Starry Light SA-22

LED Flashlights – General Info Multiple AA / 14500 Flashlights
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IMPORTANT UPDATE:

After some serious consideration, I’d advise against buying the Starry Light without taking into account its major design flaw and one other thing; the light can work well, but odds are that you will have trouble with the head screwing on. Tonight, the 3rd - yes, third - straight unit I got and resold was bad. Only, this one was so bad that not even the retaining ring could be fixed. The threads were not made well enough for even one round of use. The guy went to re-fasten the head after charging the batteries and couldn’t get it. I thought it would be a simple fix, but I have it ready now to send back to I.S. for replacement. Calvin responded fast to the situation, but be advised that this item is not without its problems.

So if you get one like this and the retaining ring issue isn’t the cause, then you’ll still have a working light, but the head will just press on and not screw down—which means it may or may not stay in place during normal use and will just pull right off.

I really love this light, but this is a besetting and serious design flaw to be made aware of.

Another smaller consideration:* Runtime test in high mode was completed yesterday by me. You are looking at 27:56 seconds of stable high brightness on good nimh cells. After that, the light provides an additional 10 minutes of fastly diminishing output (diminishing thereafter to nothing). This was with my best (and only worthwhile Energizer cells). The Eneloops test has not been done (yet), but of the 3 people I sold these units to, all ended up recharging them with merely sporadic use—same as my Energizers when they were using Eneloops. So you can expect no more than, say, 40 minutes on high (far from the claimed 2+ hours).

Mild flickering issue also found: This was, however, a one-time thing and I can’t get it to do it again. Just FYI.

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Ugh, thanks, Rusty Joe!

So much for all that excitement :D!

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Wow..how disappointinig... ::(

Thanks RJ for the heads up.

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Wow… that really is disappointing. When you say the threads were not made well enough for even one round of use, do you mean that the plastic body threads were worn down by the aluminum head threads? Or were they just not aligned to begin with? The 30 min runtime on high is also a big disappointment. I wonder how their prediction or test would have yielded over 2 hours… This would’ve been my new light to try out on the next camping trip. Guess I’ll be sticking with my Convoy on the next trip…

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I think the second. The threads are not very thick and just don’t catch well. I mentioned this when first plugging this light, but once the retaining issue was handled, I figured that would be the end of it. Well, I was wrong. As far as the runtime test results, I think they combined the capacity of the four Eneloops and figured on a steady 2.8 amp draw. No matter. They were certainly off by a large number.

But I learned something from this (and it should be a lesson to all reviewers here): Never utter anything beyond simple yeh or neh “first impressions” when getting a new light. It is a bad idea to recommend or condemn a light within just hours or days of getting it. The novelty of a thing can get to all of us and cloud our judgment, but time also has a way of factoring into our estimation of a thing’s value — and so it should!

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Youre right about that, Rusty Joe!

Ive come to the same conclusion myself in similar fashion - NiteCore i4 V2 turned out to be real crap, missing termination with AAA cells, fragile power cord that broke near the chargers plug and it wasnt even abused, totaly not worth the money.

I wonder if your report has something to do with fact that there is still no real review done by a person, who, according to BlackShadow, was supposed to receive review sample. That person either reported similar faults as you and they pulled the review or, which is also as plausbile as first scenario - this light wasnt evern sent out to anybody to avoid harsh criticism in reviews :D!

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4xAA, 880lm => doing the math, 40min runtime on high sounds pretty normal to me.

Now the real question is: Are the lower modes usable, or with bad PWM?

Ps. We are still working with Ric to get a BLF edition of this light with better modes, memory, high PWM, and NW emitter.. But is the build quality so bad that we should stop the GB before it's even started?

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the thread issue is bothering me, but i didn’t know about this effort, is there a thread?

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Now there is: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/24825

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I couldn’t resist the price for this 4*AA light with high lumens. I decided to take my chances with the head threading in hopes that I would be lucky. I should be getting it any day now. I don’t have the equipment to give it a proper review, but I’ll do my best to provide you guys with as many beam shots and pictures as possible.

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Thanks, looking forward to it.

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This would be awesome, looking forward!

Good review doesnt have to be with scientific battery runtimes and lux output measurement and tailcap measurement of amp draw :D!

Post what YOU like about this light and if beamshots are possible, then what else could we ask :D? Unless you have some other known lights to compare, then beamshots with those lights would be welcome too :D!

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I'm gonna need reviews/ reports from multiple sources before I'll even consider thinking about buying this light .

Whoever said " because illumination supply sold it .. meant it was a good light" was talking crazy .

Even causing Calvin to pop in and try to indemnify himself from that idea .

This light imo has gotten way too much good press without anyone even having sufficiently testing it . the Jetbeam pa40's were closed out all over the internet at 30$ and didn't get this much attention .

Rusty Joe above says he's gotten 3 bad ones ?? 3 out of 3 ?? and everyone seems to want to ignore his warnings?

sounds like a trainwreck .

* Orionlight I look forward to your feedback

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nvm

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When and where did you see PA40 for 30$ :D?

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I thought about making this a new thread, but I honestly don’t have enough info to call a full review, so I’ll just call it a mini and stick it in here. I’m only going to post pictures of stuff you already haven’t seen. The pictures of the holster and lanyard are everywhere so I’ll spare you all. I apologize in advance… I don’t have the nicest camera so I was limited on what I could do manually with the settings.

Here is a picture of the body and threading. It was pretty lubed up when I got it. Almost too much. I had to clean it up a bit and lube the O-ring a little, but other than that, it was fine.

Here is a close up of the threads. Again, super-lubed.

Here is the head where the battery contacts are made. As you can see there are two distinct contact points, the one with the black ring around it being the positive contact. There are also cuts on the outter edge in two different sizes to make sure you are inserting the head into the body the right way.

Here’s what I mean. Notice the diagram showing which way to insert the batteries and then the “guide rails” built into the body to fit nicely with the head. It took some time to see what all this stuff was for, but it works fine for what it is. It probably could have had a better design, but I like not having a separate flimsy battery holder like some of the other 4AA lights.

Unfortunately, there were some blemishes on the reflector. Looks like tiny dimples that were accidentally made. Thankfully, you don’t see this affecting the beam.

Here’s a head on shot.

The PWM on low is pretty noticeable when doing this kind of stuff or aiming it at a moving ceiling fan, but to people who aren’t easily susceptible to this, it’s not a big deal at all.

Here’s a shot at a wall from about 1.5 meters away. It looks much more ringy in the picture than it does in person.

And finally, here are my outdoor beam shots compiled into a collage. The top collage is the Starry Light and the bottom collage is the Convoy C8. I figured that just about everyone here has a version of this light so it’s the easiest to compare with as a common denominator. The C8 pics were done with a slightly different setting but you get the idea.
Starry Light

Convoy C8

Conclusion:
So far, here are my pros and cons:

Pros:
-Super bright light
-Great throw
-Surprisingly floodier than I expected (could be a con for some people)
-Uses AAs
-High quality holster and lanyard (really, not just saying it. The holster is beautiful. Holster has a D-ring too)

Cons:
-Gets hot and doesn’t seem to dissipate the heat as well as my Convoy C8
-Takes some getting used to with screwing on the head, though my experience hasn’t been like Rusty Joe’s. (thankfully, I guess I got lucky)
-Run times are lower than expected. I estimated about 40 mins on high before it goes out. 25 mins and you’ll notice it dimming.
-PWM is slow

After everything, I’m fairly happy with it. It’s a great alternative to my C8 and I don’t have to worry about ridiculous battery management like I do when handling 18650s. I pop in my Eneloops and I’m good to go. I also prefer the wider spill in the beam pattern and the closer to neutral tint. For $25, it’s a pretty good buy for a 4AA light. Can’t speak to reliability yet, but I’ll be sure to report anything if something comes up. Now… If they could SOMEHOW make this in an all aluminum casing…

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LOL what a piece of junk. Because: Chinese Plastic. LOL how long before the plastic disintegrates. This will be a two dollar light within 6 months. Chinese plastic crumbles like dust. Plastic threads against metal threads = crumbly plastic particles. Can’t stop laughing

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Let me explain a little more about the headache behind this; I think everyone here who knows me as they do would know I’d never want to do or say anything that could down a good product or cost a good seller business. But in this case, the issue with the head was the major issue with other resulting issues therefrom. Honestly, it makes this light a pain in the arse.

Because of the design, there is serious confusion on which side to put the batteries into and no distinction from looking how one side has two that go in positive first, and the other side positive down. No distinction at all looking at the spring bottom where the batteries load. So the people I sold them to brought back the two lights (just like I suspected they would) and said: “I charged the batteries and put them back in and this doesn’t come on now.” “Oh boy!”, I was thinking.

Turns out, the way the head is designed, the inner-head (actual unit of the light) can swivel around and be reversed without knowing it in relation to the way the batteries go in. So it’s dang good it has reverse polarity protection! So the downside of this mess is that not only is the head screwing on an issue with the retaining ring coming out (again, on all of the three I got), but when you want to get one of these for someone without the worry of priming them with knowledge of special batteries, you can’t as easily do that since the configuration resists being trouble-free. I’ve had to put the batteries back in and/or re-attached/screw down the head a number of times changing batteries. It really is annoying.

So the conclusion: Might as well give your non-flashie family and friends a one-cell 18650 light that won’t offer such little headaches and keep this one for you. And keep in mind, I didn’t even really factor in the defective one I sent back having the totally bad threads.

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While I agree that plastic threads against metal threads probably isn’t the best idea, the blanket statement that all Chinese plastic is horrible is a bit over the top. I don’t think you realize how much Chinese plastic you have in your house that you don’t think twice about buying. The plastic they use on this light is supposedly PA66 which is incredibly strong. About the structural integrity of the plastic used in this light, if you look at previous posts comparing the tail of this one to the Jetbeam PA40, you’ll see that the Starry Light’s end has thinner edges. At first glance you might think it wouldn’t hold up, but I’m trying to bend it right now and it won’t give. And again, I can’t say anything about long time usage, but for right now, it’s pretty tough compared to any of the plastics I can find around the house. The inside door panels and dashboard on my car have more give than this light.

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That’s what I want to know too :smiley: Was hovering the buy button when Illumination Supply had them in the mid $40s