Yes, how much difference does the 400-450nm segment make? I can see the absence of the huge blue spike potentially leading to less circadian disturbance. Maybe someone who already has one of the lower-CRI high-intensity setups could try this out, exchange which one is operating in which room, and see if they have a preference for one or the other. If the gradual color shift wasn't important, the setup would be very simple to trial.
A couple notes:
1. In regards to dimming, I have seen (fairly well-regarded) third parties saying that the CCT/tint stays pretty...
The most 'natural light' LEDs I know of seem to still be too new to be commercially available in ready-out-of-the-box modules, but with a little time to engineer the setup I think one could assemble these into a usable thing. Significantly more deep purple wavelengths and less 'cyan dip' than the alternatives. Here is a quick comparison of spectra at 5000K, vs one of the Yuji 95CRI ones: https://i.imgur.com/6TFtPbt.png
That's a pretty good thread, and also reveals that there is an existing single-component solution for the scheduled dimmer potentiometer, from the aquarium sphere, which I hadn't thought of at all. A hundred bucks is a bit more than I was hoping to see, since you still probably need one for each room, but at the very least it simplifies things for the early adopters.
I thought the strips seemed pretty attractive for people making their own setups, since they can passively cool and are already somewhat diffuse. I do think the intensity is plenty high enough ... (read more)