swampgator said:
How white did is the beam in yours? I put one in a 3D and it had a blue tint to it. My brother (who is knowledgeable in those areas) said that a "white" LED will throw a blue tint. He said a "clear" LED will throw pure white. He thinks Mag is using white LEDs.
Mine is actually very white. But this will vary depending on batch and manufacturer.
All white LED's have clear epoxy casings because there's no sense in tinting or frosting them. There is no such thing as a "clear" white LED by virtue of the fact that they're all "clear."
Also, all white LED's are manufactred in and operate in a two-stage process: White LED's begin life as blue LED's, which also output a significant amount of near UV (try aiming a blue LED at something glow in the dark, for instance). There's a phosphor coating over the die of the blue LED that's very similar to the stuff in flourescent lights. It takes the blue light and the UV from the LED and flouresces white. Well, mostly white, because the stuff logically can't be 100 percent efficient and a small amount of that blue light escapes, tinting the output of the LED blue.
Depending on the phosphor and its quality the actual light output can be bluish (most common) to nearly pure white, greenish, and yes, sometimes yellowish - But always brilliantly white compared to the normal red-hot-wire-in-a-bottle style light bulb.
In terms of sheer photons thrown, blue LED's are the most powerful and most efficient we have today. In terms of mathematical usefulness green LED's are the winner, since the human eye can see green the best. However, white light is the most functionally useful, especially if you experiment by comparing similarly powered LED and traditional flashlights looking for details in the dark.