Sofirn Flash Deal on Aliexpress from 25, Feb. to 27, Feb.

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. :smiley:

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. :smiley: 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 :smiley: , 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. :smiley:

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. :smiley:

But as it is, it’s perfectly useful, no complaints. Impressive little light… :smiley:

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 :wink:

Yes. And with no danger of accidentally bumping into brighter or strobe.
2-second hold and it comes on moonlight; one click from there to off.

Another nice wrinkle — fast doubleclick from any level and you get stutter strobe.
Single click while in stutter and you’re back to whatever level preceded it (including off)

Some serious thought went into their driver design.
Worthy of one of TK’s flowchart drawings to explain the choices though.

I stumbled into what might be a beacon at one point, going from turbo to dim to something about 1 flash/second. Nothing in the manual about that. I guess it could be the low voltage signal. In turbo, I noticed a tiny bit of flicker that was associated with having my thumb resting on the button, and I might have sent a spurious code click that way somehow.

Now if they had a glowing tailswitch so I could remember if I’d locked out the light or not it’d help, as I usually do lock it out between uses.
I’ve got to put a couple of GITD paint dots on the body and tailcap to remind me if I’ve left it locked out or not.
(dots aligned — not locked out; dots not aligned, locked out)

I haven’t tried measuring passive drain yet, presume there’s some from the side switch.

That’s it, exactly!! :exclamation:
Adding the access to turbo would make it “perfect” (for my taste, of course) :smiley:

Hum…nice tip that one!! !!! Guess i’ll have to do something like that when mine arrives!
Yeah, I ordered it already…couldn’t resist… :person_facepalming: :smiley:
Thanks!!

Thanks for your kindly suggestions. my workmate have get the feedback to the R & D Department.
different customers get different needs. for example, someone emailed us that they wanted a flashlight starting on high lumen, on-off is enough. Someone wanted one starting on low lumen with mode memory function.
Maybe we can develop different drivers in same looking, eg. the looking of SF10, starting on low with 5 modes, or starting on high with 3 modes or 1 mode. A classic looking with different drivers. How about you? :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Hi Tracy (Sofirn)!
I really appreciate the work you’ve been doing and also the effort to get flashlight users’ suggestions! Also, whenever I sent you a message, I get a quick reply! That says a lot from your company and, as far as I’ve seen, from your lights, too. Please keep up the good work!! :+1:

I know that there are many types if users and tastes for the interfaces! I just expressed my opinions / suggestions, considering my use for my lights, knowing that your company is willing to get users’ inputs on those! Still, I know how hard it may be to put all of those in place!

I think that there are lots of people in this forum that can give so much more useful suggestions and that can help you a lot more than I can!!

Concerning the Sofirn SF10 (AA/14500), being a small (pretty) light, I can tell you how I would prefer it:
a) no mode memory, always starting on lowest mode
b) firefly>low>medium>high + double click for strobe
or
c) firefly>low>medium>high (no strobe at all)

For the SP31 and SP32, I already expressed my desire :wink:

But, as I said, these are just suggestions!
Thanks for caring to read them :wink:

Look at new Convoy driver with new firmware by Toykeeper: 12 groups of modes in different sets. This set of options will come up 99% of flashlight users. This software I put almost all lights that modify.
Try to give the user a choice, he will be grateful to You.

It’s great that Sofirn is reaching out to offer review units and get feedback. I’d love to see Sofirn actively participating more on BLF.

To be clear though, I didn’t request a review unit. I’m just curious what’s inside. I think a lot of people here would like to see the light taken apart to show what would be involved in customizing it.

I didn’t disassemble the driver but I can tell you from my review that they have copper MPCB under their LED :+1:

My SP31 arrived today. So far I am impressed with it. I hope to do a short video review tomorrow if I can access my kitchen without the Mrs bothering me (it’s a nice large open space with good light). I have done a trial video in my den but having a camera behind and to the side of me really does not work well for me as I either go out of shot or knock the tripod.

Definite yes. So who owns two pipe wrenches? I’ve only got one myself.