ArmyTek Barracuda V2

I know, right? ANSI ratings and all that, ArmyTek is SUPPOSED to be a top brand. I’ve wanted a Barracuda for a long time but wouldn’t pay full price. Finally, Black Friday gave me the opportunity, and now this. The reflector is just ridiculous, never seen it’s like even in a cheap budget light. The machining lines, ugh. And now it won’t function properly on a single cell either. I don’t know if I should return it or mod it. But the big attraction is in the driver, it’s supposed constant current capability. I guess I’ll talk to the supplier and see what they have to say.

Well, I’m not really into frying eggs on a light, but some of them can de-solder connections so that’s plenty hot to do it!

I like white light, neither blue nor green nor fire orange. That’s just me. Show me that emitter and I’ll stock up on em…

OH yeah... 99% transparency, so you can spot that awesome best in the World finish

33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record Reflector style... Throwing crap...

Oh... I guess it's some limited edition vintage stuff...

Well, i am looking at the one that left here and its reflector is good( took pics, the best i could)

It seems that either that torch has several levels of quality or just you both are quite unlucky…or maybe yours are the US edition :stuck_out_tongue: …since you are close to Canada( its birthplace) its suppoced for you to be kinda patient for its disatvanrages…JK ofc :wink:

Sorry, but your pictures show some low quality surface finish.

As you can notice all around the net, too many people get low quality reflectors (and other issues) from Armytek.

Damn. Look at Fenix product (just 1 example)? A cheap E20 can accept within 5mn a new emitter mod, without any donuts hole and 33 vinyle's style beam.

Well, Fenix, and many others DO NOT package themselves as some HiluxWesternCountry owned manufacturers. Hope you get that point.

I have nothing against Chinese manufacturers. I do not appreciate bullshit bla-bla-figures.

It should not be more than 8% of variations on such range of product.

72,000 Candelas... Jaa ja... not even 50k... 540m OMG! Revolution in AT 40mm head manufacturing process lol 400m with good lens. Thanks

Enough of such bullshit marketing/packaging.

Of course, some may not be agree with my point of view about business... They may prefer bring some, ortografk issue...

I just measured it:dual cells, 92 000 cds( dedoming doubles those)
Yeah i took that photoes with my S6, its a phone not a camera so they aint good

Olight Triton got like 90 000 as log as i can remember

For me its main issues is removing the reflector, why the hell it was glued to the mcpcb? helping the cooling prolly?

About your V2s…well, it seems they have issues, maybe a bad batch - if i were you i would return those, especialy if the reflector is that bad

Well I’m glad you guys got armytek out of my system.

Have you thought of PMing them and asking them to comment on this thread?

...Distributors are getting fed-up to deal with all those issues from AT. Guess what? They rather stock Olight than the so-called Best Chinacanada Flashlight in the World.

When is the last time GoingG. did review their products, 1 year? 2 years years ago?.. Yes, that's correct, they get definitely a better deal with Olight, Fenix or EagleTac. People review good products... Not fancy unreliable stuff.

They adopt a ridiculous cost-saving strategy, distributors start to ban them. Hey? Expensive moreover!

If they were clean, they would not glue so carefully their products (especially last v)

Just make a test:

Email them about ANY basic information regarding their products, they will answer you some ridiculous salesmen bla-bla. They cannot even speak English correctly (and yup! I know what I am talking about, at least I don't pretend to be British or American lol)

Check their website:

WHAT is that???

We are proud to work for ????

REALLY?


Well> Check this out:


I proudly work for the

(3 months doing coffee and photocopy lol)

Tomorrow, I use the logo on my website and start to sell guess?


You know m8, thats how the world is goind nowadays, there is no more IBM or GMC quality ( from 80`s)
Audi you say? Well, didnt Audi( VAG group) cheated their customers lately? tens of millions of autos with a manipulated software

You know, 6 months ago i neeed a profi boroscope for my work( to look after gears in a wind generator) so we took a professional Olimpus and just as an emergency option a 160$ ALi chinese boroscope : Olimpus costed 3800$… after 3 months of casual usage its camera diode stopped( by casual i mean 2-3 times weekly, for an hour or so)….then after 4 moths its joystick failed……yet, chinese one works perfectly

And Bosch….since i work for a construction company for the last 16 years i know what Bosch “quality” means

So lets dont talk about quality, quality is quite a relative term nowadays

what do you mean by that? Brand means brand (image/symbol/mark) Quality is quality (product). Don't mix everything.

Quality- definition:

the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.


Let me explain you what it is all about:

Good products from honest and professional people against greedy salesmen crap (talking about nowadays business...)

You are right regarding branded goods. Things have drastically changed since last past 30 years. What used to be symbols of Quality (read>brands) have become money making machine without high quality left (empty)

WHY? PROFIT MARGIN! MORE! ALWAYS MORE,,,thus less and less quality, until we have to eat shit.

But we are already in it:

Don't ask me to accept and agree with bad quality excuses and bullshit packaging in the name of nowadays floating values...

Send a mail to ArmyTek operator... you will understand what means poor nowadays quality...

Bosch has a wide spectrum of quality most is crap. IMO household appliances are very poor but the Diesel pump on my Audi is excellent.

I think what jungle coffee is saying is that they pretend their lights are ‘Canadian’ made and of the highest quality, but both are questionable, especially reading this thread.

I sent that pic to the supplier and he double checked his stock. The stock he has in hand looks like that, all of them. It’s the entire run apparently, so it wouldn’t do me any good to return it.

The build quality and anodization is second to none on this light. The AR coated lens, again, superb. Perhaps they had outsourced the reflector and got a bad batch, didn’t catch it? Perhaps an engineer decided this surface finish would be good? I don’t know, but I’ll change it myself and know I have it working the best it can be made to work. My reasoning is, if they couldn’t get it right the first time, why should I wait for them to try getting it right a second time?

I got a Predator from a friend on the cheap, love it. So I found this Barracuda V2 with XP-L emitter on a Black Friday sale and finally got one. A lawyer once told me, “Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you!”

Lol…got her open

Wow, thats quite a different looking reflector from mine

It seems its either an old batch or a new one( a saving movey one) …. was it glued to the MCPCB or it just fell off?

On second thoughts you mentuoned even bad oxidation…well, it seems they lovered Barracuda 2 quality and those are the lastest batches

Like we bulgarians use to say: its never to late to shame yourself( “shame yourself” is the light forum revision of the original expresion :bigsmile: )

I’m up to 96Kcd from 72, but took a bit of output hit (1010.85 lumens). The beam now has a distinct and defined hot spot though, so I like it a lot better. Hand polished the lines out of the reflector. I ran a pencil top to bottom and heard the definite zip sound, like a needle scratching a record (for those of you who remember that) So I spent some time on it and it’s near mirror finished now, always difficult to get the “haze” out after polishing though.

Mitko, do you know if that apparent “pill” unscrews? Where the emitter sits? Or did you pull the mcpcb to de-dome the emitter? Or just hot de-dome it in place? Wondering how you handled it.

Ano is good, fit and finish excellent all around. Just the lines in the reflector.

No glue, it fell out once I got the lens out.

Thanks DB for the info. I’m disappointed in armytek becaue of your experience with the barracuda. I think you should message Armytek and see what they say. It’s pretty unacceptable.

Frankly, I don’t care what they SAY… I’ve already seen what they DO. Really tired of the lies and deception lately, high end product with a name behind em and not delivering what they promise. ArmyTek, Quartermaster knives, Volkswagen… yes, I have a 2.0L TDI and I love it, but the crap, the flat out lying to the customer, gotta stop.

+1,000,000,000,000,000

I didnt played with the pill alot cause ppl who bought those 2 were rishing to get them so i used a hot air solder station to dedome the emitter on place( using a 90deg twisted scalpel), those XPLs dedome pretty okay anyway
96k is good, you should expect arround 180k after the dedoming whitch is pretty okay considering the beam profile

I tried unscrewing the pill but its either mechanicaly fixed or heavely gllued and i didnt have the time, but that topic rised my interest and this days i will open my definately- i think it will replace my m2x in the thrower collection , especialy for the glass, its actualy maybe the best ar glass out there

Dale you are actualy the only american that i know who drivers a diesel car :slight_smile: As a 2 diesel cars owner and a huge diesel fan i salute!