High output AA?

Can the magnet be removed?

High Lumen AA lights I have include Reylight AA Pinapple, Lumintop EDC05 in NW, Olight S1A in CW, Utorch UT01 in CW, Jetbeam Jet I MK in CW, and a Enogear Stainless AA in NW.

I usually end up with the Lumintop or Reylight in my pocket. Although the others all work just fine. I really like the Enogear but is a bit on the heavy side depending on what i’m wearing. I run 14500’s in all of them but they work equally well with NiMh as well. I am also guilty of throwing a DQG Tiny AA in my pocket as a backup.

Honestly if the weight of brass doesn’t bother you for EDC I would just grab a Reylight from the group buy. It’s beautiful and functional. Not to mention built like a tank.

Great suggestions. A clarification: The Reylight Pineapple I saw is a AAA light. Is there a AA as well?

The AAA light is the Pineapple Mini made from Cu.

The "regular" Pineapple is a AA light made from Brass.

The AA brass pineapple is a nice light, but you’ll definitely need to use a 14500 in it if you want decent output. On a AA, it only goes to about 90 lumens on max. Okay for indoors, but not much use outside. On a 14500, you get about 4x the output on all levels except moonlight, so it’s decently bright on a lithium-ion cell.

It will eat batteries pretty quick on max, though, and get fairly hot. The Nichia 219 emitter isn’t as efficient as Cree, though it is a really nice tint.

Found it. Thanks.

I got also (1 NW & 1 CW). The NW was/is much warmer than expected. No problems with either switch here.

I got each for $9.99 with a code.Make a request to M4DM4X or FreeMe…they come through many times.

Pretty good little light, and a super bargain @ $10!

Thanks for the tip.

Unless you use high discharge NIMH AA cells like eneloops or eneloop pros, you’re not going to get “high output” using AA.
Any flashlight that says more than 400 or 500 lumens is either using nimh or li-ion cells to get those numbers.

That light is meant to run on one specific battery and one battery only—an Eneloop Pro, or its rebadged equivalents.

You’re not popping in an Energizer AA alkaleak and getting 500LM. Maybe an Energizer Lithium Ultimate, but not a regular jobbie.

Chris

I’m still impressed any 1.2v NiMH battery can hit 500 lumens. I thought most were in the 200 range and 14500’s were needed to hit 500-600. Sounds like Zebra has some way to get more of of the eneloops.

Hey rick, I recently reviewed the Rofis R2. Heck of a light. I got around 240 on AA alkaline and about 700 lm with the included 14500. Built in charger as well. I actually run mine with a AA.

They spec 5A and the Eneloop Pro (and equivalents) can handle that for limited runtimes.

You’re not getting long runtimes at that current, but it’s better than anything an alkaleak can handle at that draw.

Chris

I’ve used eneloops (not pro) at 10 amps.
Alkalines just voltage drop and deliver unusable currents, even brand new energizers.

So it looks like I’m not going to do much better lumens wise than the Thorfire TK05 if I’m going to use AA’s (I haven’t tried Eneloops or Everready lithiums in it to see what they do). So I think I found out what I needed to know. I’ll check out some of the lights mentioned above for their UI’s and other features.

You always have the option of finding lights that take more than two AA cells?
Or AAA?

Led lenser has a bunch around 300-400 lumens that run on AA or AAA.
Since they’re focusing TIR optics they basically have the throw of a 1000lm flashlight and the spill brightness of a 1000lm flashlight, just not both at the same time.

Note that the maximum rated current for an Energizer Lithium AA in continuous operation is 2.5A (PDF datasheet ), so using them in a Zebralight drawing 5A is dangerously out of spec.

Stick to quality NiMH cells like Eneloops or Fujitsu LSD.

You don’t need an Eneloop Pro for the Zebralight SC5w. I use regular Eneloops, and they work just fine. It will put out 500 lumens on a regular Eneloop for about 20-25 minutes. Cumulative run-time on 500 lumens, because you have to step the light back up to 500 lumens every 3 minutes. You have to do that test with a fan, or the light would get too hot.

You obviously get much better runtimes and efficiency on lower modes, but it’s nice to have 500 lumens when you need it.

As for other brands than Eneloop, they probably work fine as well, as long as they’re based on the same tech. There are lots of Eneloop clones. I’ve never used any of them personally, but many people swear they are identical.

Alkalines won’t get you the 500 lumen output, of course. Stick to 100 lumen lights if you require alkaleaks, or just never use the higher modes on brighter lights.

Thanks for the suggestion. But Ledlensers are too expensive. I looked at the Blitzwolf that comes with an extension tube, but it is rated at only about 180 with AA.

I asked my question because I’ve read the caution that, for possible emergency situations, it’s advisable to have a flashlight on hand that can use readily available alkalines. I can use my TK05 for that, but I wondered if there was an affordable AA light with higher lumens. I’m not going to spend more than $30 for another flashlight since I’m not an aficionado like most people on this list and remembering that I bought lights in my initial frenzy that I rarely if ever use. Under $20 sounds even better. So I’ll keep an eye out for sales on suggestions made in this thread. Thanks, all, for your responses.