Sofirn SP36, impressions of a sample

The SP36 is now in their store.

New Sofirn BLF SP36 4*XPL2 6000LM

That is a pretty hand holding that flashlight, nice carpet too. And a ROT66 in the background to please the competition. :smiley:

(they never asked for using my BLF pics, but oh well…)

It seems that there were just two samples made of the SP36 and I have one and ToyKeeper has the other. So Sofirn had no SP36 samples themselves to make pictures of for use on the website. By request of Barry I made new pictures of my SP36 sample this morning and sent them to him, but it appears that they already made the page with my old BLF pics.

Sofirn SP36 : glued driver, no batteries carrier, long unfined (screwed down ?) aluminum tube head without bezel = 75.25$

Now the price is $ 54.95 for a flashlight without batteries and $ 63.55 for a flashlight with batteries.

Im glad this has no battery carrier. I hate dealing with battery carriers. Does this fit protected cells? Wonder if it will be on sale on 11/11.

I was a bit upset when, the day after posting my D4S review, I found Neal using the same pictures to sell it.

Have been considering some sort of watermark system ever since then, if I can find an easy way to do it which doesn’t require manually editing each image and doesn’t significantly reduce image quality. Will probably just need an ImageMagick script of some sort, but I haven’t done it yet.

I really want this light but I was hoping it was going to be in the $40 range similar to the Q8 promotion. The wait begins.

Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll bug Sofirn about the usual GPL stuff, since there doesn’t appear to be any source code available from the product page. It talks about Narsil, but doesn’t actually provide a copy or a link.

Barry told me that the SP36, even in promotions will at least be a bit more expensive than the Q8, and that is fair enough since the USB-C charging adds some development and production costs, and can be considered as a valuable extra feature. Time will tell if it is also as robust as the Q8 (I have not seen much wrong sofar but I can not test everything).

The cost of all the glue they will have to use and this unproven 6000lm rating definitely means more money

I would just be happy for them to just put it at the Q8 coupon code price of 46,50$US.

I also love it that they include cells inside of the light.

Makes it so much easier IMO to gift.

I measured 5000 lumen, but they are “honest lumens”, calibrated to maukka’s standard. If you average the reported “ANSI-measured” output of many high-end manufacturers (Nitecore, Sunwayman, etc.), you end up with a considerably higher number than maukka’s calibration. So the 6000 lumen that Sofirn reports may not be correct but it may not be less honest than numbers of any of the other manufacturers.

Just saw this. Pretty cool light. I like what sofirn has been doing lately. IMO we need more multi-reflector hosts like this. I would really like a larger head diameter 4x emitter host, like a 60-90mm TM16 or TN40 but affordable.

I typically watermark mine but in the end it doesn’t really matter, they get used anyway. I had a member send me a PM once asking me about pics he saw with my watermark on the ArmyTek facebook page. I had taken apart my headlamp and took pics, apparently they’ve never done that with their own lights so they used my own… not affiliated with a review or anything but nonetheless… As a photographer that could well have been a lawsuit but whatever, wasn’t worth pursuing on my end.

I use Lightroom 5 during the processing and/or converting phase to add the watermark, simple and easy. I shoot in RAW then convert to JPEG and resize at the same time as applying the watermark. I digitally sign with my own handwriting using a Wacom tablet. Kind of like the screen you sign when using a Credit Card at the store, only larger. :wink:

I’m happy that it uses NW emitters. My Sofirn SP32A uses the same emitters with the same 5350-5700K tint that is just a bit on the cool side for my preferences, but still look good to me.

I figured it would be in that price range because of the charger but it’s not a bad price if they produce the light without glitches or issues. Some comparable lights are nearly twice the cost.

I’m curious as to what the supply chains look like for flashlight manufacturers. It does seem like most of the time when there’s a suggestion of any LED brand other than Cree, most manufacturers are very hesitant.

The price is more than I expect for this light ,Sofirn any GB price for us available ?

Well, OK.

Has anyone given thought to using the USB port as input for an external configuration interface, maybe from a cell phone or laptop?
Plug a bluetooth dongle in, or something?

These new interfaces deserve something like that to program them.

That’s not going to happen with a tiny85 MCU, but it could be possible on bigger chips with more pins and more ROM. I also considered using the LEDs themselves to read data from a computer screen, but the data transfer rate is painfully slow.

Instead, I’ve mostly just tried to make the interface easier to use and easier to configure. And I’ve been thinking about putting in a factory reset / auto-calibrate function people can use as a panic button. Basically, hold down the button while connecting the battery, keep holding it for a few seconds while it flashes out a warning, and then it would reset everything to defaults.

Mostly though, I don’t think a computer-based configuration interface is necessary. It’d probably be harder to get the thing installed and connected than it would be to just configure the light using its built-in button. It would also take significantly more work to write a cross-platform config app than it does to write the firmware.