11 ms·
Have to say the evolution in LEDs has been pretty amazing. First we had terrible yellow fragile maglites that requires several large C or D cells for anything
by sliken 10y ago
Have to say the evolution in LEDs has been pretty amazing.
First we had terrible yellow fragile maglites that requires several large C or D cells for anything approaching reasonable brightness and battery life. I had my small maglite die at the bottom of the grand canyon, and the top of MT shasta. After trying to replace a tiny incandescent bulb in the dark in challenging conditions I decided I was switching to LEDs, no matter what the compromise was.
Similar monitors had broad spectrum CFLs that generated UV, converted it to white light with a phosphor then threw away most of the light and filtered it down to approximately R, G, and B. The resulting color accuracy was terrible.
LEDs started out expensive, not very bright, and mostly red. Migrated to different colors, I think blue was the most expensive.
Finally white LEDs started showing up in tiny AA or AAA flashlights with 50-75 lumens. About as bright as the 2xAA maglite that were huge in comparison.
Color coverage got better, life got better, efficiency started ramping up.
100-200 lumen flashlights started to become more common. 18650s that have substantially more power and a more LED friendly 3.7V started to appear.
Year or two later 400-500 lumens were common, efficiency kept increasing. Started to appear as backlights, car dash boards, brake lights, etc.
CFLs switched from wasting 95% of the light to ditching the white phosphors for a mix of RGB phosphors. The savings were twofold and multiplicative. The first was generating UV -> RGB directly with mix of RGB phosphors in the CFL. Then additionally instead of narrow notch filters that didn't pass much light they switched to very wide spectrum filters that passed most of the light. So a red pixel didn't need to be within 1% of red, but instead just block 99% of G and B. Since the RGB phosphors emitted very close to the ideal frequencies the color accuracy increased. Monitor power requirements dropped significantly.... only to be killed off by more efficient LEDs.
Things doubled again, small ish flashlights much like the 2xAA maglites except fatter. 1000 lumens hitting $50-$100 points points. Now throwing a usable light 300 Meters isn't unusual from a small hand held light. Depending on your use recharging once a month isn't unusual. 4-or 5 light levels are common, and runtimes of 1.5 hours (max light) to 100 or more hours (on low) aren't uncommon.
So now macbook pros that are extremely thin (greatly helped by very tiny LEDs for backlights) get 10 hours of battery light with 500 nit screens with wonderful color accuracy. Similarly even 55" LED screens are crazy high resolution and crazy cheap. The cost per pixel doesn't seem on that crazy different than the cost per transistor.
Sadly like Moore's law, LEDs aren't getting much better anymore. For the first time I purchased a new flashlight after 2-3 years... and the best I could find was zero % brighter 8-(.
It's not just computers that have been improving like crazy.
- icanhackit 10y agoGreat comment. It reminded me of the various technologies that have matured over the last 10-20 years which at the time were exciting but are now standard fare: Bright energy-efficient LED lighting, touch screen phones, optical image stabilisation, SSD's, large LCD & OLED display panels, fast internet, wireless networks. Now intelligent sous vide circulators the size of handheld blenders are cheap enough for the average person to try it out, electric cars are desirable, full-frame and medium format mirrorless cameras are becoming more and more affordable, phase-detection is expected in phone camera sensors...I could go on but when you stand back and look at the body of advancement from the last 10 years you'd need to be crazy to be underwhelmed. We've seen rockets lands on drone barges in rough seas.
- exhilaration 10y agoI need new flashlights and you seem more knowledgeable than the average Amazon reviewer -- give us some links!
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y agocandlepowerforums
- sliken 10y agoHeh, yeah, that's the center of the crazy flashlight nerds. For keychain stuff it doesn't matter much, anything with a few buttons, AAA, or AA will do the trick. If you want to see across parks, tops of distant trees, flag down helicopters, etc then get an 18650 based light. Fenix is a good place to start, but there's many companies that made good lights. Even $50-$60 buys a hell of a light .
- vvanders 10y ago+1 on Fenix, Eagletac is another great reasonably priced brand that I've found held up well over the last few years.
- aembleton 10y ago