Originally Posted by
pierce
I'm quite sure the Cree specs are talking about the whole LED... its all one chip, under a single bubble lens.
can you remove the reflector and lens entirely from your other Cree lights? I know you can on the magicshine style, just unscrew the bezel and the reflector lifts out. compare the brightness without the reflector assemblies and you'll have something more consistent to compare. XXX lumens in a 10 degree spot will be MUCH brighter than the same XXX lumens in a 30 degree spot (9 times as bright as its 9 times less area).
Old lamps are gone. The new lamps were so much brighter and so cheap that I got rid of the old lights this summer.
I also know what effect the reflector angle has on the beam from back when I ran halogens with 25 and 12 degree reflectors. I even had a 7 degree reflector which really concentrates the light. I was using the same halogen lamp...MR16...and driving them at 20% over nominal voltage. There was a difference in light but the difference wasn't as noticable as the difference between the 3 different emitters.