I got my A01 a couple days ago and I’ve been playing with it since. I don’t have a camera for taking beamshots, and I don’t have equipment for measuring light output, so all I can do is dump my thoughts and comparisons. (Pardon the text spacing. It was the best I could figure out.)
- I haven’t found any official specs for the A01, but it’s supposed to be identical to the Manker E01, which claims a firefly/low/high of 0.14/7/102 lumens. My main question with the A01 was whether or not the low mode really is 7 lumens. I did an eyeball compared it to several other flashlights using similar low modes in my collection just to see. Here’s the list:
Lumens | Flashlight |
---|---|
? | AstroLux A01 Nichia 219B, 90 CRI |
7 | EagleTac D25A Clicky Nichia 219 D220, 92 CRI |
12 | Thrunite Ti3 Neutral White |
16 | Lumintop Tool Copper Reylight Nichia 219B, 91 CRI, 4500K |
20 | Olight i3S (cool white) |
29 | Rayus C01 Nichia 219, 83 CRI, 5000k |
32 | Lumintop Tool Aluminum (cool white) |
For brightness testing, I aimed the flashlights at the walls and my apartment door and judged with my eyeballs. An eyeball test is somewhat difficult to judge lumens, because a flashlight with a smaller hotspot will appear brighter than a flashlight with a larger hotspot at the same lumens. For example, the EagleTac D25A appears to be slightly brighter than the A01, but the A01 has a wider hotspot, though both are rated at 7 lumens. To work around this, I used a variety of distances from 6 inches to 15 feet.
After conducting the brightness tests, I would conclude that my A01 is slightly brighter than the EagleTac D25A and slightly dimmer than the Thrunite Ti3, so maybe 9 or 10 lumens, which is pretty close to the Manker E01 specs.
- Functionally speaking, the flashlight that closely compares to the AstroLux A01 is the Thrunite Ti3 Neutral White. Both have similar lumens spacing, and both have the mode order of Moonlight -> Low -> High -> Moonlight -> Low -> High -> Strobe.
Mode Spacing | Flashlight |
---|---|
0.04/12/120 | Thrunite Ti3 Neutral White |
0.14/ 7/102 | AstroLux A01 Nichia 219B, 90 CRI |
Visually speaking, the A01’s moonlight does appear slightly brighter than the Ti3, the low and high modes are slightly less bright than the Ti3. These differences match the lumen claims of the Manker E01.
One difference is that the Ti3 has “short term memory”. If the light is turned off and back on between 2 and 10 seconds, the last mode is used. After 10 seconds, the light resets back to moonlight mode. The Manker E01 specs claim to have short term memory, but I didn’t see any evidence of short term memory on the AstroLux A01.
- The strobe mode is ALWAYS the 7th mode in the mode cycle, regardless of how long you take to get there. For example: Moonlight -> Low -> High -> Moonlight -> Low -> High -> leave light on for 10 minutes -> Strobe. The Thrunite Ti3 has the same behavior, but the Olight i3S requires you to get to the 7th mode within a few seconds to activate strobe.
- The first few times I tested the A01’s high mode, I noticed some flickering, as though the battery was somehow struggling to maintain the light on high. I later solved this problem by making sure the head was FULLY TIGHT. This eliminated the flickering and made the high mode even brighter than my initial high mode tests. I’m not sure if this problem is specific to my light or if it’s a design flaw.
- The body has a flat top side and a flat bottom side. This makes the A01 slightly more roll resistant than the Thrunite Ti3 and Olight i3S in my tests. It’s not a roll stopper - once it starts rolling, it will roll. But it requires just a bit more force to start it rolling.
- I can’t decide if the A01’s flat top and bottom body design is better, worse, or simply different than the Thrunite Ti3’s body, which is a round tube with crosshatch knurling.
On the one hand, the Ti3’s knurling means that my fingers can feel the friction when they’re wrapped around the body.
On the other hand, the A01’s flat sides means my fingers can get a better squeeze on the light without it rolling around. It reminds me of the flat sides of a handle on a screwdriver. Also, the flat sides curve into the head. You can see it near the battery orientation drawing. This curving gives a natural resting point for my thumb as well as my index finger wrapped around the underside. When I twist my wrist back and forth, I really feel like I’m gripping a mini screwdriver.
I suspect the flat sided design was intended to make two handed twist operation a little bit more effortless, like a screwdriver. Whether this works any better than the Ti3, I can’t tell. Right now, I’m calling the A01’s body design as something “different”.
- I like that the instructions for how to turn the light on/off as well as the battery orientation are written on the flashlight itself. That means fewer questions from people who are not regular flashlight users.
- How can you say no to a $10 Nichia, high CRI light? It’s currently the cheapest way to introduce someone to the awesomeness of neutral white tint and high CRI compared to the cool white of most flashlights today.