TEST: Armytek Wizard Pro XPL HD Warm - How HOT Can It Be?

Dale, show me the link to your stolen pic post.
Thanks

http://i.imgur.com/rdgqCFd.jpg

The watermark is indeed in place, a fellow member here caught this by the watermark.

I always watermark the image, but also try to use larger pictures so people here can look closer if they’re trying to build a light and my pics can help. If you’re protecting it too much, you can’t open it larger.

I’m a photographer, I build lights as a hobby, mod lights for fun. This is not really a big deal and everybody that saw it on ArmyTek’s twitter or facebook or whatever saw my watermark. But for a company to use a photog’s pic without asking is a definite negative mark against the company. Pretty cheesy.

They design them in Canada, they’re made in China. The design team in Canada doesn’t necessarily get to see the final product.

Aaaah, it’s good that you marked it in the first place. Yes, that’s definitely bad for AT reputation.
I tried to lookup for Armytek page in FB. Got MANY of them. Looks like some big AT distributors create dedicated fan pages for their Armytek products.

They had problems earlier and seems to be much better now. I’m interested in some of their EDC lights. Perfect host for neat mods, as long as the driver is now trouble free.

That’s not cool.
I wonder about the quality of thit customer service.
Ever use the no hassle waranty?
I shipped predator pro and ward pro to canada, over a month ago, no feedback yet…. I asked to buy some o rings and new headband too, no reply to that.

Excellent test! I always doubted about the temperature regulation of my Wizard XHP50, it just seem to get so hot.

So wrong for a company to steal your pictures, but this also shows your photography skill are vastly superior to theirs. I can assume they wouldn’t say “this light was opened by a customer” because they don’t want to incite people to do that. It would be nice if they sent you a free light or something for exchange of using your picture.

Very nice soldering job it had in there, and plenty of thermal paste.

Me and some family members ordered five Wizard Pros back around March of this year. Not a problem with any of them to this day, except one got dropped repeatedly while being used at work. Finally the lens broke after a drop, sent Armytek an email explaining what had happened, and asked if it was possible to pay to get it repaired. After a few days, was told it would be replaced under warranty. Sent it to Canada and, once it arrived, was told that they didn’t have it in stock there, and that it would be shipped from China. Was a little annoyed that I didn’t get the option for a quicker shipping method, but eventually arrived here after several weeks. I would say my experience with customer service was pretty good, given one has some patience. For them to replace a light that was repeatedly dropped and finally busted due to user error, we’ll that says a lot to me.

Now thats insane, for a company that brags about how durable their lights are, their service and behaviour leaves a lot to be desired

That is great, mine is a few years old, my switch is not right, no longer clicks, and it freezes mode 3, and battery check mode freezes up.
I loved the light so much, I bought an xhp50 wizard! So I have a good light to use. I bought my dad a wizard pro, and convinced my best friend to buy one, he bought new from amazon, bur it had a rattle inside, not long after it stopped working, something is not connected inside.
I have not emailed them for an update, I’ll wait few more weeks, they may be swamped building lights for Christmas.

My XHP50 Wizard Pro has been working flawlessly since I purchased it in June. The temperature control works as it should by stepping down the brightness on turbo 2 in very small steps as it heats up. I put a glass of ice water on the top of head cooling it down which caused the temperature control to reverse the step-down to step-up in the same small increments. That said, I think it’s an excellently designed headlamp. I love it even more than my Zebralight H600F. BTW, since I use it for close up work, I almost never use the turbo modes anyway. Gets great battery life on the lower settings.

The battery life is impressive, I put mine on turbo sometimes, lights up entire back yard! I’m glad to hear stepdown works as it should, I always turn it back down to avoid damage to battery or led.

When I have a chance, I’ll make a video hopefully showing my findings. I’m not sure my camera will pick up the small changes in brightness, but I’ll try. I’ll also connect a temperature probe with my fluke DMM.

That would be cool to see real time temp, and see if it goes down, and how high it gets.
Do you feel it’s safe to leave on turbo unail it steps down , or will that hurt the light, and the battery? I may have to try a test with miNE too! Always afraid to burn my aw 18650, or 30q. And the led and driver must have a heat limit too?

Jake, I’m not worried at all. I’m confident nothing bad will happen since I’ve already tested mine on turbo 2 till the battery needed to be recharged.

Every time you overdrive an LED, it’s life expectancy decrease. The same effect to those driver components and battery.
Cree’s test shown that at high Tj and high current LED LM decrease significantly - still a very long time for a headlamp.
Check Page 59: http://cree.com/~/media/Files/Cree/LED-Components-and-Modules/XLamp/XLamp-Application-Notes/LM80_Results.pdf

I know this is an old post but can’t seem to find out why these lights crap out online. I just ordered one from Amazon yesterday and will return it when it arrives do to a lot of complaints about customer service and the wizard light failures. To bad, its a great looking light but when I start paying a 100 0r more for a flashlight I expect it to be high quality. I’ll replace it with the Fenix HM65R which seems to have great feed back. It sucks because I have been wanting a Wizard for years now.

Hi Doug,

I have owned several Armytek lights over the last few years, and have never had any issues with them. Their build quality is top notch. As with any electronics, there can be defective ones. Even Zebralight has had a wave of defective lights. Although I have not dealt with the Armytek Customer Service, this is where they may fall short based on user feedback. The Fenix HM65R looks like a nice light, but the stepdown in Turbo and even High mode make it a poor option in my eyes. The Wizard will be regulated in all modes, and only drop in intensity if the temperature is too high. I would give the Armytek a try before you return. My 2 cents.

good test

Interesting. I don’t use my Wizard Pro VERY hard but I am known to drop my lights occasionally. Had a Fenix L0Dce that was on my keys that was dropped dozens of times if not more… and thrown across the room more than once. Never an issue! In fact, its sitting in reserve with a lithium AA “just in case” its ever needed! How rough were these drops you had? I’m just wondering what to expect from mine down the road.

Thank you Pavlo, I really do like the light and like I said, have been looking’s at them for years. Sense I bought if from Amazon I think I’ll keep it for a while, It really is an awesome looking like and the main reason I got it was for its three low lumen levels. Well your 2 cents was worth a lot, thank you again for sharing your experience with me. :+1: