Review: UltraFire LZZ-F15

Yes, I have noticed that before. It seems it’s their way to get a “thrower” out of many different lights without having to do a lot. I guess it’s probably the cheapest approach for a Mfg.

Thanks a lot for the review! Frontpage’d and Sticky’d.

Do any of you that have this also have the Defiant Super Thrower? I'm curious if the body will thread into the DST head.

I have been working a bit on this light to make it into a gift for a friend of mine, nothing like a OL make-over, but I'll share some findings:

stock current: 2 amps, I used a freshly charged CGR18650CH Panasonic IMR battery for all current measurements.

there are 8 x 1.5 ohm resistors on the driver, I paralleled another 5 x 1 ohm resisitors, the current went up to 2.5 amps

I put copper braid through the tail spring and contact board spring. the current went up to 3.0 amps

I decided now to just skip the current limiting resistors, that is easy done by moving the led-plus wire to the convenient blob (also labelled out +) that is to the bottom right of the original connection (I guess they made that one especially for me):

the current went up to 3.5 amps. (I'm beginning to like this simple driver, am I the only one?)

The led board started smoking at this point, because of the isolation gasket melting (no thermal paste, led board not really squeezed down because the reflector is just not touching it when srewed tight ).

Then I changed the led board to a Sinkpad with a XM-L2 3C, Arctic silver 5 in between, pill not completely screwed down (just half a milimeter) because then the reflector does indeed squeeze the led-board tight against the pill. (I changed the melted isolation gasket for a new one).Current went down to 3 amps (perhaps because of the higher Vf of XM-L2, and/or lower working temp?), but the light can easily handle a continuous high now.

Last thing I did is soldering a 330 kOhm resistor over the light-brownish capacitor (as suggested by Relic38 somewhere else) and got rid of the next mode memory, it always starts on high now.

I has become a very nice light and I just gave it to my friend, he has no idea what happened to it, but he is very happy :-)

Bottomline for me is that, although generally it is considered cheap and ready to swap to a better one, I quite like the driver (it is in a variety of lights by the way, as already stated above in this thread), it is simple enough for me (I am no electronics guru), with a very simple move of the +wire in this light it is getting 3 amps to the led (same current with a Trustfire 26650 I just found out), and the next mode memory is easily removed with a resistor on top of the capacitor. Oh, and I could not see the PWM on low,when waving the light before my eyes, so that must be pretty high for a change.

I like the look of this light, good to know it can be made to perform well with some basic TLC. :wink:

Djozz, did you measure any lumens output?

I heard that even at 3A the driver/led combo didnt really put out too much lumens, in another thread, on another light, but with the same driver.

I did not do lumens because as far as I can understand it is a straightforward direct drive driver, the tail current goes through the led (can someone correct me if I am wrong here?). At 3 amps I expect around 850 lumens OTF, and it looks bright enough for that.I gave it away already, so I can't not do the lumen measurement anymore.

I heatsinked the led as well as can be, but the output in the stock light could suffer from high temperature though.

Thanks for answering.. I was wondering if the white gasket also blocked some light...??

it does, see my post somewhere above, it was the first thing I swapped in the light. You can even see it in the Fasttech picture , the middle section of the reflector does not receive any light:

So the answer is Yes..thanks

did you read your PM Djozz?

now I did :-) . Answered.

When I took out the white gasket, the beam looked really bad.. (in a Paisen Z6 U2).
Not sure if a normal gasket would help.. I can still try, or I can try to sand it down.

(pm replied)

The gasket does lift up the reflector a bit relative to the led, you miss that if you remove the gasket, I suggest to replace the gasket by one that does not have that high rim. Also, don't be fooled by the looks of the beam, it may look worse, but the hotspot will be brigher without the stock gasket. That is because the outer part of a reflector images the light much better into a nice hotspot than the inner part. But the inner part does still contribute to the hotspot so if you simply remove that light the spot will be perhaps nicer looking, but dimmer. (I did a simple experiment somewhere last year that shows the separate contributions from the outer an the inner part of a reflector to the hotspot)

I like this light and ordered another one to mod (and also ordered a Efest 3000mAh 26650 battery), and experimented a bit further with the driver. With both springs reinforced with copper braid, all electrical paths to the switch reinforced too, bypassed the current limiting resistors by moving the led+ to the other solder pad on the driver, used thick wires to the led (switched to a XM-L2 5B1 80 CRI, on a 20mm Sinkpad) I got 3A. Then I bypassed the Mosfed as well by soldering the led+ to the other side of it (three legs of it are in direct contact with two large via's going to the battery+ contact plate). Now I got 4.5A. so the Mosfed limits the current by quite a bit (eats up some voltage I guess) in this set-up!

So now it is a 1 mode direct drive light, and pretty much the maximum that you can get out of a single 4.2V li-ion light with a XM-L2 (apart from that I used a lower binned warmer high CRI led, which gives about 20% less light than a cool white U2 bin). I can still put a AR-coated lens in, and both the output and the beam improves if you remove the bezel (that does not fix in place anything, so you can just leave it off). The light handles the heat very well, with no large output drops over the course of minutes

I get 1040 OTF lumens out of it (with 19klux@1meter throw), on a fresh Efest 26650 IMR, not bad for a single battery 80 CRI 4000K XM-L2 light :-)

Can you take a pic of the driver with all you mentioned above??

Hi!

I got this light a few days ago - because of this review!
Til now - I just love it :slight_smile:

I customized it like this:

- Neutral White XM-L

- 8x7135 3 Mode driver (Nanjg)*

- swapped the insulation gasket to this one: https://www.fasttech.com/p/1182004 - fits perfect and gives more spill

  • lubrificated and thermal-greased

I like it, because it has a good cooling structure, the beam is not to narrow (I hate throwers) and is fits my hand perfectly.

Very good modding host.

*Because the original driver is 21mm in diameter - and I only have 20mm connection boards, I just removed every part of it with reflow, grinded the surface down to the ground material and then connected the Nanjg driver.
Takes a while, but works perfect.

I won this light in a giveaway that Pulsar ran last year. I liked it, but was dreaming about a relatively easy MT-G2 mod. Turns out, this host makes for a simple and very pocketable MT-G2 mod.

A tir from digikey, 1066-1095-ND is a perfect fit behind the glass lens. (Although one of mine had a little casting nub that I had to cut away.)

A normal 7135 driver board can get the zener diode mod and a few (4 in my case) extra stacked 7135s. I used the existing driver board as the contact plate after stripping all the components off. (I didn’t bother with kapton or even sanding the component side of the old driver, as I just epoxied the double-high 7135s onto it.)

A couple of 18350s and you’re good to go.

On high, it gets too warm to hold comfortably after about 5 minutes indoors, but this isn’t really a long runtime kinda light at the best of times.

It’s not the absolute brightest light I’ve got, but it’s got a great size/bright ratio.

JonnyC wrote:

Do any of you that have this also have the Defiant Super Thrower? I'm curious if the body will thread into the DST head.

I do. Please remind me if I don't report back tonight.

Thanks for the review O-L. I got on of these from the TinyDeal limited coupon. Not a bad light for $10. My wife carries a 26650 tube light in her purse (and a AAA Thrunite). She'll probably want to replace it with this guy.

I can't quite recall, but I think I've seen the body of this threaded on a DST after I made that post. Maybe, unless it was another host.

LOL. Sorry, didn't notice the date of your post. I'm curious to find out though.

EDIT: Looks familar but I may be thinking of the A8. The battery tube in the OP does fit the DST and works too. Never tried to use in shorty mode til now. Petty cool. There is a mismatch in the anodized finish that the picture didn't capture.