Yes, thanks unknown00101 for the fine review and many detailed pictures.
I ordered the Jax after reading your review and am very happy with it.
Especially after a fellow BLF’er kindly consented to modify it for me.
It has been current-boosted and is now using a de-domed XPG2. I didn’t go for the full boost
(to keep the heat in check) but my little Z1 still achieves 190kCd
Am loving it !
Looks like this JAX Z1 has made a lot of people happy. It is one of the best aspherical flashlights we can find nowadays especially in this price range.
With a single cell I’m afraid you won’t see a lot of current gain as these buck drivers normally have fairly high resistance. You need to try using two batteries instead to see the increased current to the emitter after the resistor mod.
The stock driver may not be easy to pimp out for single-cell use, but this host works very nicely with a BLF22DD driver.
Also, does anyone know of a cheap plastic cover which would fit this to protect the optics? It’d be nice to carry this in a pocket without scratching the glass or the AR coating. I’m thinking something like a shallow end cap, perhaps even usable as a diffuser, roughly the shape of a petri dish.
I like the jax better, nicer and better quality imo, but the smaller thwart numbers, and specially the price difference (due to MAP policies, just remember that fight BG-GB…) made me go for the 1504 group buy, approx halving the (discounted) price of the jax. Even the 2 cell 1405 complete light is 5$ cheaper than the (also discounted) jax z1 host
I have the MC-E zoomie from way back when and it leaves the + sign in the die, so don't count on throw. Lumens, well, there won't be a competition to most lights on the market, even assuming it isn't driven to capacity, but that will NOT satisfy the throw-hounds out there.
My 55kcd measurement of the xml2 version converts to 469m. So they’re about the same throw, but the xhp50 should have a larger hotspot with the signature plus sign through it and a heck of a lot more heat.
Lumens and throw are mostly unrelated. For example consider a light bulb, which has high lumens and almost no lux or throw, and a laser, which has barely any lumens but has high lux and throw.
So, for throw it’s all about lux. However, double the lux still doesn’t mean double the throw. It’s a square root relationship, so four times the lux is needed to double the throw. Here are a few throw distances and the lux needed to get them: