White or turquoise LED? ...

What color LED light do you prefer for a an EDC pocket light (e.g. Arc AAA or photon)?

I have the white Arc AAA now, but considering the turquoise for the next round.

What are your experiences and thoughts?

Thanks!
Christopher

One of eaach!

White when you need to see all colors.
Tq when you need to see. Tq "Appears" brighter because the human eye is more sensitive to B/G.

I have both arcs and never use the Turqoise. The extra brightness doesn't make up for the funky color in my opinion.
Other people love em though so who knows.

BTW the Arc Turq are going away soon, so if you want one act now.

I used to be a big fan of the turquoise, but for an all 'round light I've decided that white (and its ability to render color well) is better for a keychain EDC.

But..I don't know that either is a bad choice unless you really NEED accurate color rendition (like you are an electrician, etc.).

I have booth, but if I could only have 1, it would be white. Turq is great for reading fine print, white's for everything else. TX

Go for the white. I just traded my rare Turquoise EV for a new white Arc AAA. It was hard to part with, but the fact that i couldn't use it to identify certain colors was annoying 80% of the time.

I decided i could sacrifice a little percieved brightness for color correctness. Also, in my opinion, green was a little too "raver-like", i just didn't like the stares i was getting when i needed to use the Arc for light.

BTW, this is the same reason why i also traded my RARE Cyan Arc LS for a white one.

I have many of these flashlights both factory and mods. This is what I have learned.

Nobody has sold me a true good turquoise light except for Elektrolumens with his 5watt cyan 5D and 6AA flashlights and Wayne Yamaguchi and his Dat2Zip Madmax cyan sandwich that he is selling right now. Elektrolumens' 5 watt cyan bulbs all appear to have consistent true blue green color. I have only bought one madmax cyan so I don't know if I just got lucky or if all of his stock is such high color quality.

Lambda sold me a cyan illuminator but it was not cyan. Rather it was a true green. But Lambda's work is superb. I'm just pointing out that it is not cyan. Arc's AAA turquoise is not cyan compared to the two lights referenced above. Rather it is a true grass emerald green to the naked eye. Ledtronics aqua green replacement bulbs are true green with no blue in it. It is hard to find people selling a true cyan. I heard the photon is bluer but it is not a weatherproof light and it dims rapidly.

The reason why I am pointing this color variation out to you is because the GREEN lights appear much dimmer to my naked eyes even when, for instance in the luxeon lambda illuminator, the light is cranked up to full power and you only get 90 minutes of runtime on two AA batteries. The green light just makes the whole room inside my house look dark. It is like the red lighting on the inside of submarines in the movies. Sure the red light illuminates the sub. But it appears very dark and makes me feel sleepy.

The true cyan, blue mixed with green to yield a brilliant turquoise the exact same color as the turquoise stones sold in Indian jewelry, is a brilliant color to the human eye. True cyan appears brighter to my naked human eyes than the white luxeon stars. The beam makes me feel wide awake as if in full daytime. The color appears as bright as full flourescent white lighting in the room.

This true cyan color is what people are referring to when they say it is brighter than white color. If you get a dud that is green and not really cyan, you will not get this brightness effect over white leds. You will instead get a light that appears dimmer. It's color seems intense but dim at the same time.

Remember the only true turquoise lights I have run across so far are:
Elektrolumens 5 watt cyan lights all configurations

The Madmax 1watt cyan luxeon star but I don't know if all his stock is as good as what he sold me. He is also selling a badboy 400 cyan.

The 5mm bluish-green LEDs from bgmicro.com are also good cyans. (I've compared them to the true greens in one of my microlights, MUCH brighter!)

Originally posted by cave dave:
BTW the Arc Turq are going away soon, so if you want one act now.

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Do you know how soon this will happen?

I much prefer turquoise to white for a small EDC light. I don't find the color rendition a big problem personally.

I have an ARC AAA turquoise light. I really like the light but when I started selling the CMG Infinity Ultras ($20 each with CPF free shipping special) I of course compared them. All of the Ultras that I tested are MUCH brigher than my ARC turquoise. So now I use an Ultra almost all the time.

The Ultras have a wider nice even beam with a hot spot in the middle. The turquoise ARC has a lot of funky rings in it that irritate your eyes. If you're going to go with the ARC AAA I'd go with the white (even though I've never seen one).

All the ARCs and Inovas that I have seen have those artifacts in the beam. I find that they are only really annoying to me when I test them against a flat plain wall or something like that. When I use them out in the world all those artifacts mostly blend in.

Best bet ultimately is to buy them both and try them both in the house and out in the world and then sell off or trade the one you don't like.

At Darell's suggestion, I put a piece of WrightRite over the turq LED in my ARC AAA. It did wonders in smoothing the beam. Did the same thing with the RB LS Wayne installed in a Brinkman 2D/3C light I call my Glow Blaster. Also works great. Oh yes, on my blue ARC AAA too. TX