Upcoming Astrolux S42 18350/18650 quad w side button and usb charging

well, I sacrificed an Efest 800 to the Krunch God just so I could try this beast.
kinda disappointed that I could handhold it, even recycling turbo from time to time. :frowning:

now with the spacer I can use my WindyFire 700. whole different animal.
terminated the first finger test due to familial duties….just a few minutes
came back and within a minute, I was uncomfortable, and crying like a baby a moment later
seems to my finely calibrated, elderly thin-skinned hands, that the hottest point in the whole danmed light is the switch ring
great engineering there! :person_facepalming: and I gotta hold it for a long press to off? :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming:

I’m glad I got a chance to see this in its potential before my Aspires arrive.

Update:

Dear friends,

We already asked one colleague to deal with S42 technical problems specifically, any technical problems, please send E-mail to heyanqing@banggood.com directly from now on, sorry again for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding!

Best Regards,

Swi

Thanks Swi for the followup. :+1:

This is a good idea, as customer service did not know the problem :open_mouth:

Will the 18650 tubes for the S42 also need replacement please?
(mine order has shipped but is not yet delivered)

I also asked for a replacement for my new 18350 battery that the light has crushed…

Yeah, I’d like to use 18650s without the cell being squished and damaged.

I received the S42 today, and although I sent the mail for a new battery tube and USB cover, I just wanted it to work.

I first measured the Aspire 18350 battery that I want to use, it is 34.6mm. Then I measured the inner length of the battery tube, from the driver board surface to the rim (that is screwed against the flat machined inside of the tail section), it is 36.8mm. So the battery actually fits and I have 2.2mm leftover. On the battery side I used up 1mm of the 2.2mm to solder a bit of brass as +pad for the battery (the spring was removed). On the tail side I shortened the spring and carefully re-shaped the remaining coils so that they compress inside each other instead of on top of each other (carefully because the tail spring seems a copper alloy which is likely more brittle than steel). The whole spring now fits inside the tail recess when compressed.

Now the Aspire battery is a perfect fit, with 1.2mm leftover, so a slightly longer battery will fit too.

Further impression: nice size and looks, great output (XP-G3 version), I actually like the tripod mount and don’t mind the extra length that it takes, I hope the USBport-cover will be replaced with a better one, and the hopeless UI is the great showstopper for this light.

I put in a brass button on the driver and bypassed the tail spring. It draws 10.7a from the tail and output is much improved. The draw back is that it gets super hot in turbo even quicker.
!

Really a huge disappointment if the universal 18650 tube that fits nicely across S41/S1/A6 can’t be used on the new S42. Hopefully Astrolux can rectify this for the S42…

Regards…

the 18650 tube works perfectly fine with flat top unprotected 18650. I used Samsung 30Q and Sony VTC6 and they work fine.

Adding my experiences to that of others.

(1) BATTERY/TUBE LENGTH -
With springs at both ends and the existing tube (original batch/pre-order) there is the potential for battery crushing. You can see the resulting depression at the bottom/neg of the unprotect Efest 18350 battery I tried; the depressed bottom was originally slightly raised!

The tail end spring compresses easily and annularly (the coil compresses almost flat.) Whereas the spring at the driver end is rather stiff and only coils down to 4-5 coil thicknesses.

(2) UI ISSUES -
I also second the observations about the UI issues.

  • Would be better to also have last-mode-memory in Group 1 (and/or allow toggling Last-mode on/off).
  • Would be better if one was able to turn off from moonlight mode without first having tp enter a brighter mode (or accidentally entering Turbo!)
  • Would be better if the off-time press was shorter; similar to the other Astrolux/Manker electronic switch models.

(3) USB COVER -
The cover wont’ stay on, the cover or body really needed to have some ridges or other protrusions to keep the cover on more securely.

(4) 18650 TUBE -
I can also confirm that the S41 tube fits the S42 head and tail perfectly with no battery crushing.

FWIW -
To address the height issue on mine, I snipped one coil from the tail spring, and replaced the stiff driver side spring with the snipped piece. This effectively eliminated the space/height taken up by the original driver side spring while still allowing the use of flat-top batteries.
!!

The S42 finally came in today.

After reading all the depressing news about it in the past ten days or so i guess i was prepared and didn’t even try to force in a 18350.

As mentioned earlier, a few turns of a wire inside the tail cap will do the trick. I used a thick copper wire, wrapped it around a 18650 cell to shape it as a spring with two turns and inserted it in the tail cap. That way the battery tube can make contact without screwing it all the way, and you gain the 2 or 3mm needed to fit a flat top cell. No need to unsolder or mutilate any spring. The only down side is the oring is exposed, but that’s a temporary solution awaiting the longer tube BG is going to send.

That said, and having the S42 working, here are my first impressions:

- It’s compact and light weight, especially compared to the S41

- It’s incredibly bright on turbo - although not for long

  • The ‘dragon breath’ lighted switch is a nice touch

However…

- I would rather have it even shorter and not have the bottom tripod/glass breaker hole

- The UI is quite bad to put it mildly

- The usb cover wont stay in place. I hope the new one will work better, but i kind of doubt it…

  • Not sure, but the threads don’t seem very deep and robust. Just fumbling a bit with the battery tube i managed to damage them. Anodizing went away in some spots.

PS: this UI is driving me mad! I can’t seem to manage to select a brightness level other then by accident… have already blasted my face with unwanted turbo a couple times… managed to switch mode group without a clue… when in turbo one click goes to disco sometime… turning this thing off can be challenging…

This light is almost unusable! :person_facepalming: :expressionless:

Yes, I have also accidentally blasted myself in the face with turbo a couple times… Very uncomfortable to say the least.
Typically, a light like this I would just leave it alone, as typically the UI may not be ideal, but usable. This UI is borderline unusable. It would be awesome if they design a proper driver and at least let us buy that to replace ours, but I doubt even that will happen.

I want to like the Astrolux lights, but now I am 2 for 2 for lights with horrid UIs.

Got the S42 today.
-The hammer won’t fit in the tail cap.
-Replaced the big spring in the cap with a DIY small copper convex dish fitting inside the spring’well. Result: It works with the light-blue Windyfire IMR 18350.
-BLF A6 tailcap fit too. It also provides the solution: turn the light OFF with its tail switch.
I am so happy I can play with my new light, either with 18350 or 18650 batteries.
-Can’t do anything about the funny UI.
Cheers

USB cover’s loosing fit. Solved with the help of the CLIP pressing the flap. Hurray!

For everyone who had the temerity to buy that shit you should send a new flashlight head with corrected USB port cover, with corrected driver, with corrected user interface and with corrected a button and button indicator!!!

That will be a moral satisfaction!

^ THIS!

I been sitting here playing with it and can not for the life of me understand why anyone thought this was a good UI.

They tried to simply port the functionality of the BLF A6 to an e-switch light, and it's apples and oranges - the two types of lights have very different UI's for a good reason. To do what a power switch light does is not practical because it's an easy built-in function to turn off a power switch light, not with an e-switch. e-switch lights give you a lot more capability, but you have to go with the technology advantages you have with the e-switch.

I think you should never implement multi fast click operations where the UI uses single clicks to navigate modes. You either have to slow down the single clicks, or you will hit into a lot of inadvertent fast clicks for changing modes. They chose to slow down the mode changes so you can't fast click unintentionally. Also slowing down the single clicks means you can do double clicks without taking action on the single click, so it works better - it's a total pain because things are slow, but you don't get flashed from a single click action when you double click. Ideally a double click, when used, should be something that steps up from a single click. Say from OFF, you single click to go to last mode, but click quickly again it goes to turbo. You are counting on the first single click and emphasizing it more on the 2nd fast click.

Double and multi clicks work great with a ramping UI because you use press&holds as opposed to quick clicks. This is what I did in Narsil, but when in mode set operation, double and multi clicks don't work - it would interfere with fast clicking thru modes.

well, if there was ANY copper in that tail spring, it flaked off while my less-than-careful and increasingly forceful machinations created a model for a theme park thrill ride
GRRrrr! :rage:
the revealed metal is shiny silver, SS?

(never did get it right)

I think an e-switch light should almost always use single-click for on/off. If you can’t articulate a really good reason for doing something else, do that.

Update again,

We suggest you don't open the head optionally so as not to damage the lamp or other head accessories, by the way, if you have ordered 2 stainless steel material S42, but have not shipped, we will ship the newest to you, without any problems.

Please wait more patiently, we will reply your mails one by one and the factory need sometime to produce the new items, thank you for your understanding!

Best Regards,

Swi