While new product announcements from Philips aren’t unusual, this specific announcement is. Ever since the Luxeon Rebel was announced years ago, Philips has forged ahead with their own unique LED package and solder footprint, making the lives of DIYers a little more difficult when it came to mixing and matching LEDs, at least on multi-LED MCPCBs. With the announcement of the Luxeon Q though, that may be changing.
The Luxeon Q adopts an industry standard 3535 package size and solder footprint. While that may be Greek to many of you, you may know it as the same footprint that Cree has been using in the XP and XT series of LEDs. This will start to make things simpler when it comes to mixing LEDs on 3-up, 4-up and more-up MCPCBs that have become more readily available of late.
For now, the Luxeon Q is limited to just white hues, but that is likely to change over the next year. If that is the case, then this will make it a breeze to fill in some of the spectral gaps that Cree has left open. Again, the positive is that it’s now possible to mix and match Luxeon and Cree (and other 3535 format) LEDs on a common 3535 format multi-LED MCPCB.
The negative unfortunately is that the LED isn’t a groundbreaking performer. It trails behind the Cree XP-G2 in output and efficiency, but that’s not usually why we buy Luxeon LEDs. Even with this dip in performance, Philips legendary color performance is still there, which many consider to be much better than equivalent Cree offerings. Either way, the LED is no slouch, and will be another worthy lineup to any DIYers arsenal.
The brief stats are as follows:
- Available in 2700K, 3000K, 3500K, 4000K, and 5700K bins
- 1050mA max current
- Efficiency of 129lm/W @ 350mA (5700K, 85C)
- 305lm max at 1000mA (5700K)
- 2.99v forward voltage at 1000mA
