Thanks for the review Old-Lumens. Hope you don't mind me sharing my first impression on the light as-well.
I got the light 2 yesterday. It arrived in 17 days.
I only paid 7,3$, it was on sale. I don't regret spending the money. IMO its a 3/5 at most you are spending 10+$
My light may not be 100% the same as Old-Lumens.
High starts on about 2,12A to the emitter and declines towards 2 amps fairly fast.
Mine does not have any PWM sound. :)
Next mode memory.. :Sp
Same pill as old lumens.
Dry threads.
No thermal paste.
Zoom feature was a bit too tight to comfortable one hand operation.
Tailcap does not screw on all the way when using long protected 18650 (say NCR18650B).
Flimsy spring on the tail.
Emitter was not centered
Anodizing on my was quite nice. Im not saying its good anodizing, just saying it was evenly applied and no marks to really complain on.
I like pocked clip is not super stiff as some lights are. Its nice.
How do I remove the (next-mode) memory? I would consider the driver to be decent if it did not have the next mode memory.
A fun fact. The hotspot when fully zoomed in is about 9,3 times larger than my XT-50 with de-domed XP-G2 with 3A Qlite (I bought that light as a host). Needles to say, it does not throw anywhere near the same. The N-light XT-50 have far superior thermal design, and larger lens and head. The stock SK98 have much wider and useful flood compared to my modded XT-50. Guess you cant have it all... This stock light does not impress anyone who are into lights in any way. Despite that, I think its a bit cool having an oversized Sipik SK68. :)
No need to test for long use. It gets hot fast on high. Easy to tell it won’t run on high for a long time without having some kind of problem. Like most small lights, it just does not have the mass to run for a long time without overheating something.
I was curious as to how long it takes to get in the approximate “danger zone”. I probably shouldnt buy it for myself though anyway, since I do like to run my lights on high for longer periods, and my little Xiaozhi stands up to this use, though its *edit: $16 vs $13 with the above link for sk98.
That’s 12 minutes. I decided to stop before it went over 40 degrees. the point where it stayed at 36.5 for a minute may have been me making an error in taking the measurement.
Temp measurements were taken at the kurling on the zoomer using an IR thermometer.
Copper MCPCB and thermal paste should help the emitter a ton compared to stock.
High (2,65)- medium (0,65)- strobe
High (2,62)- medium (1,31)- low (0,35) strobe - sos
After moving the positive emitter wire you will get higher output. Emitter output is very sensitive to input voltage though. 2,65 was with NCR18650B at 4,1V, so even if you might see three amps using a fresh good low discharge cell, you will only have high current in the beginning.
Information about how to do this was found here. Thanks to nofearek9. I just hopefully made it more clear.
As I understand from Relic38s memory fix, a 330K resistor goes on top of the the capacitor (the brown thing) in the same when as when stacking resistor on top of each other right?
You guys need to start one thread and gather all the driver info like this, in one thread, where we can find it again. I will forget this valuable information by tomorrow morning and I will look for a week and never find it again, LOL.
No, you just bypass the current limiting resistors, the modes still work, and there is enough resistance everywhere, in this driver and your flashlight, to keep the current limited to a few amps anyway.
My has lost its next mode memory all on its own! I dont know how, been using it for about 2 weeks on a mix of high and low and it has lost the next mode memory. It always starts on high now.
Compared to my XR-E Q5 EZ-900 SA-9, that emitter footprint looks big! I’m beginning to understand how emitter size matters in a zoomie!
Great photos & review!