Review: Ultrafire C3 Stainless Steel XR-E Q5 1xAA 3-mode

I have the original (ordered the day DX announced it) Q5 C3 stainless - a 93mm long one. Actually there were more than one older C3 SS models - one older one with a P4 which cost more than twice as much as the Q5 one I have. One warning about it - on high with a 14500 I cannot take the heat for more than 4.5 minutes and my hands can take more heat then most people's. It is the only light I own that can make me drop it.

What I'd like is a no strobe version with the build quality of the Aurora SH-034 and an R5 in it. Preferably with a 3-10 lumen low.

Ive got a 98mm C3 SS with a theoretical XRE Q5. The tint is very greenish, and with the GITD oring was even more.. so i put a black one.

Now I am waiting for an XPG R5, and I dont know if put it in the C3 SS or in the 6 usd TR801 that I am waiting too.

Stainless Steel can't transfer the heat as well as aluminium, so it take its time to get hot, but when is hot enough, i have to drop it too (and lumens fall more than a 30%)

An XPG R5 will generate more or less heat than an XRE Q5 (at the same current)?

(you should get used to my horrible english)

Less - it is more efficient. If you look at the light outputs at 350mA where the power consumption will be roughly the same, the R5 will run cooler for a given number of lumens than the Q5. Driven at full power (1.5A), it'll run hotter than the Q5.

I can absolutely guarantee that your English is better than my ability to communicate in your language!

OK, thanks Vectrex. That was a good deal of useful info.

I have also taken a look to Trustfire R5-A3, but for what I've seen it has no real low modes, it's more like high and very high, so poor overall runtime. I find useful to have a very bright light on certain occasions, but most of the time a lower output is perfectly fine if that improves runtime.

I agree that aluminum is a better material for high output flashlights, however great heat transfer is probably not that important in case of sticking to NiMH or using high mode for short periods of time, and usually SS looks nicer and it's sturdier. If you don't plan to carry the light around much a bit more weight is not so bad neither in my opinion.

I've considered F25 too. It seems quite good, but according to Don's data its performance on NiMH is quite far away from that on Li-Ion (242Lm vs. 81Lm) and its runtime on low mode (NiMH) is only about 8h, compared to about 48h reported for C3 SS on a not very different brightness level.

Lightbox Lightbox Lightbox Est. lumens Est. lumens Est. lumens Throw
Light Battery Immediate 30 seconds 2 Minutes sitch-on 30 secs 2 Minutes Lux at 1m
Trustfire F25 High 14500 1347 1174 1090 242 211 196 6870
Trustfire F25 Medium 14500 585 572 563 105 103 101 2930
Trustfire F25 Low 14500 118 118 118 21 21 21 590
Trustfire F25 High AA NiMH 449 418 404 81 75 72 3530
Trustfire F25 Medium AA NiMH 192 194 192 34 35 34 1570
Trustfire F25 Low AA NiMH 47 46 45 8 8 8 335

I'm also interested in possible mods if they are worth it and not too difficult to put into practice. For instance, a good 3-4 mode driver (no strobe) that fits on Trustfire R5-A3, works with AA/NiMH too, and keeps about the same performance on high level would be great, but I don't even know which size it should be exactly. Any help will be much appreciated.

P.S.: By the way, the F25 at LT is the same or very similar to that at DX or significant differences do exist too?

The R5-A3 would not be an easy light to mod - most others would be easier. The Ultrafire U20 from Manafont would be easier and is even brighter on 14500 and the driver performs better with NiMH.

Those F25 results came from one I bought at LT - I don't have a DX one.

I want one of these with an R5 in it. Heat issues won't bother me as I'd only be using it on full power with a 14500 for seconds at a time.

Come on Ultrafire, make one for me!

Given how bright it is on a Q5, I really want one with an R5. And am prepared to pay premium prices for it.

If it does better than the Q5 version with an NiMH that would be nice, but what I really want is a crazy bright nice light.

And if Ultrafire is reading this, please recess the tailswitch a bit more so that it can tailstand.

Here's hoping!

Don is the emitter in this light an EZ1000 die or the EZ900?

I'm with you on the xp-g r5 it sure would be nice!!!

I got mine a couple of years ago - not sure the EZ900 die was generally available then - it appears to be an EZ1000 but it appears to have a low Vf so is very bright.

Just to report how different two specimens of the same light can turn out. I got my second ex. of C3_R5 stainless

from Lightake and compared it to the old one (also the 93mm from Lightake):

order date Lumens* Amp on 1xAA col.temp Bin off-neutral

Old: oct.16, 50-22-3, 1.2-0.62-0.30, 5710K, WD, -1

New: nov.11, 85-38-5, 1.62-0.82-0.38, 5820K, WG, 11

The drivers look the same (red with a red stribe).

* perhaps my Lumens numbers are a little conservative - I repeatedly measure less than Don.

The difference in tint is clearly seen with the two spots together. The old one looks purple and the new one green. They look off-white to the same degree.

When looking at one at a time the old one looks neutral and the new one slightly greenish.

I really can't tell the difference in intensity at any level. Perhaps Lumens-hunting doesn't pay.

Or mine are too high.

You calibrated yours against a Zebralight H50? Mine was calibrated against a Preon 2. I have an H50 so can calibrate against that instead to see what it does to the numbers.

I think that H50 is difficult to use as reference due to its atypical spread, almost 180 degr. but it is the only non-budget light (read: thrustworthy claim of output =66LM) that I own.

The future will bring clarification -as always.

If only this were true....

:(

I wish I knew some of the people in the physics department at the university here. I've no doubt that they'd have something I could calibrate against.

Thinking at the keyboard - something we were strongly discouraged from doing when I was a chemistry student 30 years ago...

A small incandescent light bulb might serve - it is easy to measure the energy going in, and building some sort of calorimeter to measure the heat going out shouldn't be too hard (Basically it is a tank of a known quantity of water (Specific heat capacity 4184kJ/kilogram centigrade degree) and some good thermometers). The difference between the two is the light going out - in joules. Then all we need is a formula to convert those joules to lumens. This goes part of the way there but seems to imply this is harder than it seems.

There is some fun looking stuff on that site though.

In fact it looks like this idea won't work. Metrology is hard...

Next thought, domestic light bulbs are tightly specified, and are probably very consistent from batch to batch, and it may be that the manufacturers specify lumens - do you have any contacts in the bit of Philips that makes light bulbs? They used to make a large percentage of the things for Europe.

Unfortunately, I newer had any contact to the Lighting department of Philips, that business was far from ours in every aspect, massproduction vs. small 10-pc. batches, mass consumer related vs. professional, sometimes institutional customers, thousands and thousands of emploies vs. 200.

I visited Eindhoven a couple of times, though and saw the massive group of buildings in Philips-land (of course I also visited a local pub with portraits of the Philips team (PSV)) . My purpose was participation in seminars or vibration and fall test of some of our prototypes. We did'nt have equipment for that at first. It was fun to see vibration tests on what in fact was a huge loudspeaker with a solid steel board instead of the baffle to which the apparatus, often weighing 8-10 kg was clamped. At resonance the printplates and the large capacitors was moving in waves sometimes more than an inch.

The power to drive this was measured in kiloWatts and I can remember after we got one ourselves, the whole building would vibrate at a test so we always new when a test was going on.

Calibration-wise, I also seek normals and have ordered a star with Cree XP-G 4B Neutral White R4 LED in the hope that sometimes you get what was announced. If I can measure it to be in bin 4B (which is rather narrow specified) all is well, but if I cannot then either my equipment is not calibrated well or I did not got what I paid for.

Edited: Got the R5 tint 4B and measured it to be in the middle of bin 4B. Satisfied

Hi, I'm new to this forum and while I'm not really a collector of flashlights I'm really just looking for one particular light (at this stage). The light reviewed here seems like exactly what I'm looking for after having spent weeks researching hundreds of lights on forums such as this, as well as browsing through DX etc.

But there is something that bothers me. The review made it clear that "This flashlight was kindly sent to me by Manafont.com expressly for review purposes". Call me cynical but how do the rest of us know that this wasn't a special 'beefed up' version for the review purpose which may reach an audience of hundreds, even thousands of people? Manafont are going to make absolutely sure they send as good a light as possible, and if anything, could enhance it to make it look better than it is. I'm NOT saying they do this, I'm just wondering if normal everyday people such as myself would recieve such a (almost) perfect light too. I had never heard of Manafont until I read this review, so please understand my skepticism. Also, I find it odd that the review was over three months ago and I can't find a single other independant review of this light since (the closest I could find was tethering's post #9 in this thread). I know there are many reviews of the other Ultrafire C3 versions available but I am only interested in this particular one.

Hi vnv

Welcome to BLF. Hope you have a good time here.

Chinese made lights do vary in quality from unit to unit. While it is possible Manafont picked out the best one they had, I doubt that they did. I've not had a dud from them is all I can say.

The first batch of any Chinese light tends to be better quality than the following ones. This light seems to be exclusive to Manafont so it depends how many of them they have in stock but I imagine they had to buy quite a few of them.

Hi there vnv889, welcome to BLF, hope you find the forum useful! Thanks for joining.

I agree with Don's comment, nobody will be able to guarantee that you'll receive a "good one", since quality varies considerably between manufacturing batches and different sellers. I'm not sure if others here have bought the C3 SS from Manafont, if you want you're welcome to create a new post along the lines of "Who owns the C3 SS from Manafont and is it any good?".

I do recommend Manafont as a seller, even though I don't receive any monetary compensation from them for my opinion. (I have requested and reviewed three flashlights from them. They also used to advertise here on BLF.) Manafont is polite, responsible, fast, and caring toward its customers. I'm fairly confident that at least for the most recent review I did of a UF-H2 headlamp that they did not send me a carefully selected sample, because when I requested one for review the manager said "Sure, but do me a favor to save me a headache please order it through the regular online system and then I'll refund the PayPal charge as soon as you make it." In other words, she wanted the light to be processed through the regular system like any other order because she didn't have time to personally go pull a sample and mail it to me.

I bought one after reading this review and it has become one of my favorite edc's. It's built like a tank but looks very cool. The 3 modes make it even better. No stupid strobe or sos.

Ah good, I didn't know you bought one Fishinfool. Glad you like it.