Originally Posted by jeff-o
They both drew the same amount of current, but the Luxeons were brighter and whiter than the knock-offs.
I looked into this issue a bit, and it turns out that those MXDL torched actually DO use Luxeons. I don't have positive proof, but here is what I found:
1) The actual appearance and size of the LED in the MXDL torches is absolutely identical to Lumileds' 3W emitter, down to the last small details.
2) I searched for competitors' products in the LED arena. Number of competitors who make a large LED like the Luxeon: NONE.
3) The only company getting even close to Lumileds is Japanese Nichia. It looked like a patent dispute was souring things between these two companies, but they have now shaken hands and joined forces. But Nichia can't produce a whopper like Lumileds' 1W, 3W or 5W LEDs - the technology is at this stage a closely guarded secret. If it were easy to make these, we would see the market flooded by knock-offs. We don't.
This begs the question, how to explain the differences you observed?
It turns out that Lumileds have recently improved their range, in both brightness as well as uniformity of color temperature. You must have gotten the new stuff, while the older stuff is still used in those torches.