jim rozen writes:

really blue led's that excite
a bit of yellowish phosphor on top
of the diode.

Quite right. I've had one of those Eddie Bauer flashlights for a while,
and never looked closely at it. It uses the YAG phosphor LEDs. I assumed
it was a red-green-blue triplet.

So this inherits all the color-rendering and perception issues of
fluorescents.