DURHAM, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) announces enhancements to its industry-leading XLamp^® CXA2 family of chip-on-board (COB) LEDs, including new premium color options, higher light output levels and the longest lifetimes published for this type of LED. The premium color quality options include high fidelity (98 CRI) and specialty color points for the 9 to 19 mm LES sizes with up to 50 percent higher efficacy than LEDs of similar sizes and light quality. These enhancements to the CXA2 family LEDs give Cree’s customers the ability to upgrade the performance of existing designs and to sell their products into lighting applications where color quality is important, such as museum, retail and medical lighting.

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CXA2 LED (Photo: Business Wire)

“The leading efficacy and excellent reliability of Cree’s CXA2 LEDs allow us to create a complete portfolio of high quality, energy efficient LED track lights,” said Eric Lin, General Manager, Westport International. “With the new premium colors, the CXA2 family will allow us to bring these same advantages to more customers and applications while still leveraging the same, easy-to-use platform.”

The CXA2 Standard Density LEDs now deliver up to 10 percent higher light output levels across all CRIs and light emitting surface (LES) sizes, providing the highest COB LED efficacy for all applications. Further demonstrating Cree’s leadership in reliability and lumen maintenance, the CXA2 LEDs are the only COB LEDs in the industry to have more than 11,000 hours of LM-80 data available. Based on this data, the CXA2 LEDs provide L90 lifetimes well beyond 60,000 hours, even at extreme 105°C test conditions.

“With these enhancements to the CXA2 family, Cree continues to set the benchmark for high-power LEDs through constant focus on improvement,” said Dave Emerson, Cree LEDs senior vice president and general manager. “With the industry’s best lifetime and the new premium color offerings, we’re giving lighting manufacturers the ability to deliver better light and industry-leading performance to more applications than ever before.”

Product samples are available now and production quantities are available with standard lead times. Please visit http://www.cree.com/cxa2 to learn more about the CXA2 LED Arrays and http://www.cree.com/cxa2premium for more information about the Premium color options.

About Cree

Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, lighting products and semiconductor products for power and radio frequency (RF) applications. Cree believes in better light experiences and is delivering new innovative LED technology that transforms the way people experience light through high-quality interior and exterior LED lighting solutions.

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

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 actual savings and lifetimes will vary from expectations; the risk 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 our 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, 2016, and subsequent filings.

Please refer to www.cree.com for additional product and Company information.

Cree^® and XLamp^® are registered trademarks of Cree, Inc.

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