AstroLux A01 AAA Nichia 219B Review - Winner winner, chicken dinner. An excellent, Neutral tint High CRI LED keychain light!

Guesstimation battery to driver current load for alkalines? :quest: Well, that should mean about 800+mA of load for NiMH/NiCD class batteries, better suited for sustained high output operation.
How hot does this thing gets after a good while on HIGH? :evil:

Cheers

Warm, but not hot… As it heats, the voltage drops due to resistance and the battery depleting. Perhaps ten minutes in it is warm, but no where near enough to call hot, at least for me.

The 600-700ma was speculated by me, at the emitter. As it will be a boost driver, expect about 1500ma at the tail, which would equate to a 30 minute runtime, which is about accurate on high.

Really? That would be a pretty poor lumens/watt ratio.
Nichia 219B datasheet

Manufacturer claims above 100 lumens of output for 350mA driving current (optimistic if specced at 25º operational temperature, of course). For 400mA at the emitter (at about 3Vf), that would mean no more than 1’2A at the tail for a 1’2V battery, unless the driver efficiency sucks big time. :frowning: Is there any other sort of drawback I don’t know of?

Cheers

I am guessing, since you have more knowledge about this, we will go with your view.

I guess in the worst case scenario, anything better is better. The driver seems to be good, but feel free to buy one and test it fully, I do not have the means for a full test…

The only drawback is you took my totally wild guess and ran with it like I tested it. Really…

Got my two A01’s today. Nice color rendering and natural warmish white tint. Changing the modes is a bit flimsy and the light flickers a bit while turning the head.

Here’s some measurements. The Astrolux A01 has a true high CRI Nichia unlike the Rayus C01.


Wow, you are going to be an asset here on BLF! Thanks for this update, really useful information…

LOL! :bigsmile:

Just checked out some boost driver reviews at lygte-info.dk, just to find out most of them are underwhelmingly efficient, to say the least. It is, thereforely, perfectly possible for the led to be getting the driver output current I presumed (≈400mA) while sucking up those 1’5A of input from the battery you presumed. Corollary: those driver designers should be summarily executed, for fuck’s sake. :Sp

Cheers

[quote=ReManG]

Thanks! Here’s an album with some more measurements.

Here’s a runtime test on high with an Eneloop. Battery voltage was under 1 volts in the end. Fan was used to cool the light.

Maximum temp was 33°C @ 10-20 minutes. After that it dropped gradually.

Appreciated information, maukka.
What was the ambient temperature during measurement?
Seems to operate pretty cool, good news for those of us who live in places of 40+° summers… 8)

Cheers

Ambient temp was 25°C. I will do another test without a fan later.

Waiting on the GB :wink:

Not only is the efficiency terrible on most, there seem to be no programmable ones! There was a thread here on developing a programmable boost driver, and attempting to improve efficiency, but no idea how far that has gotten…

Woah, gimme AN HANDFUL of those lights!! Brilliant upgrades! Thanks for the review, this really came as a nice surprise.

And for those looking for a (deep carry) clip:

!http://img.banggood.com/images/2014/chenjincheng/07/SKU257160/SKU257160(1).jpg!

(also available at BG for very little money)

Nice flat regulation there for a AAA cell.
Thank you for doing the test for us.

Can’t see the clip image posted?

As if I would care… :ghost:
Pretty sure you can find whatever kind of clip he intended to show us for WAY LESS than half the price off eBay. :expressionless:
Sure, Banggood may have some nice deals but… that’s about all. Their webshite’s search engine is such a disgusting pile of horseshite it makes me want to fix whoever are to blame’s retarded brains WITH MY AXE! And that’s just only one of many jackassly designed/implemented/maintained “features” of their webshite. From time to time, their “can’t see what’s wrong with what you say” attitude and lies mocks me to no end. What a handful of advertisement overspending donkeyass douchebags! (I have to resort to think of them sometimes…)
Don’t get me wrong, nothing against them, really. 0:)

Cheers

Interesting, did another runtime measurement with a second A01. This time without a fan. This one runs a bit longer with the same battery and of course got a whole lot hotter. Maximum temp was 54°C @ 25-30 minutes in 26°C ambient. Not comfortable to hold with bare hands.

edit: updated the graph after measuring lux on both of the lights after 5 minutes. The output is the same +–2%. For some reason the Grey one runs more efficiently or the fan is actually detrimental in this case. I will have to measure the purple one again without a fan.

edit2: Note to self: do not measure runtimes with batteries that have less than 5 cycles on them. The runtime with the Eneloop Pro AAA has significantly increased on both lights after couple of more charge-discharge cycles :slight_smile:

Nice. Let me point out a couple of things:

  1. LED’s light output performance (usually) is inversely proportionate to its temperature. According to the usual Relative Luminous Flux VS Junction Temperature graphs which can be found on most Cree led documents, these about 20º of ∆T may mean a reduction of 5% in light output for the… so what the hell is going on with that silver/grey unit? Nothing really I think, because…
  2. To my knowledge, battery internal resistance is also inversely proportionate to temperature, and that may be having a much deeper impact on overall performance since the driver could be operating in a noticeably more efficient way due to the increased input voltage.
  3. Am I speaking bullshit? Where the fuck is my :beer: beerp!? ROFL!

Cheers

Yeah, it had nothing to do with the fan. I measured the purple one without a fan and its runtime to 10 % was ~50 minutes. Pay no attention to those earlier measurements, it was just the batteries running in :slight_smile: