Review of XTAR MOON RC2

I received the XTAR MOON RC2 from GearBest the review.
XTAR specs for the MOON RC2:

The RC2 comes in a cardboard box, which was seriously manhandled by the couriers.
The RC2 is available in blue and black colors, my sample is black.

Being not so tiny, is easy to keep in the hand and use it

The switch on top, it is covered by translucent plastic, and it does protrude a bit.

On one side there is a micro USB port for recharging the RC2. The port cover has a really snug fit, to me it takes multiple try to get in place.

The wide clip on the back of the light has some bents and some intents to improve gripping.

The thickness of the plastic and of the metal springs. The clip is easily operated by one hand

UI
Click once to turn the RC2 at medium mode.
Each click will advance modes: low, high, medium, moon, off.
A long click will give you strobe mode (either when the RC2 is on or off), click again to turn the RC2 off.
Under the switch there is a led that works as a battery indicator (green: >45 minutes, red<45 minutes, red flashing<15”) as well as a charging indicator (red: charging, green: charged).
The RC2 can be safely used at all levels while charging.

Beamshots
1 meter from the wall


Here is pointing at the floor (the RC2 is just above the upper margin of the pic). The spot at the center of the beam is the reflection from the floor.


As you can see the beam is very wide and without artifacts.
It can be used attached to the belt or to a shirt and enlightening your path.

Runtime

Flat regulation on all tested levels.

My thoughts
The light is well built and easy to use.
The tint is excellent, I haven’t red the technical specs of the RC2 until after I got it, and I was afraid to have a cool tint. Not only the tint is a very pleasant neutral (a bit on the warm side, which I like), but according to the manufacturer also has a good CRI (Samsung 5630 80+ CRI).
The UI is fine, although I’d like to be able to turn the RC2 off without passing through all the modes.
I like the integrated charging feature.
The clip gives a good range of possible application spots, and the range can be further widened attaching the clip to a lanyard (using the provided lanyard hole) or to a magnet (either connecting it to a lanyard or gluing it to the RC2).
15 minutes after I took the first pics of the RC2, the belt of a rolling shutter broke and I used the RC2 to shine light inside the rolling shutter box. The RC2 worked very well for that purpose.

How does the Moon RC2 compare to a headlamp? The RC2 can be substituted by a quality headlamp with similar beam (Zebralight H602 mainly, and other floodier lights) and better output, however the RC2 is first of all cheap, has a more versatile clip than most lights, is easy to use (it can be given as a gift to a non flashaholic) and rechargeable with an integrated battery.
The RC2 has a great runtime and you can forget it in a toolbox, or keep it in a dark place where you usually need courtesy light (as my father suggested: “put it in the wardrobe, your mother complains about being too poor lit”). At 120 lumens it can enlight a medium room without problems.
The great runtime could be further improved from XTAR by using a hi capacity 18650 battery (moving from 2200mAh to 3500mAh).
I’d like some “real tailstanding” capability for the RC2, since it can rest on the switch but only on a flat surface and it wobbles even so.

Thanks to: AntoLed for lending me the camera and luxmeter, P.P. for the clamp and Zampa for the tripod.
Thanks for reading.

I received some questions about throw and usability.

They claim 15 ansi Meters of throw. 6 are fine, but at 8 the light becomes very dim.

I attached the RC2 to the neck of my t-shirt and the spill arrives at my feet. However, for output higher than low, looking down for prolonged times becomes annoying because of the small amount of light that shines vertically from the RC2. It does not get better too much if you put it on your belt, because the light is almost vertical. However, if bend your torso a bit when looking down, the problem disappears because the axis of the RC2 moves foreward from yours.

Might use this in my camping tent. Thanks for the review and the nice pictures!

I have reviewed another lantern, the LT-5 from Blitzwolf.
While the LT5 has integrated power bank, and is more waterproof, the RC2 is smaller and has more leves… and a definetly better (IMHO) tint.
Be sure to check that out, it may fit your needs.

Thanks! Will do.

How hard is it to crack open, to have a look at the innards?

I wouldn’t know. The parts fit toghether well, and I don’t see any screws.

Then you need an appropriate tool to open it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Abudgetlightforum.com+hkj+mallet

the trick would be to open it and be able to put it back in one piece AND working.
I usually don’t hold back against my vice, a belt tool and a heatgun… but for aluminium.

I just had a terrible experience with plastic, and I’m not gonna risk it soon probably.

Son of a gun.
I moved the light halfway during the test of the runtime at high level.
I let the test finish, but the curve resulting is odd and ugly.
Now all the batteries are charging again, and by this evening I should get the new results.

However, the light is well regulated and when the high mode ends, the battery is empty. If you try to turn the light on, you get a brief flash.

looks good to me.

> when the high mode ends, the battery is empty.

So it must be a NiMH cell?

No, they say it is a 18650 2200mAh.
for all levels, when the lights drop to 0 the battery is empty and you can’t turn the light on (you get a flash).

Well, let’s hope not. That’s not the way to treat li-ions.

Maybe they mean when it won’t light up, it’s reached the cutoff and the driver has over-discharge protection.

Or maybe they mean the cell has n over-discharge protection circuit.

Or maybe …. not.

I guess we won’t know ’til someone cracks it open.

Someone will, eventually. Xtar isn’t stupid about battery protection.

Although a non-replaceable battery in a sealed throwaway light, doesn’t impress me.

But hey, I’m not their target customer.

During these runtime I found another things I don’t like about this light… It doesn’t charge fastly at all.
My XTAR usb meter says the draw is around 0.2is Amps, even with a 2.4 Amps smart charger.

“In today’s world more harm may be done by well-intentioned people trying to do good, who are unaware of the unintended consequences of their actions, than by people actually trying to cause harm.” (Peter Coleman).
So XTAR did everything it could to make sure that the well-intentioned people who use this light are not hurting others or are not hurt themselves. A mayor component that could cause damage is the battery. If I worked at XTAR, I would make sure that it was not over-charged, over-discharged, etc. I certainly would keep the charging current down to a minimum that would still result in an acceptable (better: workable) duration. Hence the not over dimensioned battery of 2,200 mAh. You want the light to be fully charged when the sun sets.
BTW: I like the review :slight_smile:

Thanks.
a 0.5A charge would be enough conservative (all recent 18650 can be charged at 1A) and fast enough.

The light still rocks.
I used attached to my shirt to lit a wall to drill holes in it.

I bought 2 of these for my brothers new barn. No electric yet and 2 of these put out a lot of light. Pretty nice lil camp/utility light and fairly cheap.

I personally own two RC2, both the gray one and the blue one. I gave one to my nephew.
Mostly, I use mine in bedroom. I love reading while lying down but the celling light really burns my eyes. RC2 is perfect for solving this problem. I prefer the low mode most. Its brightness is just right for reading with kindle before sleeping.