Interesting comparison between the VG10s and SP33.
The VG10s has 1100 lumens vs 2500 but does not appear that much brighter because of the hot spot. You actually have to pay attention at the spill and the larger/smoother hot spot to see where that lumen difference goes.
I always preffer floody to throwers for an EDC. However, in an urban enviroment, floody “waste” light because it’s competing with ambient lighting. So a thrower with half the lumens appear to be be just as bright.
Two instances….in a dark area standing in between two buildings, the SP33 shows off its high lumens.
When i pointed across the street at a building 350 feet away, hard to tell because both covered the building about equally and spill was irrelevant.
Another interesting thing was the tint made comparison more difficult.
In the end….i stll preffer the SP33 at twice the price….even though we are talking about 15 vs 30 bucks.
Floody is a relative term. The SP33 is floddier the lets say a VG10. Larger, smoother hot spot and more spill.
The more lumens, the better . i would love the Thrunite TC20 with an xhp70.2 but at $90 it’s just too expensive. At $30, the SP33 is a better buy. Of course there is cheaper with less lumens, but 15 vs 30 bucks is not much of an argument.
OK, quick question for the driver folks. I’ve messaged Dan but he’s not around much lately so here goes. Is there any reason this driver wouldn’t work with IOS/D4 ramping firmware? I was hoping it would work but it won’t even give a flicker except when it rarely seems to ramp a bit or sometimes just gives up turbo for a second. Using IOS ramping on an 85 MCU from RMM, Decent FET, a single 7135, diode on D1, 10uf cap with zener piggyback on C1, 36k pulldown resistor on R4 over by the FET. I can build a working driver on RMM’s FET+1 board and these components so what gives? I know it’s a hack, don’t laugh too hard…
Separation of strobes and turbo from normal mode makes the normal usage less annoying
The light output is pretty strong
Relatively cheap, I got it for $21 a piece.
Negatives:
Seller could have packed the item better. As you saw in the album above, the boxes are in a really questionable shape.
Both of my lights shows quite noticable "doughnuting". The very center shows some yellow hint and quite dimmer than the surrounding "hotspots", and then the "angry blue" spill beam.
It looks like the boxes got banged around in shipping. Their main job is to protect what’s inside the box. It looks like they did their job. Sofirn has to keep the shipping costs down so there is a compromise here.
I’m not seeing the donut hole pattern in your pics or in my light. The slight OP reflector seems to smooth it out. Do your pictures not show it, but you see it in person?
I can kinda forgive the crumpled box, as long as the light is usable. Though that’s cutting it pretty close.
The donutting is indeed worse for me in person. It’s still there in the photo (at least with my monitor) but much more subtle than the real-life.
There is more concerning issue, though. I kinda ran into a kind of glitch on one of the light. After the light entered “Turbo” mode, the “High” would no longer be accessible until I re-screw the tail cap. When this glitch occurs, one click on the side-switch in “Turbo” mode will not turn off the light (as it should have), but rather drop the light into “Medium” mode, and holding the light will only going back and forth between the “Medium” <—-> “Low”.
Now the glitch magically disappears, but I cannot say for sure when it will come back and haunt us. I wonder if someone has encountered this glitch before, and how they deal with it.
You just need to clean the battery tube ends and contacts. If there is extra resistance in the circuit it fools the driver into thinking the battery voltage is low. This happens every now and then. I clean the contacts and it’s back to normal. This is common on all boost style drivers.
Dang, didn't see this til now. I got these CK drivers and 2 SP33's to mod with them.
Looks like a 3 channel driver, not 2 channel - FET+bank+1. Std 3 chan NarsilM should work. Need a few mins to trace it out. I've used these drivers in a 2 chan config as well, just didn't populate the bank. I modded NarsilM more recently to work on a 3 chan as a 2 chan.
Let me confirm the driver layout by tracing it out....
Yes, confirmed - it's a standard triple channel config, not the 2 channels Ramping IOS was designed for.
Triple channel is a std NarsilM config setting, probably in Anduril as well. Not sure if Ramping IOS supports it -- would have to check...
Ok, nope, I don't see it, though I only looked at my orig (buggy??) Ramping IOS version... Doubt TK would have a reason to add 3 channel support though.
Has anybody tried a Nichia 144am LED in this light? Looks like it can indeed make a good host for that LED.
I’ve got a Nichia 144am and looking for find a good compact 26650 light for it.
I recently picked up a Sofirn SP33 and I love many things about it with the exception of the doughnut ring. it’s actually quite disappointing. I see that some have fixed this buy modding the LED emitter itself or even replacing it. I’m definitely not doing that, I got this light to take with me camping but is there any way to just adjust the placement of the emitter and help eliminate this? Is this so common that if I sent the light back to Amazon and requested an exchange the new light would be the exact same with the darker center?
