Trailrunner & BarryP:

You guys are light years ahead of me on this LED stuff, which is yet another great reason to read this forum. My intro to LEDs came from the boating angle, and in the mid-'90s I bought a cockpit light from Davis, a single LED in a plastic "fresnel" lens that was $50 and was hard to see from 2 feet away on a pitch-black night. It was a joke! Felt like I wasted my money and so I ignored LEDs for years -- too many years. Looks like there's been great leaps in the technology.

I got back into it in recent months to replace the G-4 base, 12v halogen bulbs on the boat -- the LED ones (compared to a 10w halogen) use 1/10th the power, last 'forever' and don't produce heat, and I've found them for about $13 each, and have replaced 5 so far.

But back to hiking and LED flashlights -- my purchases over the past 5 years mistakenly have been from outlet/surplus catalogues selling cheap or OUTDATED LED headlights and flashlights -- some I bought were just 'toys.' Now you've revealed this site, so I won't be making that mistake anymore.

A few questions, after reading up on Wikipedia and elsewhere on LEDs:

So was the 1st big breakthrough for LED flashlights: the Luxeon light 'bulb' by Philips, followed by the Cree LED light? (That's probably way too simple.) Are these patented processes that manufacturers get a license to produce in China, or are they made by those companies that apparently hold the patent and then sold to the flashlight makers?

That wikipedia article talked about yet another more efficient LED coming out now by Seoul Semiconductors and then Nichia Corp. that are even more efficient. So our Luxeon flashlight today will be supersceded by those latter two tomorrow?

I saw that these Cree lights have aluminum housings since, unlike my G-4-base LEDs on the boat, they said they do get hot and the housing acts as a heat sink. You have any thoughts or experiences on that?

Man, an $11 AA Cree flashlight -- what a deal, even if shipped OASBFC (on a slow boat from China). BarryP, on another thread you mentioned that Cree P4 lantern. Do either of you have one? Any opinions? For $14, I can give it double duty camping and as a backup anchor light if it's decent quality. Thanks for the info.