LedRise LED Lighting Blog

As a manufacturer, we want to use the most powerful LEDs in our LED strips and modules. We focus especially on mid-power LEDs that typically consume less than 0.3 watts of power, are fairly small, and require minimal or no cooling. A large part of our products use these LEDs.

Before selecting the most powerful LED for our products, we compared more than a dozen models from leading LED manufacturers: Nichia, Osram Opto Semiconductors, Samsung, Philips Lumileds, LG Innotek, Seoul Semiconductor, Cree, Everlight.

For a meaningful comparison, we have selected LEDs that operate at 65 mA with a voltage between 2.75 and 3.2 V, divided into three groups:

Cold white (5000-6500K), CRI 80+, for linear fluorescent lamp replacement (LED tubes) or luminaires for office or industry.
Warm white (2700K-3900K), CRI 80+, is normally used in LED lamps, linear luminaires, cove lamps, desk lamps, normally for residential and catering applications.
Warm white (2700K-3900K), CRI 90+, with applications in luxury lighting, professional linear luminaires, cove luminaires for the commercial and gastronomic sector.
For each category, we compare luminous flux and luminous efficacy at the usual "laboratory temperature" barrier of 25ºC and more realistic 100ºC. The comparative data are those from the manufacturer's data sheet.

Linear lamps are light sources preferred in the office and commercial sectors, with billions of linear lamps installed in buldings across the world, operating 11 hours, on average, daily. Summed up, the office and commercial sectors account for near half of the lighting electricity consumed on the planet.

Upgrading this lighting time with LED fixtures should have beneficial results if LED linear fixtures are environmental friendly with focus on energy efficiency, durability, and exclusion of dangerous substances.

The lamps they replace, with fluorescent tubes, are not environmental friendly because of short lifespan, high mercury content and UV light emissions.  

White light has different shades  and while there is no general consensus, warm white light for LEDs has a value of 2500K-4000K on the color temperature scale, pure white 4000K-5000K and cold white 5000K-10.000K.

Warm white LEDs, as with all manufactured products, have material and process variations that yield products with corresponding variation in the shade of white light emitted.  For example Nichia warm white LEDs just out of the production line can have a color temperature between 2580K and 4260K.  If they would be directly integrated into strips or luminaries they will yield color inconsistent products that are generally unusable. 

 To overcome this problem, LEDs must be color sorted by the manufacturer with additional further sorting down the supply chain, if necessary. 

Color sorted LEDs are grouped in batches known as "Chromaticity Bins". Nichia, as a LED manufacturer, groups white LEDs in many Bins, thus allowing very good control of the white light color of your project.

The Nichia Bins for new generation LEDs start with the letters "sm" follower by a series of numbers, where the frist two describe the color temperature (65 as in 6500K) while the last two narrow down the selection interval.

Nichia also offers color sorting in 3step, 5step and 7step MacAdam ellipses. While a detailed explanation of LED color sorting can be found here, we recommend that you choose the color sorting based on your project:

• General Lighting: 3step
• Ambient Lighting: 3step or 5step, where 5step could be more affordable
• Street and Christmas lighting: 7step
• Flashlights:  5step or 7step

Our Nichia Maxline LED modules are perfectly suited for  linear lamps or fixtures with superior performance.

Integrated into a linear LED fixture, the Nichia Maxline modules can easily surpass the performance targets for effective and economical sound replacement of fluorescent tubes. This outstanding results arise from the use of Nichia 757 Mid-Power LEDs with the highest performance on the market.

Our Nichia Performer Flexible LED Strip is designed for projects involving cove, case or shelf lighting and architectural back-lighting. It uses Mid-Power LEDs with the highest performance on the market as of today, the Nichia 757G series.