The challenge in high CRI lights is the phosphors. The LED emits essentially a single wavelength of light, the phosphors are responsible for converting that singe wavelength into other wavements. High CRI requires a very broad spectrum of output, and that is almost always a challenge. You can see this problem in the history books. Most here are not old enough to know what Color Television looked like in its first decade. The picture was actually pretty dim. The problem was the performance of the red phosphor, and it took almost a decade find a solution to that problem. A rare earth based phosphor was developed in early 1960's that allowed color Television pictures to get much brighter. There is a very good analogy with fluorescent lamps. They make white light the same way LED's do, with phosphors. In the late 1980's I had a seemingly intractable lighting problem in the family room of my house. I went to a lighting specialist who suggest I utilize some (at the time) exotic fluorescent lamps. They were high CRI F40 lamp made by GE. In case quantities they just over $9 EACH from the local GE wholesaler. They were so expensive that no retailer in his right mind would carry them! GE also had series of Fluorescent lamps with extraordinarily high CRI, the Chroma series. IIRC the Chroma 50 had a CRI of 93. That was the good news, the bad news was the F40 version had a tough time even putting out 2000 lumens (Today's better F40's can deliver about 3400 lumens). It was discontinued because it couldn't meet the mandated energy efficiency standards. The basic problem is that phosphors that have very high efficiency and put out the right wavelength tend to be difficult to create and difficult to manufacture, which means expensive. When you are building a product for a mass market (which is what LED makers are after these days) every penny in cost counts.
Good post sir.
9 1980's dollars per bulb? That'd be like what, $20 today? Each? Holy cow man!!
When I was young, lighting was lighting. It kinda came down to whether you could see or not.... not anything like does my purple African violet look blue at night. And you put away your socks in the daytime with dark blue to one side, light colored between and black on the other side. We did ok.
Oh and those Sony Trinatrons? wow, Wow WOW what a boon they were. Of course my parents hadn't forgotten WW2 so no Japanese tv was going to be used in our house. Zenith or RCA or a Sears tv were required. Yet when gasoline reached 75¢ and lines were long, somehow a Toyota was ok. lol. My dad was a Ford guy through and through but he wouldn't touch a Pinto with a 10 foot (3m) pole... even before they exploded.
Anyway, we had Kel-Lites and Radio Shack made Kel-Lite knock offs back then. Mom had a 4c Maglite at one point.
I remember a time when light bulbs made your house look like an aquarium... all blue tinted like. But we got through without the need for psychotropic drugs. So when the LED flashlight could surpass 75 lumens and not look purple nobody complained.
To me, those high cri lights appear like lights when I was younger and it was obviously an artificial source. I suppose its because my eyes have gotten used to the cooler end of the tint spectrum and when a light puts out a beam without what folks call tint shift, my brain thinks its pretty close to sunlight.
I grew up at a time where hospital rooms had ashtrays, pop sprayed around the foundation of the house with now banned termite killer, and paint still contained lead. So maybe years of absorbing all those toxins has clouded my eyeballs, but I just don't see the charm in all these 90+ CRI lights. 75-80 works just fine to my brain.
