Give us what we want manufacturers... Hi CRI Neutral White emitters(poll to prove it)

[recDNA]

Cool. I would love a triple Nichia A in a magbetic control wheel infinite adjustment light like an rrt-0 or v11r.

I used to prefer cool white myself but now my preference is 4000-5000 kv with highest cri possible. I love triple Nichia but Nichia A and Nichia B are a toss up. Since B has more output I lean toward B but if it looks green to you you might prefer Nichia A. It has a slightly pink hue but reds really pop.

 

[Tachead]

Yeah, we definitely need more Nichia options. It would be nice to see some new HI CRI emitter options as well. Come on engineers, give as a high output 90+ CRI emitter with no tint shift in 4500-5000K NW:rock:

 

[recDNA]

I don't mind cool white for high power flashlights but for indoors or in the woods HiCRI is the way to go.

 

[GoingGear.com]

Unless there is a radical shift in consumer preferences, it's just not going to happen. I've been on CPF a decent amount of time and love spending time on here, but listening to CPF is a good way to severely limit sales for production manufacturers. Enthusiasts are not aligned with the mass market in pretty much any industry. We want better, faster, stronger, higher performance, etc. and all that costs more and requires more knowledge/preference than the average consumer wants or will ever have. Even spending $50 on a flashlight is crazy to a lot of people.

So, let's go down the list of some of the ones I see a lot:

High CRI? The average consumer overwhelmingly prefers cool white. You might think it's salesman bias, lumens, whatever, but we show people the beams side by side all the time without telling them anything about lumens, tint and what it means, or anything else and they usually want the cool white. Even when we explain the benefits of the higher CRI, they want the cool white. I personally prefer neutral and High CRI, but it would be foolish to discount what the majority of the market wants. There is definitely a large part of that cool white group that just wants max lumens and doesn't care about tint at all, but we see over and over that people just like cool white tint better.

Strobe? That's the #2 thing people ask us for after max lumens, but you would think it gives you mega-cancer if you read CPF.

Beacon/SOS? I have yet to talk to a customer that has used SOS in a real-life situation, but people want it. I know a lot of people that use beacon on a regular basis, mostly for letting people know where they are with increased visibility.

Aggressive Strike Bezels? People love them and we sell them all day long.

Green tint? The Olight M2X has a pretty darn green tint, but it has a beam distance of 800m and that's all people care about. They usually comment on how it is green as they walk up to the register to buy it and then again when they come to buy a second one for a friend. Granted, we do have a lot of enthusiast customers who do not like green, but they are the exception, like everything else above. Heck, a lot of hunters look specifically for green tint because they say some animals that cannot see the color (not sure of the truth on that).

As others have mentioned, neutral and High CRI inventory just sits on the shelf. Several people have pointed out FOURSEVENS and I can tell you that they are not an isolated case. We see far lower sales with anything other than cool white across the board. The one exception is headlamps. Cool white headlamps still sell better, but not with quite as dramatic of a difference. Spark is the only brand I can think of where the sales are even close, but they admittedly do a great job of choosing tints for their neutral models.

My point is that a lot of people like and use things that we don't like and that's not a bad thing. There will always be the niche guys that make the tints, interfaces, features, etc. that we want and there will always be the mass market guys that make what everyone else wants.

 

[Cerealand]

Cool white just sells better. Thank you goinggear for providing input.

 

[markr6]

They usually comment on how it is green as they walk up to the register to buy it and then again when they come to buy a second one for a friend.

Man, spending over $100 for a friend? I contemplate a $100 purchase for days or weeks just for MYSELF! I love my friends, but not that much

 

[the.Mtn.Man]

High CRI? The average consumer overwhelmingly prefers cool white. You might think it's salesman bias, lumens, whatever, but we show people the beams side by side all the time without telling them anything about lumens, tint and what it means, or anything else and they usually want the cool white. Even when we explain the benefits of the higher CRI, they want the cool white. I personally prefer neutral and High CRI, but it would be foolish to discount what the majority of the market wants. There is definitely a large part of that cool white group that just wants max lumens and doesn't care about tint at all, but we see over and over that people just like cool white tint better.

I think this is simply because cool white is brighter, whether actual or perceived. People generally don't care about any of that other stuff because in their mind, the brighter the flashlight, the more they're getting for the money no matter how little sense this mindset makes. It's like when people buy new speakers: Their first inclination, without fail, is to see how loud the speakers can go. They don't care about clarity, or accurately reproducing the nuance of the music, or whether they'll ever actually use them at that volume. If it's loud then they must be getting their money's worth. It's tthe same reason that cars have speedometers capable of registering speeds that the vast majority of consumers will never even approach.

 

[recDNA]

I always preferred cool white until I needed better color rendering for certain activities in biology lab. I still prefer HiCri nearer 5000k than 3000k. I never liked incandescent bulbs at home because they are too yellow. I do like some high power incandescent flashlights but they are far cooler than my old brown beam maglights. I do like HiCri. I do not like warm light for the sake of warm light. A lot of these warm or neutral led's have Cri in low 70's, no better than some cool led. Give me 5500k and CRI 100 and I would be a happy camper.

 

[twistedraven]

Give me 5500k and CRI 100 and I would be a happy camper.

I wish I had sunlight in my pocket too.

 

[recDNA]

Might be a little toasty! Seriously though...a lot of people seem to confuse warm light with high CRI. If you like yellow tint it's fine with me but it isn't "better" any more than 5500k is better....just a personal preference. Arguably however...HiCRI IS better.

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

Might be a little toasty! Seriously though...a lot of people seem to confuse warm light with high CRI. If you like yellow tint it's fine with me but it isn't "better" any more than 5500k is better....just a personal preference. Arguably however...HiCRI IS better.

If you want a warm tint with a horrible CRI, just use low-pressure sodium lighting, common for street lights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index#Typical_values

A warm colour temp of 1800K, and a CRI of -44. Yes, negative 44! It's a monochromatic yellow light source. No colour visibility possible with it.

 

[H-Man]

I've actually had an electrical issue that was caused by using a low CRI flashlight.

On some cars, the wireing harness color codes make it extremely easy to cross wires when the color fades due to age. On my car, one of the easier to cross pairs of wires cause the radio, and anything related to the door sensor (dome light, headlamp buzzer, etc) to go dead because the fuse blows. I got the car cheap because of that electrical issue. I wouldn't have found the issue if it wasn't for my LED light going dead and thus forcing me to use my streamlight ultrastinger to finish the job.

 

[soul347]

I personally prefer a warm neutral tint for headlamps such as the one on my Armytek Wizard Pro. I prefer a cooler white for my handheld flashlights. I think this is because with headlamps I intend to do more close up work, so I like warmer, diffused light up close. For handheld flashlights, I want something brighter with a bit of throw.

Perhaps another reason why people generally like cool white is that overly warm light tends to give the impression that it is comparable to the old incandescent bulbs of flashlights.

 

[Derek Dean]

Unless there is a radical shift in consumer preferences, it's just not going to happen. I've been on CPF a decent amount of time and love spending time on here, but listening to CPF is a good way to severely limit sales for production manufacturers. Enthusiasts are not aligned with the mass market in pretty much any industry. We want better, faster, stronger, higher performance, etc. and all that costs more and requires more knowledge/preference than the average consumer wants or will ever have. Even spending $50 on a flashlight is crazy to a lot of people.

Thanks for taking the time to post. I think those of us who've been around this forum for a while understand your points. It's usually the new enthusiast who comes here and suddenly discovers a neutral tinted light for the first time, and then wonders why all the manufacturers haven't jumped on this bandwagon, and you've explained it perfectly.

The manufacturers ARE giving people what they want. That's how they stay in business. It's also why many folks here have learned to do their own modding of lights, so that they can make a lights that fits their particular needs and desires.

Facts and figures tell the story. We are a niche market.

 

[RGB_LED]

High CRI? The average consumer overwhelmingly prefers cool white.

Strobe? That's the #2 thing people ask us for after max lumens, but you would think it gives you mega-cancer if you read CPF.

Beacon/SOS? I have yet to talk to a customer that has used SOS in a real-life situation, but people want it. I know a lot of people that use beacon on a regular basis, mostly for letting people know where they are with increased visibility.

Aggressive Strike Bezels? People love them and we sell them all day long.

Green tint? The Olight M2X has a pretty darn green tint, but it has a beam distance of 800m and that's all people care about. They usually comment on how it is green as they walk up to the register to buy it and then again when they come to buy a second one for a friend.

There will always be the niche guys that make the tints, interfaces, features, etc. that we want and there will always be the mass market guys that make what everyone else wants.

Thanks GG and Henry for your comments - it was very interesting to see. Btw, all those 4 things mentioned (strobe, SOS, Strike Bezels, Green tint) are things I personally dislike!

I think there were some very insightful comments especially the observation that the vast majority of consumers are not very picky about what features appear in their flashlight - they just want a light. For most of us CPF'ers, we have become, for lack of a better descriptor, picky. But, this is like many other hobbys out there: i have friends who have to have certain clothes or shoes, some need to have 5-point safety harnesses and certain speed-rated tires on their cars and some will only ever use certain Japanese kitchen knives for their food prep. The list goes on. I guess when you immerse yourself into some hobby, you tend to specialize and expect more.:shrug:

I'm not holding my breath that we will see more High CRI NW but I will do what I can to encourage more manufacturers and sellers to offer them by only purchasing flashlights or LED dropins with those attributes.

Who knows? None of us ever thought we "needed" to have a smartphone to constantly be able to surf the net and check emails. Perhaps one day, everyone will need to have high CRI NW lights!

 

[AMD64Blondie]

My Peak Eiger brass High CRI is growing on me.

(I really like it.)