The BLF A6 has ruined me!

I have around 50 different lights, from AAA to multiple 18650 and the BLF A6 is what I keep grabbing to daily carry everyday. I have the cheap chinese no names, and some main stream known names that cost too much in my opinion. BUt for some reason I just keep coming back to it. I am a cool white kind of tint guy, I can’t stand the yellowish tints on any lights. I literally changed every bulb in my home to daylight led’s, even in the fridge, yes EVERY single bulb. Even the ones on my vehicle are a cool white LED. Just my preference. I think I might get a custom Convoy S2+ from Hanson customs next since it is about the same size and form factor and he can make it however I want. Just loving the moonlight and all the modes in between. I have been using it daily for about the last week or two and I just did a battery check lastnight and I am still between 75–100 battery on the suggested samsung IMR 3000mah 30Q.

Same with me too. Had a mech mod, and bought extra batteries. Wondered where they were besides laptop cells and those external batteries. Found out the first mods were converted flashlights so I decided to try out the flashlights, I knew the SK68 was already a good light. Got the SK98, lost it with my 25R :(

Got the S2+ and it was ok besides the awful UI. I used the A6 as well at home because it was finicky when I first got it, and it honestly sucked. BG gave me a "replacement" that was actually a dummy head and I learned to mod flashlights because of their mistake.

Haha you guys did a good job convincing me, I just ordered my first A6 now the long wait for it to arrive.

I love my 5A BLF A6. It’s a great general purpose light! That hasn’t stopped me from trying other lights, with special metals or more dedicated purposes. There are a ton out there to try; for example:

-Small throwers like the Emisar D1S or Convoy C8

-Big throwers like the BLF GT

-Higher lumen flood like the BLF Q8, Astrolux MF01

-High CRI lights using Nichia 219B/219C emitters, or high CRI Cree emitters (although some have issues), or even mod a light with a Samsung LH351D or something)

-Different CCT, like a Convoy S2+ with a 7A XPL HI for a warm tint

-P60 dropins for some Lego fun

-Keychain lights. All of them. And then again when you inevitably lose them.

-Titanium, copper, brass, or other special materials (like the Prince with its carbon fiber or specialty lights made of expensive artistic metals like mokume gane)

-Headlamps, from the smaller Manker offerings to high CRI Zebralights or the Armytek Wizard Pro/Elf C2

-Firestarters like the Emisar D4

There are a ton of options out there to try!

BLF A6 is really good, considering its price. Build quality is so-so, but impressive performance and great UI makes up for it.

You should try Q8, great soda can light.

BLF A6 is still my favorite light. Why not have two, one 1A tint and one 3D tint, both with 18650 and 18350 tubes, and competent batteries. This is the single most useful light I own, starts in low moonlight and quickly moves to any desired brightness. Other than that, you may want a smaller single AA light for the pocket (or a AAA that you don’t even know is there in your pocket, but IS always there). Eventually you may give in to the temptation for a thrower, you will buy one, and you will rarely use it. But it will have “filled out your collection”. Welcome to the “hobby”……

I don’t care for the UI on my A6 that I received a couple weeks ago.

I like the concept of a longer press to reverse the direction of the mode sequence, but the press length to go in reverse is too long for me.

It’s especially a problem if I’m in low when I turn off the light for a short time and turn it back on. Often it comes back on in Turbo, rather than low. I don’t like this.

I would return the light, but it seems like it would be a real pain to return a light to China.

I can’t gift the light to anyone I know, since no one I know has a charger for 18650 batteries.

I do prefer the UI of the A6 over the Folimov 18650S, which can’t go in reverse at all and requires cycling through Turbo to get back to Low.

I much prefer the UI on the Sofirn SP32A V2.0 when in ramping mode. Much easier to reverse direction and never mistakenly enter Turbo when Low is desired.

I’m not sure what to do with this A6, since I will most likely never carry it.

I was a big fan of the A6 earl on, but some of the later production was flaky — screw holes misplaced in the head, for one.

I’m now a Sofirn SP32Av2 convert. Waiting eagerly for the rumored v3 No such animal, they told me in email.

As to giving li-ion lights away, I always have to think “is this person someone who would burn down the house or poison his family with fumes?” —- if I think they can be trusted, I give the light with one of the single-celll chargers and one of my older li-ion cells.

Out with the old, in with the improved!

I had a light I didnt use, I did a giveaway…. it was fun actually !

The bigger problem with A6 for me is that the duration of the press needed to go back changes as the driver warms up.

The other thing is that the light consumes huge amount of current on turbo and generates a ton of heat which it cannot dissipate, but delivers only marginally higher output than something like Convoy S2+.

A6 may have been something special when it first came out. Today - not so much, IMO.

I have suddenly come into possession of a BLF A6 via a co-worker that’s into EDC gear - early spring cleaning I suppose. I look forward to trying it out.

I see single-cell lights in the kilo lumen category as nominally <500 lumen lights that can briefly burst to 1k lumens - it’s the price you pay for them being so small and handy. This fits my use cases reasonably well since most of the time I need a light for task work and only occasionally do I need throw or canned daylight.

A6 is a great light, don;t hear the haters :slight_smile:

it does get very hot, i never noticed the ‘long press gets longer’ issue

and it is VERY CHEAP!

wle

Sounds like you just need to turn the memory off or on

link to user interface instructions >> http://i.imgur.com/x0wmQWM.png

Thanks, that is quite helpful and gives me some options to mess around with.

I like the light much better now.

Now, if I can get the horrible clip reshaped so that the top of my jeans back pocket doesn’t get stuck on that stupid bump on the tube clip. Then all will be well with the light - for now.

I really don’t understand the design (or maybe it’s poor execution by the manufacturers) of these clips. I had to do a lot of modification of the clip on my Utorch UT01, which has a similar clip, before it could be used deep carry. This design comes stock with many models from many manufacturers and it just makes no sense to me.

Why is that big bump left there to catch on the top of the pocket and prevent deep carry?

I know what you mean i’ve never understood that silly bump bit that catches on pockets either! Only way to fix it for me was to use a dremel to destroy the bump.
Its one of the very few things i can complain about the light though. For the money I LOVE this light.

I find the UI to be reasonably intuitive - the same as my rarely-used Astrolux S41 . Cool White, but that’s fine for my purposes - it’s not so blue as I used to routinely suffer.

Yeah, it can get hot. But not so hot as the S41, my 2014-vintage Fenix PD35, nor the Emisar D4/D4S. Or maybe I’m just not smashing Turbo long enough, often enough.

It’s a neat little bit of history that I’m experiencing after the fact that’s also a near-daily user.

I only pop on here rarely because as amusing as it would be to have a shelf filled with lights, my wallet can’t afford to be bled a little more each time I read a flashlight review and find myself wanting the new shiny toy.

It’s harder being only an occasional member because as with all things tech, the world of LED flashlights moves pretty fast. The new hotness that I was drooling over only a couple of years ago has been relegated to has-been status (if not all the way to old-and-busted), manufacturers have come and gone, and apparently Samsung is now making LEDs better than Cree? Huh. And we don’t just care about output and tints these days, but actual colour rendition values? Wow.

The BLF A6 was finishing development one of the previous times I was around, and I put myself down for two, with differing tints.

One of them replaced an SK-68 (well, probably a clone) as my EDC, and I was very unconvinced about carrying a fixed lens light when the SK could flood or throw as needed. Turns out that I mostly needed a close in light, and throwing a wall of photons at distant objects in turbo mode sufficed for my purposes. I’m still half-convinced a zoomie makes for a better general purpose, jack-of-all-trades tool for when what I’ve got is whatever I’m carrying (i.e. EDC) and I can’t reach for a specialized tool, but I suppose I’d need to get a compact 18650 zoomie like a Sofirn SF30A or something and carry it around for a while and see.

I did try replacing the SK with a more pocketable zoomie (the SK really isn’t very pocket friendly) but the cheap lights I got were just bad.

Prior to the SK-68, I had a 2xAA tube light. This was… what, a decade ago, now? But it was LED! It would run all night on AAs! The light’s tint was positively frigid! I ran it with 1xAA (it could run on a single AA!) for EDC, and screwed on the extension tube with a second AA if I went for a walk or whatever and actually planned on using the light. It had a #(&@ annoying driver that would cycle with half or full clicks, so it always came on at the next setting, and it had the archaic 5-mode L-M-H-blink-SOS pattern. If I had it on high and turned it off, the next time it came on — be it a second or an hour — it would blink. Great if I just left it on, very bad for intermittent use.

I say “had”, but the reality is that it’s now in a kitchen drawer, loaded with Eneloops. It’s kinda last ditch, but it still works. Ditto the SK. And the garbage zoomies as well, though I gave those away to family (and they’re quite happy with them, oddly enough).

Regardless, I’ve had the A6 in my pocket since it came out and it’s served well. It will continue to do so until the FW3As I put myself down for ages ago are finally built and shipped. A BLF light that’s smaller than the A6 but takes the same cell and still can put out three times the lumens in turbo? Yes, please. It even has to throw better, if only from the sheer number of photons emitted. And it’ll probably have better a CRI, too. Yay. (Which will probably become “Yay!” once I test it and compare the beam versus the A6, because it’s not like a high-CRI light is going to be worse, right?)

Oh — if I’m in a suit, then there’s an Astrolux A1 with an Eneloop AAA in my pocket instead. I’ve resisted putting it on my keychain, however. (An old Photon is still hanging there, gamely bathing the area ahead of me in orange light when I turn it on. Can’t believe it still doesn’t need its 2032 changed…)

I’ve gotten off track…. The point I’m trying to make is that the lights I had before the A6 had problems, but the A6 has been completely satisfactory. As such, I wouldn’t say the A6 has ‘ruined me’, but it’s been more than good enough for me to use until tech eventually comes up with something noticeably better — like the FW3A. And if the FW3A doesn’t work out for some odd reason, I’ll happily just continue using the A6. It set a baseline of cost and functionality that acts as an effective filter for all other lights — they need to do better than the A6 in some way or I’m just not going to bother with them.

Cheers to the BLF A6’s developers. My hat’s off to you. :slight_smile:

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BTW, what’s this ‘bump’ on the pocket clip you’re talking about?

Here’s the bump on the pocketclip, side view — so the fabric slides up along the side of the flashlight, hits the bump, hangs up there instead of sliding all the way up into the bend of the clip. Usually the metal clip makes a right angle to the side of the flashlight, tho’ some manufacturers put a curve at that point.

Here’s a clip without the bump: