Lumintop FW1A discussion and review

Wish they would do black ano on this one

Wish they would do a stainless steel bezel on this one, but I imagine Lumintop is getting tired of different versions by now. Has anyone counted the SKUs in production right now?

18350 tube,18500 tube,SS bezel will be available about at September 30th. on Neal’s site, may be you can just buy the bezel by itself later.

SS bezel would look much better on a black ano or raw alu light than this fake gray color but maybe i’m wrong. the bezel is going to be so big since it’s the entire head and not just a threaded on front piece (unless they change that too?)

What exactly is fake grey?

The arbitrary blue-gray color they used in place of doing clear or no ano.

Here’s the only example I can think of, one looks OK, the other some people complained about and some didn’t care. I guess we will just have to see:

I saw an update that my order just arrived at LA this morning… anyone else seeing the same? How long do you guys think it will take to ship?

Oh. So it’s not fake grey, it’s fake “natural” anodizing.

It was never pretending to be natural ano though, like the type 3 military-grade stuff with no dye. It’s just … grey. Real grey, in a medium shade, with a hint of blue in some batches.

Natural would have been okay too, if the result could be kept a consistent shade so the parts would match… but it ended up using dye instead.

Totally unrelated, tracking says I should have a FW1A tomorrow. So that should be interesting.

Looking forward to your impressions. I’m thinking I may get an FW1T when they’re inevitably released.

Fake blues!

Yes, I got the same notice. I am guessing that our FW1As will be going through customs in LA, and then handed over to the USPS for delivery. Fremont was the first stop in the US last week, but it is not a point of entry for customs.

My point was the lack of contrast with the SS bezel but I get it. You guys like the gray more than me.

Okay, so the number I was trying to find out was apparently 22.5.

22.5 cd/lm in the XP-L HI version of the FW1A. Plus or minus a pretty large error margin due to my questionable measurement tools.

That’s about two thirds of the Emisar D1, which gets 33 cd/lm. And it’s about 6 times as throwy as the FW3A, which only gets like 4 cd/lm (I measured 3.8 cd/lm on a XP-L HI version with 10511 optic).

And if that’s anywhere near accurate, it means the FW1A should get about 27 to 29 kcd at turbo, for about 330 to 340m of throw.

So it’s less throwy than the official specs claim, but still more throwy than I was hoping. I’m debating whether to add some DC-Fix on the lens to tone it down a bit, since I was hoping it’d be 10 to 15 cd/lm. Will have to try it outdoors at night to check if it’s too throwy or not.

Anyway, initial impressions of the FW1A are good. It does a lot of things right.

Sounds grrreat

Does anyone remember, offhand, what the throw numbers are for the triple?

See above.

If you mean just above, those figures are for the 1A, and I was trying to remember how it would compare to the 3A. I have to leave for work, so no time to search right now.

Thanks, TK. That sounds great! I’m looking forward to comparisons with some known lights (S2+, ZL SC6x).

The numbers are pretty approximate. I measured 3.8 cd/lm at the 1x7135 level on a FW3A with XP-L HI 3D. However, maukka measured 4.46 cd/lm (12500 cd / 2800 lm). And maukka’s numbers are probably much more accurate.

In any case, the FW3A gets about 4-ish cd/lm with XP-L HI emitters… and FW1A gets about 22-ish cd/lm.

Using the same equipment, I measured the FW1A at about 5.95X more throwy, so it goes a lot farther at the same power levels. During normal use, this makes a huge difference. In particular, it can really increase the overall runtime, since it only needs a fraction as much power to achieve the same visible brightness.

However, the turbo level makes fewer lumens, so the maximum hotspot intensity is only about ~2.4X as much as the FW3A. And the maximum throw is about ~1.5X as many meters as the FW3A.

TL;DR: FW1A has a much smaller but much brighter hotspot, so it’s way better for seeing into the distance. If used up close though, it’ll require aiming much more carefully since it lights up a smaller area.

I’m interested to have it along the fw3a but waiting to see if they release any other colors first.