Mini Review of On The Road M3 Pro

Awesome, thanks so much for your help! One more question, do you have the CW or WW M3 Pro? Since it seems like you don’t use it, just a thought, but would you consider selling your U16?

I have CW. These lights (M3, M3 Pro, U16, U18) are a bit warmer than normal. People say the NW versions are warmer than expected ( borderline warm white) and all my CW versions are a bit warmer than I like, maybe 5700-6000K instead of the normal 6500K you typically see with CW lights. So keep that in mind.

I’m not interested in selling.

Jason, have you noticed severe parasitic drain in this light?

I charged a battery some weeks ago, used the light few times and put it aside, with the tailcap tight.
Now I measured voltage and it is 3.20V :zipper_mouth_face:

Once it drained a battery below 2.0V and now I noticed this…

Any clue?

I measure a super low 43 microamp parasitic drain. Have you tried measuring yours?

Hum, I’m not sure if I could measure it accurately with my multimeter. It gave me a value of 002 or 0.02 depending on the setting I was using. But again, I am not sure if I did it correctly nor if I have the proper tool for that.

In any case, I find it very weird. BTW, this time the light had the tailcap tightened while on the first time it happened, it was slightly loosen…
I took the battery out now so that it doesn’t drain again, in one way or another. :person_facepalming:

Just remove the tail cap and put one probe on the battery negative and one on the bare metal part of the battery tube.

You need to move the positive probe to measure amperage. Preferably uA, but if you don’t have that setting, use mA. The negative probe stays on COM/negative. Be careful not to turn the light on while measuring these low currents and put your positive prove back to Volts when your done.

43 uA (microamp) is the same as 0.043 mA (milliamp).

Here’s the best picture I have. It’s showing how to measure a harder type of light. The probes are backwards, but my meter works both ways.

I can turn the selector switch to uA for more accuracy if I want.

I have the M3pro and the original.When I screw tho bottom sometimes the button blinks with a blue light.Is it normal?This happens only in m3pro

Mine does the same: otherwise the light only comes on when charging (red then blue). I really appreciate the mode lock feature but miss a moonlight or firefly mode.

The blue light is normal.

It has moonlight mode. They call it ultra-low.

I didn’t know what you were referring to so I looked through the manual. Sure enough it has a feature I didn’t even know about, I can choose a brightness level and then hold down the button for 2 seconds and it will give me a confirmation blink. Then I can turn the light on and off at that level with a single fast click instead of having to press and hold to turn the light on and off. This is a really nice feature!

Thanks Jason. Will try again tonight and check the values!
I guess I was doing it differently, but will try this way!

Thanks again :+1:

And BTW, the mode lock is quite nice indeed :wink:

Nice review. Good insights as well.

Instead of making this kind of measurement, I did another type of experiment with the M3 Pro to check the battery drain.
2 days ago (21st July, night) I measured the voltage of the battery outside the M3 Pro. It marked 3.58V. I put it back into the light and never turned the light ON. Only the blue LEDs from the switch gave signal when screwing in the tailcap completely.

Yesterday (22nd July) I repeated the process and in the morning it marked 3.48V. Yesterday at night, it marked 3.43V.
This morning (23rd July) it marked 3.41V.

NOW, 23rd at night, it marks 3.01V!

I cannot explain this.

I will leave the battery inside the light and check it again in the morning, to see how drained or depleted it will be…
It is annoying to perceive that this light is draining the battery somehow… :zipper_mouth_face:

Can you turn this flashlight on while it is charging? That is one of my favorite Thrunite features.

Yes, it functions normally while charging.

That is strange. I don’t think it’s an accurate measure of drain because the battery might have a certain amount of internal drain that messes up your readings.

You might try to measure the drain with a DMM at different voltage levels to see if it’s consistent or maybe the drain increases at a lower voltage level? Usually the parasitic drain will decrease a tiny bit as voltage drops. I’m not sure how to explain your results.

It is indeed strange Jason! And guess what?
This morning I checked the voltage again and the cell was at 2.05V! So, during the night there was another huge drain.
So I decidedto put a brand new Vapcell 800mAh into it, with 4.10V. Later today I will check again how is the Voltage.

Meanwhile, I tried to measure the parasitic drain, but I am not sure if my settings on the multimeter are fine. Can you or someone please validate or tell me what I need to change?

At 2.05 volts it’s time to replace that battery. It’s toast.

Your DMM looks to be set up right, but it’s measuring 3.2 milliamp instead of 0.043 milliamp like I got. That is a huge difference. I think your M3 Pro is defective. It will continue to eat batteries. I would contact the company you bought it from and tell them it’s constantly draining your batteries in x number days.

Hum, could the value displayed be related to the screen of the multimeter (being small) or the setting itself ?

Still, I guess it must be somehow defective. I will confirm it tonight when I check the Vapcell. That one being brand new, without previous discharges, will probably behave better under normal circumstances.

I didn’t bought the M3 Pro, it was sent for me by On The Road (at AliExpress) for review. Still, after confirming if the numbers continue decreasing with other cells, I will inform them of a possible malfunction in some of their lights. Not all, of course, as yours is working properly.

I will post again tonight after checking the battery!

Thank you for the support and hints on this case Jason!

If you change the setting from 200mA to 20mA you should get a bit more accuracy. You get an extra digit from 03.2 to 3.2X milliamps. It’s still the same high reading.

If you switch it to 2000uA it would probably exceed the scale as it would be 32XXuA. This is 3,200 micro amps and I think your meter only goes up to 2,000 microamps. So over 3000 microamps compared to what it should be 43 microamps.

IDK, maybe the MCU on your light is not going into it’s lower power sleep mode or something.