My FW3A with the SST 20’s arrived today. These are my ’first’ impressions…
Very nice tint.
Fit & finish is excellent.
One piece optic is OK, not bad at all; but I prefer the Carclo w/ glass lens.
Tail cap is screwed on super tight!!
Switch is silent but super easy to activate. Personally I like the first ones much better. Not sure why they changed this.
Less lumen output than XP-L HI
More heat than XP-L HI
Better CRI than XP-L HI . It does not to me. In this light, I would rather have the XP-L HI with a nice tint than the SST-20 with a nice tint, for the reasons listed above.
Glad I got the SST-20 since it has/had the nice tint & the XP-L HI 3D tints in mine basically suck.
Those are my ’first impressions’. More later if anything else becomes apparent.
For me, I don’t notice the change in activation much but it feels a lot better. I love the SST20. I don’t have a xpl-hi version. Everybody says it’s hotter. Does that mean you can hold the xpl an extra 10 seconds on turbo or at the top of the ramp? What are we talking about here in real terms?
Maybe the design requires higher precision that is possible at this price point? I don’t know, just wondering. On a related note, who creates the blueprint files for projects like this?
I had XPLHI , after a short time it did develop a blue tinge to it, but that was after one led went bad & started to smoke , but before that it was ok for a warmish or neutral or whatever just under 5000k is ,with no green more of a yellowy white.
Another new colour I’ve invented
It wasn’t the led that was smoking (it was just discoloured) the smoking was from the negative black wire which got hot enough to melt the solder & disconected itself , the smoke was coming from the plastic insulation on that wire.
I was taking a video to show neal the smoking & as luck would have it that’s when it melted the solder & disconnected itself ,I could smell it was hot just like a D4 or any other high power light gets , but this was a burning smell & that’s what made me take the bezel off to see where it was coming from.
That would do it. The star on the FW3A isn’t screwed down. If you ran it for more than a few seconds on turbo without the bezel on, the star could very easily overheat.
Yes he did but it was burning & or smoking before the bezel was taken off , I could smell burning so I took the bezel ,optic ,lens off to see where it was coming from.