Short Review of Sofirn SP33 v2 with XHP50.2

Maybe I should just cancel the order I placed for this light 7 weeks ago from your Aliexpress store and order it from Amazon.

Sliced my dome off today trying to warm up the temperature . Only slightly warmer than it was. Any tricks?

You are missing out if you pass on the SP33.

I never said my switches had “issues”, I said they were “finicky”.
As it turns out the majority of the “finicky” part was ‘operator error’. . :person_facepalming:
The ‘short clicks’ need to be fast & crisp. The ‘double clicks’ to Turbo must be quick & fast.
Doing it that way my SP33 has been working like a champ!! :+1:

I am beyond pleased with it. . :+1:
I hope at some point they will do one with a ‘ramping mode’. :wink:

Mine do not have the ‘Eco mode’ issue Streamer has mentioned.

The SP33 is a great light at a great price as far as I am concerned. :+1:

Yeh, an occasional flaw in products is to be expected. It just sucks when it happens to you. Not to worry though…

The driver flaw in my copy was disappointing for sure, but thanks to Sofirn for handling it so speedily for me. That said, I can’t wait to get another copy of this light when they hit Amazon.

It’s that nice of a light. And I love the size of the 26650 battery tube in hand with this thing. Gotta have another… :+1: .

/\:+1:

You mean a ramping mode on this SP33?

They already have some ramping on the C8F 21700 and SP32A. Plus the upcoming SP70.

My bad, yes on the SP33. I should have been more clear, I wrongly assumed since we were talking about the SP33 it would be implied. :person_facepalming:
:smiley:

  • I have edited the my original post & the quote above to indicate I was referring to the when hoping for ramping in a future model of the SP33.

Been making progress on my SP33 driver, still need to make the slots for the switch daughter board to interlock together. Originally I had planned to put components on both main board and the switch daughter board but I was able to fit everything on the main board to allow the use of the factory switch board (with some air wiring). I will be making a directly compatible daughter board (with switch and AUX LED) for a little bit cleaner install (personally I’ll spend the extra ~$6 on ordering it, mainly so I dont have to disassemble the factory driver) but if you want to be thrifty, and you dont mind running 3 short air wires you can save your few bucks and recycle the factory switch board.

Renders updated to v03 @ 14:42EST

Very cool Cereal_killer!

Could you give a rundown on what your boards will provide for modders?

I’ve been pondering swapping out the led for a warmer tint. Maybe it’ll be worth it to switch the driver for a different UI and perhaps more output. Is that along the lines of what your boards will provide?

It’s a 1+8x7135+FET driver for running a 3V LED from the single 26650. It’ll allow the use of popular triple-channel FW (ROT66 build). 3 fully PWM’d power channels with indicator LED.

Personally I’ll be running a Luxeon V2 and Anduril in mine!

Very nice Cereal_killer, thank you for sharing!! :+1:
I’ll be watching the progress on this.

Oh CK, very interested in the board set! If my SP33 ordered on Nov 16th every gets here. Was just resent this morning.

Shame it's not a side mounted switch PCB...

The pair of boards are done!

The switch board will be $3.45 so theres definitely no reason to have to destroy your factory driver and do tons of extra work just to save that…

Nice! Very nice!

So before I jump in, the steps to swap out the old for the new are:

Remove the bezel, glass and reflector.
Unsolder the MCPCB and remove screws.
Poke the driver out through one of the holes.
Unsolder the switch wires.
Solder the two new populated boards together.
Reassemble the parts and either use the old MCPCB with a thin layer of thermal paste or get a new one with your choice of tint.

Is that pretty much it? The light is of a size that it looks doable.

Will you sell populated and flashed boards?

Finally, how much? I know I may be jumping the gun but it looks like a very worthy mod to me.

Couldn’t take the blue tint anymore. Broke down and ordered a 5000k XHP 50.2 for mine. I hope Sofirn goes back to NW tints in the future.

You have 2 choices, either replace the XHP50 with an XM-L2 or SST-40 on the factory mcpcb (those 3 emitters share the same 5050 footprint) or get a 26mm mcpcb for XP LED’s (3535 footprint) to open your options up a bit. MtnE sells a maxtoch 26mm XP mcpcb which is what I’ll use for the luxeon V2.

Everything else you listed sounds spot on.

The more I use the SP33 the more I like the UI. It is simple & straight forward. I really like the ability to jump up to Turbo & then go right back down to the brightness level you were at. Nice…… :+1:

To me it looks like they are copying our UI's, so this is all good! I dnld'ed the manual and it's NarsilM/Anduril in the basics, emphasizing the 1-click ON, 1-click OFF, press&hold to ramp, dbl-click to turbo, 4 clicks to lock out.

Just fyi if it hasn't been noted already, that white glue looks the same as the white glue used on the SP36 driver, and that stuff softens with heat.

Curiosity got the better of me, so I sliced and diced the stock emitter.

Measurements before:
20.5Kcd, 286 meters (a bit higher than my previous measurement of 18.5Kcd) and 2,200 lumen at about 20 seconds.

Measurements after:
27.5Kcd, 331 meters and 2,030 lumen at about 20 seconds.

The tint definitely shifted. Stock the SP33 v2 was definitely cooler in temp compared to the C8F 21700. Now they have flip flopped. The C8F is definitely cooler in temp. The SP33 hot spot used to be slightly bigger than the C8F, now it’s slightly smaller. (I adjusted the colors to best match what I’m seeing in person)

As with most NW emitters, they can look a bit yellow at lower output levels. The SP33 v2 sure looks more yellow, but on turbo it looks a bit less yellow. I imagine some people will prefer this. I’ll try it out this week to see if the new color, smaller hot spot, increased throw and slightly less output agree with me. I’ve got a stock 5700K as a backup just in case.

Mod pics for those interested:

I might be able to shave it a bit thinner, but it’s tricky and I didn’t want to damage it.

Besides slicing it, did you also do some scraping ? I sliced mine only. I see yellow pieces around your dome in the picture. Maybe if I had before and after pictures , I would notice a warmer tint, but I don’t notice much difference and have ordered a 5000k for replacement.