Single Cell AA light shootout

Uniquefire S10 at 105 minutes - cell voltage down to 0.84V

Tank007 E07 at 108 minutes - cell voltage down to 0.82V

Uniquefire AA-S1 at 110 minutes - 0.87V

New Ultrafire C3 at 111 minutes - 0.85V

I'm surprised that the Trustfire R5-A3 is still chugging along and is the brightest of them - I thought it would be among the first to give up.

Here's a picture at 90 minutes

im hoping its winter time over there. im sure u are heating up ur living room lol

EastwardYJ J09 150 minutes - cell voltage 0.84V

Trustfire R5-A3 164 minutes - cell voltage 0.85V

Not officially winter here yet, but the heating is on. Most of these guys don't get hot unless used with a 14500.

I've also been surprised at the runtime of the R5-A3, especially on the lower setting and how bright it remains.

Let me guess....did you bought it at Lightake?

Let´s see if they will offer 1$ discount coupon on your next purchase to "solve" the problem..................(as they did with me) jajajajajaj

EDIT:

Now I am even more dissaponited...

I tried to use the discount coupon of 1$ they gave me. I placed an order of 2USD, inserted the coupon and the system said "Sorry, this 1$ coupon discount is only valid for orders above 5USD, please insert another"

Inaceptable

I'll not say till I hear from the distributor concerned. At this point, I don't want to have any influence over anyone else - I want to see how they handle it.

I would regard the behaviour mentioned as unacceptable - I'm looking for a refund or replacement.

Quite deliberately, the account name and email I use are not the ones I use here.

We'll see.

Old Ultrafire C3 for flickering and going out - generally behaving like a badly behaved light.

Smallsun ZY-C85. Cell voltage down to 0.85V

Uniquefire S10 at 105 minutes - cell voltage down to 0.84V

Tank007 E07 at 108 minutes - cell voltage down to 0.82V

Uniquefire AA-S1 at 110 minutes - 0.87V

New Ultrafire C3 at 111 minutes - 0.85V

EastwardYJ J09 150 minutes - cell voltage 0.84V

Trustfire R5-A3 164 minutes - cell voltage 0.85V

I think the Hugsby P32 will be next - still 10 lights to go.

There are now two tabs on the spreadsheet - one labelled "With Runtimes".

These are not formal runtimes which would be to 50% output - these numbers are till the light is dim enough to comfortably look into the LED. Official runtimes would be a little shorter. However, once NiMH cells hit a certain level of discharge the voltage and output drop like a rock so there is not a huge difference.

By 1V an NiMH cell is essentially completely discharged.

Hugsby P32 219 minutes - 0.87V

Hey Don, out of all your 1AA lights, what would be your 1AA NiMH Top 5? I ask because I'm looking at putting a Christmas list together of 1AA flashlights for my friends and family. Thank you sir. Smile

Don, I just wanted to point out that without minimal current draw infos (like, at start and at each hour afterward would be fine), those numbers are not going to be that useful to everyone else. In fact that might be a good thing to do for the spreadsheet in general.

We all know about the variability of the chinese light manufacturing process, and while we can't control for defects/loses through the light body, people can probably get an approximate number for their version/batch by doing a quick draw test linear extrapolation. A few results over time can also help verify if it's the same kind of driver.

IOW, you may have a R5 A3 with 2A draw, but won't necessarily say anything directly about mine which may only get 1A.

Thanks.

And I'm really curious about the headlamp. Did you try it with a 14500? I does say only that battery type on the specs, fwiw.

Between 02:00 and 06:10

BLF DeLight

Akoray K-106

Trustfire F22

Trustfire F25

Both the F22 and the DeLight were still flashing the LED when the battery recovered enough. Battery voltages for all four in the 0.85V range

Still running after 12.5 hours

Powerlight

Ultrafire C3SS

Aurora SH-035

Zebralight H50

and MDXL ultra-cheapo

MDXL cheapie 15 lux / 3 lumens

Aurora SH-035 12 lux / 2 lumens

Zebralight H50 11 lux / 2 lumens but because of its design the lightbox may not be capturing all the light it is putting out.

Ultrafire C3SS 4 lux / 1 lumen

Powerlight <1 lux / not a lot

I can only say that the Akoray K-106 ran for more than 8 hours, likewise the F25 (All the remaining lights were lit when I checked at 2am). Given that the BLF DeLight and the F22 were both flashing I've allocated them a >600 minute runtime.

I do not have the facilities to do this for 20 lights simultaneously.

13hr exactly, the C3 stainless started to flash at me. Voltage 0.85V.

Hmmm, interesting. I should test my Ultrafire C3 Stainless again. I would have expected at least 20 hours. And it appears than the F25 is significantly brighter than the C3 Stainless on low? I wonder if my 3/5 star rating on the 14 hour runtime of the Ultrafire M2 is a bit too low after all?

I got 12.5 hours on an alkaline to 50% on the C3. I'll need to stick the F25 on the box and get some better numbers. Thus far it hasn't even been out of the house, let alone exposed to outdoors darkness. At some point I need to gather together all the runtimes and put them on a spreadsheet. Problem is, runtimes are the slowest of all to do - must play with the Linux box which is steadfastly refusing to update itself and see if I can persuade it to do two simultaneous sets of measurements, the Windows box will only see one of the meters at a time - and it isn't always clear which.

I suppose a full data set would be something like

Outputs at all (non-flashing) levels from all cell types. Since I'm not interested in the flashing levels and runtimes are likely to be long, it would be tedious to test those - let alone I have no way of measuring with the necessary time resolution.

Current draw at all levels from all cell types

Runtimes at all levels from all cell types (This gets expensive and is unlikely to happen)

Temperatures reached (This is not very easy to get reliable results from)

Weights

Sizes

LED type

Construction quality

Beamshots indoors and out

Presence or absence of PWM.

Other stuff

Complete data sets are an ideal rather than something I ever expect to achieve. Comparisons do interest me though. I'll get numbers for the F25 soon.

Thanks Don for your hard work! Fascinating stuff. Is there a way to make the Google spreadsheet temporarily sortable by column perchance?

I don't think so, but it will be easy enough to put in more tabs sorted by each heading - problem is that sorting it comes under editing it which is likely to lead to vandalism sooner or later unless I were to specifically authorise each person using it which would be tedious in the extreme for everyone. I can easily enough copy and paste into new tabs and sort them by each heading.

Might get around to graphing it some day.