Nice looking pm sent
Tracy Wan — Sofirn — can you tell us what a “XK-WB LED” is and show some pictures of the business end and the circuit board/driver board?
AND, ToyKeeper’s questions earlier: Sofirn Flash Deal on Aliexpress from 25, Feb. to 27, Feb. - #6 by ToyKeeper and following
Hmmm, Google image search
turns up this China “wholesale and drop-ship” company (worth a look for general information)
offering what might be the same Sofirn 3-cell flashlight, among much else
THe search also turns up a flashlight described as “Sofirn” that is labeled “Trustfire”
A possible reply to TK’s question — I pasted this into Google: “is Sofirn Thorfire?”
and got back some possible confirmation from the results
Shorter: China, it’s all one big business operating under many different names …
Received flashlight yesterday, good looking light, will be using it and write my review of it this weekend and post my impressions here…
I sent you a PM Tracy Wan, please read and advise…
Just got my Amazon box — I bought a couple of their 3-cell lights as mentioned above
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MQ2IFA7/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1
These now show as “currently unavailable, We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.”
Seems like a good deal for the $10 price they were asking. It’s got the “M@glight” thread feel to it, weighty, like a club.
Came with a 2-cell charger, three “Sofirn 2800” li-ion cells.
Light is bored out for something bigger, the cells have plastic sleeves.
The bore is too small for my EVVA 26650 protected cells, feels like it would shave off the wrapper if I pushed the cell in.
Might work with slightly thinner 26650s, anyone got a recommendation?
Seven emitters, probably LatticeBright, I’ll try to add a picture later
Tube is labeled “AIMAI ARF01” — there’s one review for a flashlight using that name online, but at a site that won’t accept https and has problems with its webserver.
WARNING — don’t use the bundled 2-slot charger.
The back side of the charger gets extremely hot while operating.
The charger overcharges.
Charging the cells provided with the light, it gave me one cell at 4.21v, and another at 4.25v
So it appers they’re not protected cells.
Both cells were noticeably warm while charging
EDIT: at first I thought the driver has the dreaded “next mode memory” design flaw.
It does not — it has mode memory that requires the light be for maybe 30 seconds before it memorizes the mode setting. Which is ok with me.
High, medium, low, strobe, SOS
hank - I’m curious if the light will work with either 1 or 2 cells. Regarding the bore width, maybe it’s made to be the width for those 3xAAA adapters?
If you go to the website listed on the Sofirn manuals, you’ll see lots of AIMAI branded products there. Not sure if it is the same company? Maybe same company but they brand stuff for different regions? Maybe a parent company? The relationships of the various companies/brands is not clear.
Today rec’d a one-button (side button) Sofirn SP32 flashlight in the mail, given to me free with a request I review it as noted earlier.
First take — I can recommend this one for bicyclists.
Nicest features noted are
— tailcap lockout works with less than a quarter turn
— NO SOS, and a hidden stutter-strobe very useful for crossing busy streets at night (pedestrians live in terror in my town, and drivers are often oblivious to foot or bike traffic)
— tightening the tailcap after lockout leaves the light off, then a button tap restores the previous brightness level. That’s nice.
(exception — if the light is locked out from strobe, then tighten-and-click restores one of the four brightness levels, I haven’t quite figured out what the logic is, sometimes it comes back on low, sometimes on a brighter level). This isn’t annoying as the strobe is so quick to access with a double-click.
(I had asked them for a 2-button light and did not get one, for just that behavior, which I prefer)
— two quick taps on the button starts a “stutter strobe” — alternating moderate and fast blinking, good attention-getter cyclists will like
— regular taps cycle from low through high, with 2 intermediate settings
— there’s a brief fraction of a second ramp up as it’s switched to a brighter level rather than an abrupt increase, a feature I like visually, so my pupils don’t contract when the light gets brighter. I’ve noticed going to a higher brightness can cause a little ‘flinch’ with lights that brighten suddenly, though they accommodate fairly quickly. Maybe that’s an age-related effect.
(I’ll leave to the driver experts whether that’s a feature that protects the emitter from sudden power increase)
— 2-second hold for off
No comment yet on the included 1-cell USB-powered charger, except that it looks familiar
Familiar snap-on belt clip, chromed steel
Light is slightly — about 1cm, 3/8inch — longer than a Convoy S2, not the marked length increase I’ve come to expect when side switches are build in. That’s nice compact design.
Driver held in with a threaded retaining ring. Blue-green film on the back of the driver board around the spring base, no writing
Threads on both ends of the battery tube were a little hard to get started and dry; added a dab of thread grease and ok after that.
Bezel appears to be either extremely tight or glued on (I’ve asked) so I could not get a close look at the emitter.
Beam pattern is moderately wide, entirely useful, a bit yellow at the center with a blue corona. Probably a high CRI emitter when the two are mixed.
Nice flashlight. Some thought went into this one.
More later.
EDIT — good little manual included in the box.
One added feature I discovered after reading it: from off, a long (about 1 second) press turns on moonlight; from there, a single click turns it off.
Very handy. Moonlight is rather brighter than I like for dark sky camping but fine for city nighttime use. I’ll compare it to real moonlight when full moon comes along.
So for those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like.
Easy access to both moonlight and stutter-strobe, but they don’t pop on surprising you…
Got mine today as well. Nice looking light and I’ll be giving it a review after I’ve had a chance to play around with it some. One thing to note though. Amazon did a lousy job packing it. It was sent in a large box with a few of those oversized inflated packing cushions. The flashlight box (inside the big box) had opened up, so the flashlight battery and charger were just banging around all over the place. As it was almost free, I’m not complaining. But if I had paid $30 for it I’d be ticked.
Thanks for your interest in our brand. However, the brand Thorfire belongs to who? Our factory owns two brands—-one of these is Sofirn which aims to different kinds of batteries and lights. Sometimes the flashlights are not multifarious as womens’ skirts. Many brands seems similar as we browse webpage. I once thought Convoy, Fenix and Anker are similar. But they are not in fact.
Hi Socaltiger, the AIMAI and sofirn belongs to one company. But the Aimai was abandoned in the USA. markt from November, 2016. The reason is that there is a brand “AMAI” on Amazon. It is hard to tell the brand “Aimai” and “AMAI” for customers.
Sofirn aims to manufacture better and better budget but high-qaulity LED lights, and we welcome to accept your or flashlightaholics’ feedback, suggestions or even criticism. Thank you for your interest.
Nice light (SP31)! I got mine yesterday, played with it a bit, and like it. If anyone’s interested, I posted this review on Amazon:
—
I’m impressed. I received the light, a Sofirn SP31, in a rather low-key cardboard box, no ribbons or anything shiny, and expected a low-key light as well, I was quite wrong. 
It comes with an 18650 cell and charger, but I didn’t want to wait so used a known-charged cell and flicked it on. Quite a nice tint right out of the box. A nice perfect neutral white hotspot, slight yellow halo around it, and somewhat bluish-white spill. Anything I shined it on looked very nice, though, so the choice of emitter was spot-on. As I said, a nice perfect neutral-white.
It’s quite lightweight, not as heavy as, say, my Zanflare F1 or Convoy S2+. Whether good or bad is up to you. There’s less thermal mass to absorb/spread heat from the LED, but the lighter weight makes it easier to carry in a pocket (ie, slip it in and forget it’s there ’til you need it).
I’m not terribly fond of the mode-spacing, though. Instead of moonlight/low/medium/high, it seems like moonlight/kinda-high/high/really-high. Ie, the three upper modes are visually spaced rather closely together with a big jump from the lowest setting. Still, the highest (“turbo”?) setting is impressively bright. I lit up the whole backyard looking for a noise-making critter last night. Indoors, an informal ceiling-bounce test lit up the whole room.
On its highest setting, the light gets very warm, very fast! This is a Good Thing™. It tells me that there’s an excellent thermal path from the LED to the case. You want to shed heat from the LED as quickly as possible to keep it from cooking itself. If it gets too warm, just switch it down one setting to medium.
Speaking of modes, there’s no annoying blinky mode anywhere in the single-click rotation, thank B’harni (pbuh!). In fact, the UI (user-interface) is rather unique, at least in my experience. Instead of the progression 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4~~…, it goes 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-3-2-1~~…, ie, low to high, then down to low, then to high, etc. Interesting! I’m not quite sure if I like it better than the usual. It may take some getting used to and I’d grow to love it, or it may end up grating on me, I have no idea. It’s just “different”. Again, good or bad is up to you. It’s a rather bold decision to buck the usual trend, at any rate.
As for the blinkies, okay, I tried them. Strobe is, well, strobe. Annoying to anyone you shine it at, possibly epilepsy-inducing, but muggles seem to looooove strobes. Feh.
What was quite interesting was “bike mode”, though. I assumed most “bike mode” lights do like what I often see, just a slower strobe, maybe once per second, more to be-seen than to see. This, though, seems quite useful. It seems to be the light being constantly on in high mode, but a repeating set of bursts in “turbo” mode. So it’s actually used to illuminate what’s in front of you, but also has that flicker to warn drivers that you’re there. Okay, this is a useful blinky-mode. Thankfully, it’s well-hidden, along with strobe (doubleclick and long-press).
Accessories? Lanyard, spare O-rings, pocket clip, that’s it. No case/holster, “tactical ring”, other stuff. The kit I received did include a charger (with USB charging-cable), and battery, but given the choice, I’d do without that, as I have several (smart…ish) chargers already, and enough 18650s to last me through the Zombie Apocalypse™. Before I even turned it on, I removed the pocket clip, as they just in general annoy me. Personal preference…
[nb: it’s a standard pocket-clip, not deep-carry, so half the light would be sticking out of your pocket if you were to use it — LB]
All in all, it’s quite a nice light. It’s lightweight, “crazy bright” as described in the blurb , has a nice feel to it, has a perfect tint, and if you just want a nice little light to slip into a pants-pocket and forget about, I don’t think you can go wrong with it.
I just posted the “review” of the SP31. Quite nice light, and pretty impressive, I’d say.
My only critique would be the mode-spacing. The 3 brightest modes seem to be bunched together rather closely, visually speaking.
Moonlight/Lowest is wonderful, nice and low without ruining your night-vision.
“Turbo” or “High”, whatever the highest setting is called, is also impressively bright.
It’s those 2 settings in-between that are somewhat skewed to the bright side of the range. The jump from lowest to regular-low is a bit jarring.
Just tweak those settings a bit to even them out visually, and you got a winner.
But as it is, it’s perfectly useful, no complaints. Impressive little light…
I kind of wonder if that might be BLF’s fault. That mode didn’t seem to be popular until we made the BLF A6, and now it’s showing up in all sorts of places.
Here is a link to my review,
Thank you for letting me review your product
Sincerely
AlexGT
Tracy, thank you for the clarifications!
TK wrote:
Y’all who worked on the BLF A6 should take a bow, and Sofirn should read up on the histories here as groups collaborated on designing better lights and better drivers.
PS, I left Tracy a fairly long message recommending not gluing the lights shut, or making hosts available to BLFers, specifically to attract the attention of folks like TK who will take them apart and improve them, and for people like me who will swap out drivers and lenses, mentioning the variety of Carclo optics and how useful it is to change things around
The light is not that hard to open with strap wrenches, I already opened mine and plan to put a XP-L HI on it.
Hey Tracy, I hope you’ll respond to ToyKeeper’s posts above.
Particularly, lights that can be opened up easily, in response to
(maybe bundle a flashlight with a couple of pipe wrenches (grin))
Or send a description/engineering drawings describing how they’re being built?
I’m too “young” and not savvy to make a review or test, especially being this a new brand that has to improve and develop its products.
However, I can let here my opinion as a flashlight user.
I am interested in a Sofirn SF10 (AA/14500) but the “High-Mid-Low + Strobe” modes are a bit ‘out’ for me, as I prefer to start on low settings.
I sent message to Sofirn through the AliExpress store and suggested a modification starting in the lowest modes and increasing after it (like the SP32 or even with the SP31, going up and down in luminosity), with the strobe outside the regular modes.
On the AE store says that the SF10 will be updated and will also have Firefly mode. Still, the order of levels remains from High to Firefly, I guess.
For the SP31 and SP32, maybe I’d suggest a modification, trying to give “instant access to turbo” mode.
I’ll buy a SP32 meanwhile, through AliExpress.
I guess that with SP32 one can access a low level in the middle of the night, without having to memorize in which setting it was before switching off. :sunglasses:
Sorry if this is a bit off-topic.
BLF members and Sofirn (in this case) keep up the good work, and thanks for it 