Hugsby V1 (SK68 type) review.

> Notice how deep the LED sits in the pill.
Hm, so the lens never gets close to the LED — limiting the diameter of the flood.
That’d make room for a big chunk of copper heatsink to bring the emitter forward.
How much space is there on the other side of the pill for a decent driver to replace the next-mode thing?

Trapezoidal threads, but I don’t like the shape well enough to pay the prices I see. Around $ 10.

Thanks!!

Great review!

Yep, great review. I’ve also been a fan of the brand at least the Hugsby XP-1 and Xp-2. Feel they gave a lot for the money and their quality control was consistently good on 35 units purchased over a 6 month period. Made good gifts. Unfortunate, the list of design shortcomings but maybe there are workarounds for some of them.

Thanks guys. :slight_smile:

I agree it has great potential, just a couple of odd design choices holding it back.

Yes, $10 is too much. It would be better to get a generic SK68 clone and mod it yourself. At the $5 mark that I paid it starts to make a lot more sense.

Good idea, that copper spacer would also help solve the eyeball effect.
There is about 5mm from the face of the driver to the underside of the pill.

It’s a 15mm driver but in the past I’ve just sat a 17mm one on top of the pill and used pressure from the battery to hold it in place. Works well.

Yes, the driver is an easy swap and the eyeball effect could be sorted by Hank’s suggestion or painting the wall of the pill with matt black paint. It’s just frstrating that Hugsby didn’t sort these issues to begin with. Still, gives us modders something to do I suppose!

The clip actually works well on a baseball cap and as it’s so tight there’s no way that sucker is coming off by accident.

I’ve bought one some days ago directly from Tomtop shop (tomtop.com) for $5,98 shipped to look at it’s potential. 80lm doesn’t sound that much for an AA/14500 light. So it seems it’s to big/too heavy for what it can do in it’s original condition.
For me, it looks like an older Hugsby design, maybe from the XR-E ages. A XR-E is some mm higher together with it’s star and this could partially explain the deep position the emitter has now. The reason for this assumption is that I also have a Hugsby P2 with similar appearance and this is an older model for sure. I’ve bought this P2 not so long ago from Tomtop to mod it. It still had the old XR-E on delivery and I’ve replaced this with a XP-G2. At first, the TIR optics doesn’t match the new emitter very well, I had to grind the bottom of the TIR to get the XP-G2 higher inside. The throw of the XR-E together with this special TIR was almost too much for EDC use, after my mod the beam is a bit wider.
These old designs are rather heavy compared to newer lights and very well+solid made. The P2 has a changable design to match AA/14500 and CR123A as well, maybe that adds to its weight. At least it always starts at high, no next mode driver.

Good, let us know what you think when it arrives.

Update: I am pleased to report that painting the pill black has almost completely removed the eyeball effect. It is no longer noticeable in everyday use.

To the naked eye it is much fainter than the photo would suggest.

I forgot to mention: a strip of black paper may have the same effect?!

Yes, that would probably work as well.

Can thus take aa alkaline

Yes it can run on AA batteries.

So

Since the star sits down deep — and the pill has a solid surface, not a hole — a copper slug could drop into that hole and bring the emitter up near the lens.

Has anyone tried that? Are there any stock spacers that would fit?

Not tried it myself, I wondered what effect it would have on the focus?

It would lose the narrow spot focus — you’d need to swap in a different lens.

With the SK68 and #3 zoomie, taking metal off the slidey part on the end away from the lens works because shortening the slidey part brings the lens closer to the emitter (wider flood) while making no change in the maximum possible distance (spot) between lens and emitter.

I purchased a light very similar to this from Amazon Helotex VG1

Some notes:

  • Adding a large copper heatsink under the star and moving the star closer to the lens is not a good idea. For the widest possible flood mode you want top of the LED dome to almost touch the back of the aspheric lens. As such, adding a copper heatsink to raise the star would indeed greatly improve the flood. However, it would also decrease the distance between the LED and the lens in spot mode. The bezel would not extend far enough to put the LED on the focal point. Result is you’d lose the tight spot mode completely.
  • a better idea is to file off pieces of the lightto allow the bezel to retract further. Increasing the travel distance of the bezel in this manner has a number of advantages: (1) greatly improved flood, (2) no affect on throw, and (3) entire light is shorter and more compact making for better pocket EDC carry.

To accomplish this, the following parts may need to be filed down:

  • Back of the sliding bezel. Don’t file too far … there still needs to be a lip preventing the bezel from falling off the light. It just doesn’t need to be as wide.
  • The clip mount on the body. File off all or part of the clip mount bringing that portion of the body tube flush with the neck. This should allow the bezel to retract much further.
  • Top of the pill. File it down so that it starts just above the top of LED dome. Make sure to file a couple notches on opposite sides so you can unscrew it.

I’ve done the above mods on many different zoomies and have gotten good results.

My overall impression of the VG1 was that it wasn’t a bad light, but wasn’t useful without modification due to the narrow flood beam. The much cheaper and smaller “Cree 3W” lights are simply better for pocket EDC. They do the same thing out of the box, have wider flood, and are much more compact (which is good for pocket EDC).

However, if you want to do a more ambitious mod, such as retrofitting a cheapie zoomie with an LED Lenser style optic, then this light is a good choice. The extra room in the head should be sufficient for the new larger optic.

Awesome review, thanks for sharing!

I ordered this one for $5 off Amazon Prime.

Virtually identical to the pictures here . Driver is the same and even the box looks the same.

I tried the Old Pencil Trick on the driver and it worked . Now it starts on High every time. Ordered another.

Mine turns off after 45 seconds on High with a 14500. I need a new 15mm driver for these.