I've stayed completely away from driving the higher powered white LEDs, so far. But I'm interested in playing with some various boost driver designs of mine made from spare parts I make out of dead CFL lamps (it's fun to do) and I'd like to buy an "interesting" collection of roughly-1W category white LEDs for testing purposes. Right now, I don't have a single LED that requires more than about 100mW to drive.
I expect to buy perhaps a couple of dozen LEDs to make up a 'representative' variety that hobbyists are actually using in practice. But I'd like to add some interesting types, as well. For example, some with ball lenses in front. I only want to test with singles -- none of that 'tristar' stuff. (Probably, the 1W range limits that, anyway.) Operating currents in the 350mA to 500mA should be the bulk, but I also want to buy one or two 1A LEDs, just to play with. I also want to include a few at the extremities of color temperature, but the bulk should be in the 5500K-6000K range, I think. (I'm ignorant of what is going on in that area, so advice here is also good.) I'd like to get picks from various manufacturers, too. And based on various technologies and phosphors. I'd like to stay with ones that are known to last -- no point testing LEDs that rapidly age. And I'm concerned about overly complex heat sink situations, though I won't mind buying premade supplies for that if they are available, so some advice on this score for some LEDs that may be SMT and not so conducive to my jury-rigged setups may help in making selections where the LED is an SMT type may help me here, too.
Anyway, open to good experiences. Suppliers you've liked, as well. My temptation is to just buy only what I can find at Digikey and do the order, that way. But I know that may be too limiting and so I'm pretty sure I will need to pick these up from a variety of suppliers.
Thanks very much in advance, Jon