It sounds like you have your mind made up. David isn’t asking you to replace all your eneloops, just to buy a couple to run a test with.
There are dozens of reasons for different designs to have different run times. The best way to verify that ANY light and battery combination is going to do what you want is to test it in your environment.
Eneloops are great in some circumstances, but have trade offs that are sometimes worth it, and other times, not so much.
Ive already stated that for $7.50 , I think this is a good light. Im not asking for a refund from the manufacturer , im just letting people know I tested this light with a eneloop, and only got 28 hours runtime , which is nowheres near the 80 hour runtime specs the company listed. I would hope my info, could help some people. This was a learning experience for me also, because I now know, that any light I purchase, for long runtimes on moonlight mode , will have to be using a eneloop battery .
Like Energizer Lithiums? I saw those æons ago, and got sticker-shock. No idea if prices went down, but I stopped considering those for my AA uses a while back, so I can’t speak to them either way.
For eneloops, I think my idea of converting a multi-LED light via chip-resistor might still be the way to go.
Hell, an XM-L2 on a star might easily replace the LED board, and give you the latest as far as efficiency. I wondered before if making a mule out of one of those would be any good. If you want a dedicated firefly, that’d be ideal.
Frankly, most “normal” people just pick a combo charger+cells pack off the pegs at Target, Staples, Radio Shack, whatever, usually whatever’s on sale. They don’t have a clue about self-discharge, etc. All they know is, “battery stops working, stick it into the charger, wait, reuse”.
So they’ll get Ray-O-Vac (really nice AA alkies, and cheaper’n Energizers/Duracells and work just as well), or Energizer, or whatever was RS’s house-brand of Ni-* batteries.
And they all work fine.
These are the same people who still use 2×AA flashlights with PR2 bulbs, bought from CVS or Target or Lowes, but don’t want to keep buying’n’tossing alkies ($$:money_mouth_face:.
And for them, they’re fine if not fantastic in doing what’s claimed, namely, replacing AA alkies with cells that you can charge’n’reuse over and over and over again. And the incandescent bulb doesn’t seem to care about 1.2V vs 1.5V, at least not all that much.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that all those 85s out there go hanging out at BLF and other places on the interweb, researching rechargeable cells out the wazoo before buying The Best™, because they don’t.
I don’t own the light so I don’t know.
But I do own several other 4Sevens lights, and if anything they normally overperform when comparing with specs.
Especially the runtime is crazy long on my Mini 123:s (now renamed Mini ML)
so what is your problem, the manufactor of the light did specify run times for AA
he is taking the best availiable cell for max runtime, so that is a lithium 1.5V primary and 10% less with top alkalilines
if you cant get the same runtime with rechargable NiMh thats your problem not the problem of the specs
if you got a XP-G R5 LED inside you reach about 150 lumens/watt at low currents
so your NiMh has 1.2V and 2000mA that is 2.4Wh on paper
a Lithium primary has 1.5V and 3100mA that is 4.65Wh on paper
so 3 LED lumens x80 hours are 240Lh
so I need just a bit over 1.6Wh to power the LED the rest taked the flashlight converter
3.05Wh from the lithium primary are lost in the converter
34,4% efficiency
if you get only 30 hours out of your eneloops
that means from 2.4Wh are only 0.6Wh used to power the LED
so 1.8Wh are lost in the converter
25% eficiency
look at the discharge curves for 100mA at lower loads the Lithium primary will gain more advantage
and the step up converter will work at better efficiency with the lithium or alkaliline
so 80 hours are realistically for them at 3 Lumens
I did not see, in the specs, where there manufacturer specifically stated that one must use a lithium cell, to get the 80 hour runtime.
If that info was listed, please show it to me. Do you not agree, that is important info that the buyer should be told by the maker ?
Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that this light will get 80 hours runtime from a 3000 mah lithium AA battery…when it only gets 28 hours runtime on a 2000 Mah fully charged AA eneloop. …that was charged to full capacity on a slow charge of .2 Amps and then immediately put in the flashlight for testing runtime.
OK, so if you have 40 eneloop AA’s and the flashlight is testing at 28 hrs “continuous” and you want 72 hrs, again continuous then you just need to replace the battery 3 times during the outage.
Which brings me to another question, do you not have daylight available during these outages that the flashlight could be/should be turned off?
If you have daylight available, you could use a solar charger to give the batteries a boost at least.
I’m not trying to be a wiseazz, just trying to understand your exact situation and needs.
One other flashlight that comes to mind with a very efficient driver is the Thorfire PF03, but it is AAA and those batteries do not pack near the punch of AA so that will probably be out.
Good luck,
there is absolutely no information on testing conditions for battery runtime
like
at 21°C
ENERGIZER L91 Ultimate Lithium
Constant Current Discharge to 0.8 Volts
Now, as I mentioned before , I did not expect the XTAR to get 80 hours runtime on a 2000 Mah eneloop , but I surely expected to get longer then 28 hours runtime. That is a big difference between the companies claimed runtime, and actual runtimes . And we now can see, the company was not claiming 80 hours runtime, on special lithium batteries, because they list nimh/alkalaine as being used . In fact, I will be shocked if this light got close to 80 hours runtime, on a new alkalaine. Maybe thats why it was marked down to $7.50.
correct….it doesnt even mention using lithium battery….therefore you conjecture that the 80 hour runtime, is accurate because the manufacturer is claiming use of lithium, is wrong. the runtimes were for nimh/alkaliane.
now can we admit you were wrong, and / or the company is being deceitful at best ?