Halogen Bulbs’ Days are Numbered: New Cree LEDs Deliver Unmatched Brightness, Color Quality and Consistency

Pushing LED brightness, color quality and consistency to new levels, Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE), a market leader in LED lighting, announces another step in eradicating today’s energy-wasting halogen light sources. New XLamp^® MT-G LEDs deliver higher brightness levels, unparalleled color quality and proven lighting-class reliability.

The new MT-G LED is now more than 10 percent brighter, and can deliver up to 1670 lumens at 85C in warm white (3000K) color temperatures. Additionally, MT-G LEDs are now available in high CRI versions optimized for applications such as retail and restaurant lighting where high CRI and lighting uniformity are required. These new capabilities can enable customers to extend existing MT-G designs, and enable new applications traditionally supported by halogen light sources.

USAI Lighting is one of the first lighting manufacturers to incorporate the new MT-G high-CRI LED into a luminaire—its award-winning NanoLED^® lighting solution. The Cree MT-G-based NanoLED provides designers with color quality, efficiency, flexibility and control via proprietary optics to bridge striking aesthetics with functional application in a variety of interior installations.

"We have a relentless focus on providing only the best—and superior color quality is an essential part to ensuring our customers a high-performing lighting solution,” said Bonnie Littman, president of USAI Lighting. "Being able to offer our customers halogen-like color and brightness along with the energy-efficient benefits of LEDs is going to be a game-changer.”

"Cree MT-G LEDs are the flagship product to bring real freedom to lighting OEMs,” said Mike Watson, Cree, senior director of marketing, LED components. "Real freedom is providing options to customers who want the ability to order their LEDs in 2-step or 4-step color consistency at many color points. Cree was the first in the industry to offer LED components binned at operating temperature. Combine all of that with commercially-available parts, and that’s the advantage Cree brings to its customers.”

XLamp MT-G LEDs are now available with brighter flux and with 90-minimum CRI options. Cree also offers more than 6,000 hours of IESNA LM-80 published lifetime data, which can assist lighting manufacturers with ENERGY STAR^® qualification. With color temperature options ranging from 2700K to 5000K, all MT-G LEDs are available in 2- and 4-step EasyWhite^™ color temperatures, with the option of either 6V or 36V forward voltages. The full range of MT-G LEDs are available for sampling immediately, and production volumes are available with standard lead times.

Visitors to the Hong Kong International Lighting Fair, October 27-30, can see XLamp MT-G LEDs at Cree’s booth 1D-E16. For more information on MT-G LEDs visit mtg.cree.com.

About Cree

Cree is leading the LED lighting revolution and making energy-wasting traditional lighting technologies obsolete through the use of energy-efficient, mercury-free LED lighting. Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, LED lighting, and semiconductor products for power and radio-frequency (RF) applications.

Cree’s product families include LED fixtures and bulbs, blue and green LED chips, high-brightness LEDs, lighting-class power LEDs, power-switching devices and RF devices. Cree products are driving improvements in applications such as general illumination, electronic signs and signals, power supplies and solar inverters.

For additional product and company information, please refer to www.cree.com. To learn more about the LED Lighting Revolution, please visit www.creeledrevolution.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. Actual results may differ materially due to a number of factors, including the risk that we may be unable to manufacture these new products with sufficiently low cost to offer them at competitive prices or with acceptable margins; the risk we may encounter delays or other difficulties in ramping up production of our new products; customer acceptance of the new products; the rapid development of new technology and competing products that may impair demand or render Cree’s products obsolete; and other factors discussed in Cree’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 26, 2011, and subsequent filings.

Cree and XLamp are registered trademarks and EasyWhite is a trademark of Cree, Inc.
USAI and NanoLED are registered trademarks of USAI, LLC.
ENERGY STAR is a registered trademark of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.