED die AFAIK, but I think they are still trying to clone the Luxeon line.