Nico, you’re comparing a quad pocket rocket to a genteel business man’s EDC. The target market is on opposite ends of the spectrum. Price point is not particularly it at all. AND, the quad has TK’s excellent driver, only Li-ion of course, obviously Manker is making good use of it’s BLF affiliation and drawing the crowd based on output and membership.
Rey doesn’t have this background. Doesn’t have TK programming driver’s for him. Neither does ZebraLight for that matter. And have you bought a ZebraLight lately? (was it $40 or less?) I am one that doesn’t care for the ZL programming, pulled the driver out of mine and put a TK written driver in. I haven’t seen a light made by anyone that can put out over 500 lumens on an AA cell. Not even close.
A lot of folks want an AA light that can take a regular alkaline cell as well as the Li-ion cell. This fills the bill in a nice way and makes the power. Logically speaking, too much is too much, even for me. What’s the point in having a tiny light that can make a zillion lumens if you can’t hold onto it? I’ve made AAA sized Li-ion 10440 lights make over 1000 lumens, it’s just not practical though and the reality is they can’t be used in a normal environment.
This is not about what is best, what is cheapest, what makes the most burst lumens. This is about Rey, offering us a light we like. In much the same way that Old-Lumens sells anything he makes. Rey has a following of people that like what he does. I’m one of em.
We’re obviously talking about a light in this little brass AA from Rey that is, as yet, unseen. Let’s get it in our hands and run the tests and see just exactly what it actually does before knocking it as an under performer, right? I’ll have one Tuesday and we’ll see what it can do.
Well, even if anything else in this light fails to attract, this is the first light I see with the 90+ CRI 219C, well sourced, Rey! I have not even had the chance to test it!
I don’t really find the S41 / S41S very interesting, in large part because I already have a Reylight Ti 18350 completely customized to my preferences, and it’s prettier, lighter, and has a clip. The Astrolux one goes for maximum output at a minimum cost, while Rey’s triple focuses more on doing it with style.
This brass light is interesting to me for similar reasons — because it’s a beautiful high-quality host… and it has a clip.
The Astrolux light makes a decent pocket rocket, an attempt to fit as much power as possible into a small space, but Rey’s lights are art.
If the zombie apocalypse came and I needed a practical survival light to stretch my last few batteries as far as they’ll go, I’d pick a Zebralight. But in common daily life scenarios I’m not too concerned about those things, and would rather have something a bit more luxurious. Like, a Jeep versus a Cadillac.
Zebralight has been consistently leading the pack for driver efficiency and boost power, and that’s a wonderful thing. But it’s not a very useful comparison here. The 535-lm SC5 AA doesn’t accept 14500 cells, is low-CRI cool white, only comes in military drab aluminum, requires 14+ clicks to go between 8 lm and 48 lm, isn’t moddable, and it costs nearly twice as much. Totally different beast.
I like Zebralights and have several, but if someone gave me a SC5 AA for free I probably wouldn’t use it… because for my purposes it’s kind of a downgrade from my Olight S1 Ti. However, this brass light is more unique and is something I’d find excuses to carry and use.
As a general rule, if it has a tritium slot, it’s probably not in the same market as type III hard-anodized aluminum lights.
I will start a pre-sale thread soon, after Gunga’s review. They will be sold and shipped by banggood.I have a job, and I don’t have much time to check and ship them one by one.
Thanks for the TK firmware last year. I can’t remember why I quitted and went for else.
I use variations of “cypreus2” on most of my personal FET+1 lights, and flavors of “s7” on most of my single-channel lights. They both have a lot of blinkies that nobody else really seems to care about. At some point, I’ll have to make a tiny25 version using bistro as a new code base, and use the extra space to add fancier blinky modes.
Thanks for the nice reviews by DB Custom and Gunga.
The production has begun,you might pre-order here.
Price of the first 300 orders is ONLY 36$, from 301-800#, it is 39$, and 42$ after that. Don’t wait till the good offer is not available.
1.5*6mm tritium will be 6$/pc.
SPEC:
Material: Good quality brass
Emitter: Nichia 219C 4000K
Mode: Moon,Low,Mid,High (Start at moon with no memory)
Switch: Tail clicky
Size:90*18mm
Weight:100g
1*AA/14500 battery
OP Reflector
The reviews showed a little difference, but nothing negative.
The proto clip was made by hand,it is not thick and strong enough, we’re making a molding to make better ones.
Estimeated leadtime is 30 days.
BangGood will do the packing and shipping.
2016-September-29
Click the following picture to go to my flickr album.