If you are asking questions to Sofirn anyway, could you ask them (how dare I ask on BLF) to glue the bezel? They all come loose after some time so that when switching off the light at some point you suddenly have the bezel, lens and optic loose in your hands. And you can not screw the bezel too tight or the driver stops making contact with the battery.
That one is very special. Like it, but itās not for everyone.
I think the optics is nice, but itās the wrong LED. Completely different beam with a Nichia 219C, and thatās what the C01S should have been IMO. If Lux decides to ask for user opinions about modifying the standard C01S, Iāll happily participate with some beamshots.
That's very unlikely to happen as Sofirn told me they had difficulties sourcing Nichia LEDs from their supplier(s). They didn't even get any XP-G3 deep red.
Barry asked me for more details, i.e. do you have a picture that easily describes/shows which parts become loose? He said that BLF edition of C01S was not glued for DYI purposes. Has this problem also occured on standard C01S (black, red, blue) models?
Update: Barry just told me he will check with the factory to ensure that future batches will be glued better. It seems some samples did not have enough glue. It's very difficult to use the right amount of glue. If it's too less, the head becomes loose, if it's too much, the glue will spill all over the threads.
By the way, I will start a poll on BLF asking people to vote if they want future batches of C01S/C01R with two modes (10lm, 100lm) or with three modes (1lm, 10lm, 100lm). Personally, I have a good feeling that many customers would appreciate a sublumen-mode (0.5 - 1lm) for using in full darkness with adapted eyes.
Good news: Sofirn has received 20 samples of the XP-E2 deep red (660nm) with the bin code XPEBPR-L1-P20-30-B-01 from Cree. Engineering is now starting to build a prototype.
I also asked them to try making the C01S driver programmable with reversible mode order. They said it was possible (3 modes, 2 mode groups). We need to wait and see if there's any sense in having three modes on C01R as deep red tint probably needs 2 modes (low and high) only. But it could be useful for the brigher, more performing versions, e.g. with SST-20. The bad news is that prices are expected to increase with a more sophisticated driver and more LED options. However, this will all be reflected in the poll I am going to create later on.
No offense, but I'd rather keep things simple (and reasonable in terms of costs, too). While I do appreciate a high grade of customization on big lights like LT1 or SP36, I'd recommend not overstraining customers on small keychain lights that will mostly be used in one mode-configuration forever. ;-)
If 3 modes are made, I think that deep red lovers could be interested in a very low mode. So 0.1ā5ā100%
Not sure though, it is not 100% my type of flashlight.
In general it would be nice if a (mode order) programmable driver is made for the C01S, not just for the red version.