[Cat-man-do]

I moved this post over from the Cheap Chinese lamp thread so the discussion would not pull the other thread off topic.

For the heck of it I looked up the info on the so called "fake Cree" LED's made by Latticebright ( Chinese company ). The data available on their XM-L2 clone ( known as the XM ) is limited. There is no dedicated data sheet like Cree but there is some information. Anyway I compared what info there is to the Cree XM-L2 data sheets and here's what I came up with...

Comparing at 700ma, 85°C...Minimum expectations ( cool white? ) U2;

Cree XM-L2 U2....300 lumen

Chinese Latticebright XM ( bin unknown )....240 lumen ( typical is listed as 300 lumen )

Cree did not list a typical output at this level although likely it is somewhere around 350-360 lumen.

I'm not saying I would want a lamp made with the Chinese LED's but the tech behind the Chinese LED's is not too far behind the Cree LED's. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if Cree tried to buy the Chinese company just so there is no confusion in the market place between the two. Heck, they now have Chinese Kentucky Fried Chicken, why not a Chinese Cree.

 

[ledoman]

I would like to add link to the BLF thread here about fake or let say cheap Chinese clones. It is just the people can read and see what are differencies found in the wild.

So here is it. - The Fake-Cree LED Awareness Thread - The new "low" in Budget lights. | BudgetLightForum.com

 

[Vancbiker]

Without additional data, it is tough to decide just how far behind they are from Cree or other "high end" LEDs.

I'd really like to see what their output curve at high current is. IIRC XML is ~230% at 3A over the 700mA output.

 

[Cat-man-do]

Without additional data, it is tough to decide just how far behind they are from Cree or other "high end" LEDs.

I'd really like to see what their output curve at high current is. IIRC XML is ~230% at 3A over the 700mA output.

Yes I agree 100%.

I do have a problem with people calling these fake Crees. They are not fakes they are clones; similar but not the same. The company that makes them does not intend to sell them as Cree. They just want to make an emitter that can compete with the Crees. The fact that it looks a lot like the Cree LEDs should not be surprising. Basic form factors get copied all the time. Just look at smart phones, cars, TV's...etc.

Now if a manufacturer or seller tries to market these as "Cree" then the people doing that are making false claims. The Latticebright emitter boards themselves ( according to the photos I've seen ) seem to be well labeled. Of course this doesn't mean that someone who is selling the end product won't try to remove the labels and then claim they are Cree. Trying to ID the emitter by sight is not always going to be easy, even if you know what to look for.

Hopefully there will not be too many sellers doing this because if they do the services like Paypal will go crazy trying to refund money to people who received a product that turned out "Not" to be what they wanted when they placed the order.

 

[scar]

The company that makes them does not intend to sell them as Cree

They just happened to pick almost identical model/product names? Just different enough not to be noticed by most.

Nope, Lattice Bright and the companies using them are trying to confuse the uneducated that they are using Genuine Crees.

****

 

[Vancbiker]

..... Now if a manufacturer or seller tries to market these as "Cree" then the people doing that are making false claims. The Latticebright emitter boards themselves ( according to the photos I've seen ) seem to be well labeled. Of course this doesn't mean that someone who is selling the end product won't try to remove the labels and then claim they are Cree. Trying to ID the emitter by sight is not always going to be easy, even if you know what to look for.

Already happening as documented at BLF and some members here. They are Chinese manufacturers, they'll say and advertise whatever they think will sell more product.

Same with bins. They advertise U2 or whatever premium bin is hot, but IMO they are never putting premium bins in the lights. They can save some money by buying a couple grades lower on bins and the user has absolutely no way to tell the difference.

 

[Cat-man-do]

Already happening as documented at BLF and some members here. They are Chinese manufacturers, they'll say and advertise whatever they think will sell more product.

Same with bins. They advertise U2 or whatever premium bin is hot, but IMO they are never putting premium bins in the lights. They can save some money by buying a couple grades lower on bins and the user has absolutely no way to tell the difference.

^^..Yes, we've seen this before so I know it can happen. It doesn't mean that all the Chinese lamps will be using Latticebright emitters with fake Cree labeling.

The "what bin" issue has always been a problem because most times ( even for those who know about emitters ) it is impossible to tell if an emitter has a higher bin level unless there is some physical trait that can be easily observed.

They just happened to pick almost identical model/product names? Just different enough not to be noticed by most.

Nope, Lattice Bright and the companies using them are trying to confuse the uneducated that they are using Genuine Crees.

****

^^..Well if Latticebright had named their company "Crei" I might be more inclined to agree with you. "LM" is easy to identify from XM-L or XM-L2. How many lamps do we see with letters to mark the different brands or models...X2, XL, X11, XS...the letters get used by many brands and yes it gets confusing sometimes.

Yes, the people who don't know much about emitter tech are going to be confused but if they get something that works they won't know the difference or likely care as long as they are happy with what they bought. The people who will care are the people who know the differences and only want the best Cree bins. Unfortunately that means we are going to have to be more watchful when it comes to reviewing lamps claiming to use the better Cree emitters. At least for the time being there are some physical differences in the emitter builds that will allow the enlightened to tell the difference.

 

[Action LED Lights]

A couple of things to consider. When you buy led's you buy just the small object on the left in this photo, not the board it's mounted on. They're often mounted on a standard star board but many manufactures use a custom board like the Gemini one shown here. There are lots of board manufactures in China and you can have anything you want printed on that board.

CREE puts a lot of effort into making their led's efficient, bright and long lasting with their proprietary materials and manufacturing methods. Being able to withstand high temperatures has been a big advancement of theirs lately. The quoted life span of a CREE led is when it falls to 70% brightness, not when it stops working.
Cheap copies, even if they are bright to begin with will loose brightness quickly as they age. Especially if their getting hot, and a lot of lights have marginal cooling.
So that cheap clone may say CREE XM-L2 on the board but no easy way to tell what's actually mounted on it.

 

[Cat-man-do]

^^^...Jim I have to agree with everything you just said. I think where it's more likely to be a problem is with the cheaper, fly-by-night, no-brand-name Chinese made lamps. This might pose a problem for the Chinese internet sellers if they don't take the issue seriously. Likely we'll see this type of fraud all over ebay and most of the buyers won't even suspect anything is wrong ( just like with the false lumen claims or low quality batteries ).

I know this is wishful thinking on my part but I'm hoping that most of the lamps on the Chinese websites will not try to dupe the buyers by selling lamps with the LB emitters and then claiming they are Cree emitters. In the mean time it means that anyone buying a cheap Chinese lamp has something new to worry about unfortunately. Of course for anyone selling a brand named lamp with proven Cree emitters it means they have a new selling point to add to their marketing tactics.

 

[jjziets]

Here is an article comparing the Lattice Bright XML2 to the Cree XM-L2. Original post here

Fake Cree LED's Flood the market but how bad are they really?

As a local brand of high performance premium lights it is not possible to sell a product that will result in large returns. For that reason it is almost impossible to compete against cheap overrated lights that are so easily available online. Until 2015 customers that bought online from foreign mail order shops most likely also got top end LED's in there low cost lights. Although the rest of the light left much to be desired. But that has changed middle 2015 with the availability of low grade clone LED's that look nearly identical to the leading LED manufacturers on the markets. As of 2016 it is highly unlikely to get any cheap "free international shipping" light with an original Cree, Osram or Philips LED's. Regardless if the advert claims the moon and the stars. If you like to know more about how to identify the clone LED's read this.

Lattice Bright XML2 and Cree XM-L2 on Noctigon stars

But the real question remains. How good or how bad are these lookalike LED's really?

We set out to compare some of the clone LED's to their original counterparts. To simplify things we were interested to know how well these LED's convert electrical power to light, this is called Luminous efficacy. Considering temperature is the Achilles heel for LED's, we would also like to know how the Luminous efficacy is effected over a range of temperatures. Notoriously cheap lights does not have good heat conductivity, and that is where you will find Lattice Bright LED's.

First thing we did was to order two Lattice Bright XML2 LED's. The T6 bin was the best the agent could provide. We also asked for natural white (5000-5500K). After they confirmed the sample order we also asked for the same from our Cree agent, Cree XM-L2 T6 5000k. A few weeks later we got the samples.

The setup is simple: Using a custom built Isometric sphere we compared the Lattice Bright XML2 output intensity and measured the temperature of the star and the power(Voltage and Current) that was applied. We did the same with the Cree XM-L2 T6 5000k.

Before we show you the results here are a few observations and assumptions:

• Our Isometric sphere is not calibrated. We used the Cree XM-L2 T6
  Datasheets at 50deg as the reference point. Power and Lumens where calibrated accordingly
• Voltage was measured at the power supply not on the star of the LED. There were some drops in the wires but we compensated for that in the final results.
• Noctigon did not provide the LED's. We just used their copper stars to give each LED the best chance to perform.
• The equipment is not laboratory equipment and these results should be considered for general information.

Test Setup. 1 home made Isometric sphere , Lux meter, Digital power supply, Multimeter(Temp), OLD CPU Heat sink

Temperature was measured on the star as close as possible to the LED.

The testing results:

The first thing that was very noticeable was the colour difference between the two lights. The Lattice Bright XML2 T6 was horrific blue. The fact that we asked for natural white and got royal bluish white LED's should not be a big surprise considering the company we are dealing with.

Cree XM-L2 T6 5000k

Lattice Bright XML2 T6

The histogram shows clearly that the Lattice Bright LED's are producing a huge amount of high spectrum blue light. In contrast the over lap on the Cree lights is excellent and would produce very good Colour rending index.

As the temperature increased, the difference in Luminous efficacy increased as well. In fact at 100 deg the Lattice Bright are more than two bins lower than the Cree Counterpart. Effectively exhibiting the some or less performance characteristic of a T4 Bin. It is interesting to note that the junction voltage of the Lattice Bright LED's are not as heavily affected by the temperature as the Cree LED's. This is probably the only area where the Lattice Bright has any advantage over the Cree.

Conclusions

It was no surprise that the Lattice Bright XML2 T6 did not compare well against the Original Cree XM-L2 T6. The advantage at 35deg is not that big but as the temperature increases the Cree increases its lead. Sadly the difference is not really that big even at 100deg with only a 13.8% lag in Luminous efficacy of LB. If the quality (Colour) of the light was no concern one could be excused to think the lower price point and the marginal loss in light can be accepted. But that would be ignoring the fact that Cree XM-L2 comes out in much higher bins. The U3 bin would have a Luminous efficacy of 112 lumen/watt at 100deg compared to the 82.3 Lumen/watt of the LB LED at 100deg. What this test does not address is reliability but if build quality is anything to go by then the Lattice Bright LED's should be avoided.

Cheap lights are often plagued with bad thermal design and the use of low quality thermal past if any results in the LEDs running very hot. The effect is that this clones will find themself in host that would put them at a very big disadvantage to the higher quality and better performing Cree counterparts. This is just one more reason why brands add value to a product.

 

[Vancbiker]

Nice work! Confirms what most of us already thought.

 

[Cat-man-do]

....It was no surprise that the Lattice Bright XML2 T6 did not compare well against the Original Cree XM-L2 T6. The advantage at 35deg is not that big but as the temperature increases the Cree increases its lead. Sadly the difference is not really that big even at 100deg with only a 13.8% lag in Luminous efficacy of LB. If the quality (Colour) of the light was no concern one could be excused to think the lower price point and the marginal loss in light can be accepted. But that would be ignoring the fact that Cree XM-L2 comes out in much higher bins. The U3 bin would have a Luminous efficacy of 112 lumen/watt at 100deg compared to the 82.3 Lumen/watt of the LB LED at 100deg. What this test does not address is reliability but if build quality is anything to go by then the Lattice Bright LED's should be avoided.

Cheap lights are often plagued with bad thermal design and the use of low quality thermal past if any results in the LEDs running very hot. The effect is that this clones will find themself in host that would put them at a very big disadvantage to the higher quality and better performing Cree counterparts. This is just one more reason why brands add value to a product.

jjziets, Thanks very much for your post. Just looking at the photos you provided shows how very hard it is to identify the clone emitter.

My suspicion on the difference in color rendering between the two seems to be more than expected. I have a feeling that the Chinese are going to have a harder time duplicating the minute differences needed to produce dedicated bins and/or color/tint levels that the educated consumer is going to want.

Interesting that the LB emitter you received turned out to have such a bluish tint. Makes me wonder if the Chinese can even produce a true, "Neutral white" or warm white emitter. The real worry ( IMO ) is that they "WILL" produce warmer tinted emitters ( at some point ) and when they do they won't be so easy to identify.

 

[tigris99]

Nice work on the test, thanks for sharing.

Now if the Chinese sellers would stop saying the lights with these are Cree when their not it would be alot better for everyone.

Though if people would just stop buying those stupidly cheap lights problem solved lol.

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

 

[Action LED Lights]

One thing you couldn't test is performance over time. This is one thing CREE has really worked on. What happens after 10,000-20,000 hours of high temperature use? A CREE XM-L2 still has over 80% of it's output when driven at it's maximum 3A current for 35,000 hours. I doubt the clones come close to that.

 

[ledoman]

An old story reviwed. Guys at BLF has found very similar XM-L2 most would think they are geniue. I't looks somewhat this might be true.

Took that picture from BLF thread: LED test / review - Unknown 5050 SMD LED similar to XM-L2 - extremely surprising results, even better than the original?! | BudgetLightForum.com

I've spoted similar at friend of mine on a 2led headlight, but his picture is not clear enough to be 100% shure.