I wish it would have been a tad cheaper, but then i bought more expensive lights with less output and no USB charging… (thinking of the L6 or S70 for instance). This one i really like. Smaller soda can shape, almost as bright as the Q8 with the convenience of on board charging. What else? :+1:
Considering that this SP36 is a simplified body design of the Q8 to cut production costs, it should cost a bit less if it didn’t have the USB-C charging feature + new firmware. It’s up to constumers to consider if it’s worth it for $54.95.
Personnaly I consider that the built-in charger is not worth it as I prefer to charge my batteries outside of a flashlight. I think that the BLF lantern will be the only exception for which I’m considering using it occasionnaly when away from a charger.
That is quite some assumption that you state there as a truth.
I do not see a simpler body, in fact the body design is very similar to the Q8, just different, you may or may not like the difference. The amount of machining may be just a bit less because the shallower finning and that the driver cavity can be turned instead of milled, but the extra body hole for the USB-port plus the grooves to position the driver sort of compensates for that.
But I agree that if you do not fancy USB-charging, the SP36 gets less attractive.
$55 is really not a bad price considering the exceptional performance and practicality (4.25 minutes on Turbo before stepdown), relatively compact size, and most important of all, the only soda can light in existence with USB charging, not to mention it is USB Type C.
Any idea when we will have Anduril on this? Also hoping Sofirn will one day offer 5A, 5D, 4A, 4D, 3A or 3D tint neutral white emitters.
The only reason I haven’t snagged a sexy 66 (I should trademark that name) is the battery carrier. I have several lights with that design and I just don’t like them. Plus, I think soda can lights really, really need to have built-in charging.
Multi-cell lights are typically best charged in an independent charger where you can keep an eye on them and check rates before and after. Charging multiple cells in a light is just wrong in my opinion. A simple example is my Nitecore TM16 with series cells. I checked it one day after it’d sat for quite a while and one of the 4 was dead while the other 3 were at 4.17V. The one cell unexplainedly decided to take a hike. That could have been really bad if an internal charger had been applied with no way to check each cell first! These were quality LG HE-4 cells, not very old and seldom used.
Always best to check cells coming out of the light, coming off the charger, and keeping an eye on the temperatures as they charge. If I have to leave the area when I’m charging cells, I remove the cells and start over when I come back. And sometimes I charge up to 30 at a time! Yes, I have multiple 8 bay and 4 bay chargers. (And 2 bay and single bay)
I have over 300 cells to go with my over 200 flashlights. Been doing this for a while now…
That’s going to be difficult. The reflector is screwed in from below, so emitter swaps require removing the driver first, to access the reflector screws, to access the MCPCB. And the driver is glued.
It can be done, as djozz did, but it’s not trivial.
To be fair, my test showed 2.5 minutes, and it was on a cold day.
That’s entirely up to Sofirn. I got it working and published though, so there’s always the possibility of flashing it yourself if you can get the driver out.
The SP36 is a Q8 a bit shrunken, a bit more lightweight, a bit less thermal performance (lower runtime in turbo before stepdoen, but still minutes), but becasue it uses the lower voltage XP-L2 instead of XP-L, the output (stock) is the same as the Q8, with some yellow corona around the hotspot as is typical for XP-L2 (I do not find it disturbing). Also the same as the Q8 is the UI (Narsil 1.0), but (see above) there are plans for Anduril.
I think the most significant difference with the Q8 is that it has USB charging, and it is even the faster (2A) USB-C.
NarsilM v1.2 adds momentary/tactical (I think it’s from Off, do a 4 clicks or 5 clicks will go to momentary mode), this is not present on NarsilM v1.0.
Plus the strobes modes in v1.0 are a bit harder to access (non-cycleable), in NarsilM v1.2, the strobes modes can be cycled.
There’s a lot that I like about this light. I love my pair of Q8 lights but they’re kinda bulky for a coat pocket. I’m hoping that this one will be just that much smaller and easier to carry.
I’m waiting for a real-life sample to be posted and then I’d bet I pull the trigger and add an SP36 to my lights.
Any idea if it’ll eventually be sold on Amazon like the rest of the Sofirn line?
The most important difference is CC with around 5500K as stated in the lab report.
And hard to change LEDs or mod.
I don’t think I buy it, a D4S seems a better option to me. LED, optic and firmware changeable.