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Hey folks long time and no reviews from me unless you keep up with Channel? If ya don’t ya should get me? If you like offensive MEMEs and language check me out on YouTube. Some people will say its offensive others will say its Australian English lol.
So I was cruising Aliexpress and came across a deal to good to pass up. You would think I would have learn my lesson the first 50 times, Buying dud lights lol.
As it goes i bought this cool looking stainless steel flashlight/torch from Yupard on Aliexpress. It can be found at a few sellers for around the same price. I think Yupard had the lowest price so I bought it from them as you do.
Link is here non affiliate 7.90USD This light puts the B in BLF.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1387052426.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dVDVdrU
Overall
I will sum it up here for you Just in case you don’t like reading. Its a great looking light it came clean and tidy and looks good from the factory but it does need some work. You could use it stock and be happy. Common knowledge stainless steel lights don’t handle heat to well so don’t expect a triple to work well in here. Stock output is lowish 500 Chinese lumens but acceptable for a good looking light. Give the host a decent driver a high CRI LED and you are laughing all the way to the bank!
The good
I really like the way this light looks its so simple yet elegant at least to my eyes. I see heaps of customs that are pretty but they also have to much going on, Maybe to much for my liking.
Some times simple is best.
We will call this flashlight a host as this is BLF I expect it to be modded ASAP, As a host its great the threads are cut well and the light fits together good. I did put on silicone grease on it right away but surprisingly the threads are clean and not black after opening and closing the light more than a few times.
As I said above the light came clean no major scratches or marks and most importantly no chips at all which is really good, For this price I was expecting a lot less! Maybe that’s why I am happy? lol
This SS host came looking better than my BLF D80 v2, Keep in mind it would have been like 10 times easier to make this SS host compared to the D80. Even without cleaning or polishing the light it looks really good. Mind you there is not that many places for dirt to get caught up in.
The light itself is fairly light weight coming in at 86 grams most SS lights I buy are much heavier. I am not to sure if this is a good or bad thing? Being light weight should be no issue as SS is super strong. Most SS lights weight a tone i guess being so light weight and made from stainless its heat absorption will be bad.
Also on the plus side the light for the most part takes normal size parts like 16mm LED board and around a 17mm driver (with some sanding).
The light is a 18650 flashlight but even my smaller 18650s struggle, Its a tight fit!
- Weight: 86 grams
- Length: 121mm
- Tail diameter: 23mm
- Head diameter: 23mm
- Lens 20mm
- Reflector 19mm
- LED 16mm
- Driver 15.5mm
The bad
The stock setup is crap as you would expect, Pay peanuts ya get monkeys. The stock LED is like a Cree XPE or maybe a XPG, I don’t even have it with me any more, If I find it I will photo it. Straight away I put a Nichia 219c in it but now that’s gone so I can sand the shelf down.
The stock driver is no better its crap, I mean it works finish but it has PWM on all modes. It does function okay besides the PWM and has 5 modes as is low, med, high and blinky bills as usual. Output is low on the stock driver so you will want to get rid of it.
The meh
Well this part is probably bad but not as bad as one might think. This issue isn’t driver bad and LED bad so it gets its own shout out.
The pill on this light might need some work, Its a screw in pill but its small and light weight and just generally designed made with no thought to heat dissipation. On the plus side its made out of aluminum so its easy enough to fix.
I think pictures will talk the best.
So this SS light has half a shelf I am not sure what went wrong here but some may say half is better than none, Am I right? Lol.
The other issue is the pill fits a 16mm LED star but the driver is slightly smaller it closer to a 15.5mm. Then there is a lip for the driver that is stupidly shallow. So its likely without modding the shelf you will get a short from the driver. Just see the pics it makes it easier for me.
Now I am no metal expert but modding of the shelf shouldn’t be to bad but if you already running out of space/ material before you start it could end bad.
Also the retaining ring is separate from the pill, So it screw down over the pill and holds every thing in place. This sandwiches the driver in place between the shelf and ground ring. This may be the saving grace as you could just tape the pill and or driver and you will still have contact with ground on the back end of the driver but issue with shorts.
If this light had a good pill I would honestly give the light a 5/5 seeing as the pill needs work id rate the light a 4/5.
I am going to try a S2+ pill in here who knows it might fit.
Thanks for reading!
