Yup, and they're nothing to sneeze at, at all.
I'm quite impressed by the newest generation LEDs I bought, to replace the aging LEDs on my hand made fixtures. The new ones:
- are smaller,
- have better color (warm/neutral white, versus what was labeled as "warm white" but ended up bluish, or purplish after several years' use),
- drop less voltage (about 2.8 vs. 3.6V),
- are much brighter,
- and run cooler (lower Tc).
Of course, doesn't help that the old ones were Chinese specials, like < $0.50/ea (ca. 2013 vintage), while the new ones are close to $1/ea. Even at Digi-Key prices, they'll pay themselves back over their lifetime.
And this is with a CC supply, so it's not like they're brighter just because Vf is lower. Actually, I had to adjust my desk lamp to run at lower currents anyway, because it's just too damn bright to use at full power in most room lighting conditions. (Namely, I had to increase the UC3842's aux supply, so it doesn't brown out and hiccup at low load. Yeah, it was kinda marginal to begin with.) I can probably disable the cooling fan on it now, or make it temp activated. (It's currently temp _limited_, i.e. the output is throttled down at high temperature.)
Tim