Brightest cleanest WHITE on the Market. Ebay?LCK?

Hi, Ive been followng LED's since my first LRI Photons 5 years back…Ive seen Specs Rise and prices Drop but with this Market skyrocketing, it is hard finding a good source of quality LED's without exaggerated specs or shitty Chinese Dies/ (bestofHONGKONG) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif. Anyways, Ive been using SuperbrightLEDS for bout a year now and have been really happy with there product but since my projects are growing, SBL's prices are beginning to become quite an expense. $1.39 per LED /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif Ive searched ebay and found some LED's that claim to be awesome but I am so skeptical after the shity lots of leds bestofHongKong sold me a few months ago. They were bright but the colors were not profound and lucid like those of my SBL's.

DO any ebay vendors sell those Blueish Clean Pure White LED's (SBL quality) for a nice price or do they all have that yellowish tint… IS there any Deep Strong Blue's that ebay offers or are they all torquiseish like BESTOFHongKong?
LCK26K---any good? How does it compare to SBL's 18K 30 degree White.
I know the answers are spread all over this froum and I will go back and use the Search option but if 1 question is answered, even if you flame my neglecgence. PLZ let it be: IS there some catch with these Ebay Vendors?---Can I get SBL quality at an ebay Price?
thanx in advance guys

Tint is such a subjective thing that it's difficult to answer. I've tried many different eBay white LEDs-ChiWing, BestHongKong, LCK, warden_jp2002, and SpectrumLEDs. I've found that they were all a bit too blue for my tastes but otherwise I was happy with them. They met or exceeded their claimed brightness specs. The main problem might be lifetime issues. Most of these Chinese LEDs don't take kindly to being overdriven. They degrade in brightness very fast. They may still last 6000 to 10000 hours until half brightness if driven at 20 mA but I haven't run any lifetime tests yet.

Subjectively, here is my take on these so far with regards to color:

ChiWing 8,000 mcd white - a little brighter than claimed (~10,000 mcd), slight bluish-green tint, ~9000K color temp

BestHongKong 10,000 mcd (old type of white) - dead on for brightness, a slight purplish tint but otherwise very similar to ChiWing in terms of brightness and color temp (~9000K)

SpectrumLEDs 8,000 mcd - just a hint of blue but too dim compared to current state-of-the-art LEDs and they seem to degrade in brightness very quickly even at 20 mA, ~8000K color temp

LCK 12,000 mcd - probably the nicest (i.e. least tint) of the bunch but still too blue for my tastes, actually measured 21,000 mcd, thus exceeding specs by a large margin, ~8000K color temp

warden_jp2002 26,000 mcd - met brightness claims, overall a very nice white with just a hint of blue (one batch was a little bluer than the other), very similar to LCK overall but maybe just very slightly bluer, ~8000K color temp

I have on order BestHongKong's UWLC series 25,000 mcd white which is claimed to provide a better white than their previous LEDs. Color temp is said to be ~7000K. My own preference lies strongly in the 5500K to 6500K band so I might be happy with these.

I'm also ordering some of lvehk's 35,000 mcd whites. I'll see how these compare to my 26,000 mcd.

Finally, I'm trying some of LCK's new warm whites. I'm personally not a fan of warm white anything but these may come in handy lighting older HO trains where the whiter light of regular white LEDs is inappropriate. Also, since the color temp of most white LEDs is too high to imitate even fluorescent lighting maybe mixing warm and cool whites might give me something close to the ~4000K to 5000K I need to imitate most commercial and residential fluorescent lighting.

Gee Thanx for the awesome reply. Ya Im just ordering like crazy over ebay right now and LCK is on the top of my list. I personally hated bestofHongKong but I guess for some people that tint would be condusive. Im doing more decorative stuff with my LEDS....Star Ceilings, FiberOptics like this pair of glasses I am making...




I got EL riding on the sides and sequenced dancing/Fading Green/Blue LEds with the Solid Spacy LUCID Whites as the threashold ----the Clean ones that hit you right in the face! If Aliens are using LEDS, Im sure they'd be using the bluish tiint ones. BestofHngKong reminds me too much of a halogen even though its not a noticable difference until you compare it to the others. LSDiodes seems to make a great LED---Too bad they are pushing $3 a shot.
Well, Thanx again

Thanx again for those great recommendations JTR....your description of warden_jp2002's 26000's sold me with that slight off blue tint but it seems he does not have any in stock...I messaged him but in the meantime I am looking for something juist like that 5mm 26000mcd slight blue Tint. Plz anybody else plz feel free to come in here and personal experiences of White LED manufacturers to this list. I might eventually start a new thrad bout this too but I am alos looking for those real Deep Blues. BEstofHongKong has a greenish tint that I dont like.....Im looking for the blue that leans more towards the Purple that the green. Oh ya, and SuperBright as well.

Cool project! It kind of reminds me of an elaborate LED sign I saw on a store along Fifth Avenue a few blocks from Rockefeller Center this January. Basically, the sign resembled a crown of LEDs but I can't for the life of me remember the name of the store.

Yeah, the only way to really tell which LEDs you'll like is to order them and see for yourself. We all have different preferences. Also, I'm still not really sure about the consistency of what you get on eBay. You might get a great batch one order, and then something yucky the next. Good luck with you LED projects!

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OrizonComes said:
Thanx again for those great recommendations JTR....your description of warden_jp2002's 26000's sold me with that slight off blue tint but it seems he does not have any in stock...I messaged him but in the meantime I am looking for something juist like that 5mm 26000mcd slight blue Tint. Plz anybody else plz feel free to come in here and personal experiences of White LED manufacturers to this list. I might eventually start a new thrad bout this too but I am alos looking for those real Deep Blues. BEstofHongKong has a greenish tint that I dont like.....Im looking for the blue that leans more towards the Purple that the green. Oh ya, and SuperBright as well.

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I think warden_jp2002 got out of the LED business. He hasn't had any in stock for literally months. As I said, LCK seems pretty close to his in terms of color so you'll probably like them. They have the slight bluish tint you're looking for without any green. They have both 12,000 mcd and 26,000 mcd (and also maybe 20,000 mcd). Someone tested these against Nichias. They liked the color better but there were lifetime issues when overdriven (which I don't recommend doing with 5mm LEDs anyway).

1st pic I thought you bad a bra on you head!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

That's a prett cool pair of sunnies you have there. How do they look in daylight?

They are actuially the Oakleys "overtheTOp" frame that were designed for runners so they wont fall off there head: I rigged them up with Fiberoptics and lowred the Tint so I can wear them out at night.

Re: Brightest cleanest WHITE on the Market. Ebay?L

hahahha, I had to turn the brightness on my monitor to max before I could tell that they were sunglasses. I thought it was a GITD bra at first!! hehe

EDIT: Doh, Oddball just pointed out the same!

Re: Brightest cleanest WHITE on the Market. Ebay?L

The BestHongKong's UWLC series LEDs came today. I measured them at 17,500 mcd @ 20 mA (the specs say the range is 14,000 to 25,000 mcd even though they're advertised as 25,000 mcd). OrizonComes mentioned that BestHongKong looks like a halogen next to other white LEDs. That's somewhat true when it's next to the typical bluish-white variety. However, I have to say, at least in my opinion, that these are the best whites I've seen (except perhaps the Nichia C0 bin). In isolation they're neither too yellow nor too blue. I held them up to my 5000K fluorescent and a Q3 Luxeon. They were pretty close to both, maybe coming in at a color temp of 5000K to 5500K. This makes them perfect for imitating fluorescent lighting in models, or any light where you just want pure white. Now I wonder how consistent they are from batch to batch? Anyone have any experiences there?

Re: Brightest cleanest WHITE on the Market. Ebay?L

My question man, is why? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Re: Brightest cleanest WHITE on the Market. Ebay?L

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pradeep1 said:
My question man, is why? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

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Because I might be using them in train lighting kits which I mass produce and need to know if I can expect the same color from batch to batch. I've found that although most of the cheap eBay white LEDs are decent enough, you really don't know what to expect tint-wise from batch to batch.