Review: Thrunite Neutron 1A (Updated Again)

THRUNITE NEUTRON 1A (updated with pics and more comments)

Battery: AA/14500
Switch: Clicky
Modes: 7 (5 brightness, strobe, SOS)
LED Type: XM-L T6
Lens: Glass
Tailstands: Yes
Price Payed: $53
From: LightJunction
Date Ordered: 05/01/2011

I just received this light last night so this is a basic review. I'll try to add some pictures later. As most of you know, after some debate I ordered this non-budget light with a little extra cash I received on the potential that it may put out a large amount of light off a AA battery.

The big question for many of you is that is this light worth the non-budget price? And the answer, at least on my sample, is a resounding no.

Build Quality 2/5

Here-in lies the big trouble. Keep in mind that I am judging this based on cost to value. If you buy a more expensive light, you expect excellent build quality. This has been the case for me in the past with the purchase of my Fenix LD20 and ITP C7. Thrunite falls through here. The knurling and anodization is excellent and pretty much flawless as you would imagine. The clip is very solid and held in place by a retaining ring screwed on to the body. The aluminum is quite thick on this body. It would take a steamroller to crush this one. However, after that first impression, things go downhill. First of all is the boot to the clicky switch. The boot feels a tad too large and very thin. You touch the boot and you feel gapping all around the switch and it gives the switch activation a very poor, squishy, tactile feel. It also makes you wonder if the boot is going to last. If you look at the battery tube, the inside egde on the tail end has not been smoothed at all, leaving a sharp edge It is very sharp which is highly noticeable when changing the battery. The threads themselves seem decent, but if there was any lube on them, it was exceptionally light, as the thread action left something to be desired and there was a very audible squeaking when threading and unthreading on the tail cap. The overall impression is one of sloppiness or laziness, which I wouldn't expect from a non-budget light.

Finally, the biggest build issue becomes apparent from the operation of the light itself. The user interface is the same as that used by the similar fenix lights. With the head tightened, you have turbo and strobe modes, switched by half-pressing the clicky. With the head loosened, you enter the regular modes , sequenced: firefly (0.1 lumens), Low (9 lumens), Med (55 lumens), High (100 lumens), and then SOS (which actually has a pause of about 15 seconds between each cycle of SOS). Unbelievably, the head is very wobbly when loosened, if you loosen a 1/4 turn to enter regular mode, any bump to the head will flash turbo mode at you. My son was handing the light to me on firefly and the very act of exchanging hands gave me a nice blast of turbo to my eyes. Not good. If you loosen the head more, to a half turn, that symptom stops, but the light head is very loose at that point. You can sit there and wiggle the head and hear the battery tube clacking against the head. Also, not good. I contacted the dealer about this and they claim that Thrunite told them that this was normal behavior. That is a pretty major engineering gaffe for a light of this price when the loosened head is a core part of the lights operation.

Update 5/13/11: Thrunite has responded to my inquiries over at the other site. They claim that the reason for the wobbly head is that they changed the o-ring material shortly after the start of manufacturing to the same material as the tailcap boot. This material is much softer than regular silicone so it allows more give when the head is loosened, but is supposedly more durable. Because of the complaints, they are switching back to regular silicone. As of now, no one has confirmed this claim. To me, if the material interferes with proper operation of the light, it is an inferior material, even if it is more durable. Isn't that why you provide extra o-rings anyway? Plus, why would you not thoroughly test the product to make sure there is not a functional difference before switching a material like that? Seems like a no name budget manufacturer way of doing things instead of a more expensive "name brand." But, Thrunite is a young company so maybe they are still learning this stuff and if this truly is the solution, I will give them credit for finding and solving the problem. In any case, I did send back my original light to Lightjunction and they have graciously agreed to test a replacement for me before shipping it out. If I end up with a good working light out of this, I will update this review again and provide proper kudos to lightjunction.

OUTPUT 5/5

Without equipment this light is hard to judge on output. This is one light that makes you go, is it really that bright? Of course the problem is the combination of an XM-L in a rather small OP reflector. The hotspot is very diffuse, which makes it seem like the light is dimmer than what it is. Comparing the beams on a white wall, I could tell that it was brighter than my C7, but not by much. Meanwhile, it seemed like the 175 lumens of my LD20 on turbo was noticeably brighter. However, then I tried a ceiling bounce and to my eye there was no difference between the LD20 and the 1A, so it very well could be putting out in the 175-200 range. Both of course were much brighter than the C7 on the ceiling bounce. I will try to take pictures later and see if I can tell via pic comparison and post them here. Also when brought outdoors in the dark, the brightness again showed up as the floody beam just lit up a huge area. This thing is a flood monster. I do not have any 14500's yet, so it would be interesting to see how it does when powered by them. If you like floody beams, you will like the beam of this torch as it is nice and diffuse with few imperfections. The color on mine does skew to blue, which is a noticeable contrast to my green skewing LD20.

Update: Pictures added. As you can see, the hotspot is quite wide on the neutron. The initial picture makes the Neutron also appear much brighter, which is slightly different from what I was noticing from the naked eye earlier. The diffuse beam really makes the light appear dimmer than what it is. If you look at the final high speed shot, that is close to what I am seeing from the naked eye indoors. As I also said, outdoors in the dark, it is a different story as all that flood becomes obvious and it is clearly a bright light. This also shows up in the ceiling bounce shots as the Neutron is clearly the brightest light. Yes, these are all on Nimh, so the Neutron does live up to its reputation of a great amount of light from a standard battery. With many tests pegging the LD20 at around 175 lumens, its safe to say that the Neutron is putting out at least an honest 200 lumens. In light of this, I may up my rating on output to 5/5 because this simply out performs just about anything else on 1xaa. Unfortunately, i can't turn the auto white balance off on my camera so you can't tell off these pics the tint color differences between the lights.

Beamshots are left to right, Neutron 1A, Fenix LD20, and ITP C7, all on maximum output.

Ceiling Bounce

ITP C7

Fenix LD20 Q5

Thrunite Neutron 1A

RUNTIME 4/5

I haven't had a chance to do any proper run time tests or current checks. However, the low modes really are where they are supposed to be on output. The firefly mode is low enough where you can look right at the emitter without a problem, which is kind of a cool effect. The low mode is right where it needs to be for basic walking around the house at night. I don't have any reason to doubt that the battery would last a very long time on either of these modes. Obviously, with the rather high output this light may present, you won't get much battery life off the turbo mode. There have been quite a few run time tests on these modes done so if you google, I'm sure you will find that info.

Firefly Mode:

OVERALL 3/5

I had a hard time deciding to give a 2/5 or 3/5 on this one. Needless to say, I am disappointed. The aforementioned build quality issues should not be present on a light of this price and my comparable brand name lights just are put together much better. With that said, every function works on the light. It does everything that it promises to do, although I have to question its waterproofing with how loose the head feels when its not tightened. It came in a basic box, with a lanyard and spare orings as you would expect at this price level. I'm debating whether I should return this to the dealer and get my money back.

Update: In light of the obvious performance output. I can say that I would solidy give this light the 3/5. The output and modes that everyone wants are there. It is the build quality at the price level that is dragging this light down.

I have also posted the link to my review on the Thrunite manufacturer's subforum at CPF. I have invited Thrunite to read the review and post their own commentary about the issues I've had. I would be happy to amend my review if another sample proves that my issues were an isolated incident.

Thanks for the good review, Sirjohn! That stinks that the light turned out to be the way it did. Funny thing is, I remember reading that thread when you were asking about getting a new light. I starting considering getting one of these as well, just to see what all the fuss was about.

Thanks for saving me the hassle

Thanks for the review. I liked the idea of the light, I'm just sorry the implementation was less than perfect.

A lot less than perfect.

Bad reviews are perhaps more important than good ones so thanks for doing this.

I hope 1C is better than 1A. I had read good comments about it on IMR cells and ordered without reading any negative reviews. It should arrive in sometime like tomorrow or the next week. We'll see how it compares to a Quark S2.

I have been looking at this one for a while and couldn’t understand why an XML in there. It just seems so under driven that a proper XPG would be brighter. I really don’t like that head loose stuff. Good objective review. Thanks

Thanks for the candid review SirJohn .

When I heard about an XML in AA format I thought it would be a good matchup , because I like floody lights . But this sounds like a good idea poorly implemented .

Thanks for sharing .

I just finished the pictures and had some interesting results. I'll get them uploaded as soon as I can. It does make me feel better about the light. You could really say that the concept worked, but the implementation was poor.

Nice review, John :D And thanks for the shots. AFAIK, C7 is 1xAA light with Q5 and LD20 is 2xAA light with Q5 also, right?

Correct. The other two lights are Q5. The pictures are quite interesting because that diffuse hot spot really makes the neutron seem dimmer than what it is. If you look at that last high speed shot, that is the sort of effect I'm perceiving by the naked eye.

Yep. I personally always prefer that type of shots. The first one can't say you nothing, the second one is good to see beam pattern and compare spill brightness, and the 3rd one is very good to see which one will throw better. BTW, you should try your C7 with 14500 :p Will gain about 30-40% :D

Thanks for the honest review SirJohn! Sorry you had a bit of a disappointment with it. Sounds like it has good modes, and the XM-L sounds enticing. But not with that quality for that price.

Would you like me to send this frontpage now, or should I wait til you put the pictures up?

Thanks!

Thanks for the review. Its to bad that this light didnt perform as most of us would have expected. Can you return it? It sure seems like a lot of money spent on something unworthy that perhaps might be reused for something else... like good beer.

The thing is that most of the stuff is nitpicky and probably wouldn't bother me that much. Its the head that's the issue. Its a pain unscrewing the head and not knowing if you have unscreweed it enough so that it doesn't flash turbo whenever you bump it. If you unscrew it enough to go into regular mode, it should be all set, not sort of half way there. I could understand a tiny bit of play in head from unscrewing it, but there is just too much and it makes the light feel cheap. It should feel solid still if that's a core part of its function. It makes me nervous about leaving it in a loosened position, because italmost feels like all that motion means its on the verge of breaking at the threads, although I keep telling myself that the aluminum is so thick, that probably won't ever happen.

My Thrunite Neutron 1c Neutral version arrived just a few minutes ago. I had only Soshine RCR123 (unprotected) batteries with me and tried at once with one of them. Here are the marks for my first impression,

* Has the same low lows of a Quark 123,

* good knurling,

* matter finish than my Quark,

* some internal edges look sharp

* light has a great, useful flood beam

* Neutral color is the best, nowhere green, nowhere orange warm

* High is really high even without an IMR

* Would like to have a clip and/or lanyard with it but only a holster and o-rings came in the box

* Loved this light.

Even though there is very little difference in usefulness and output of a Quark 123 S2 and 1C, but 1C seems to have memory and a better tint with a floodier (broader) beam. Thrunite 1C is nice, maybe 1A needs a 14500 too :)

Are you having any issue with head wobble like I am in on my 1A? If it wasn't for that, I would probably give the light a 4/5.

No, the head doesn't wobble on my sample of 1c.

I ordered Nyogel 779zc, a thick lube from Lighthound. I plan to apply it to my light with loose threads. It may be worth a try for 1A too.

Sorry you're disappointed with the light, but nice job on the review and pictures. The ceiling bounce test is very telling. On a 14500, the light output should take a leap forward, so please post again when you get them. I like that it has a super low Low since so many people love that.

Hopefully the head wobble thing can be fixed. Any way to fit another o-ring on there or maybe a bigger one? That might hold it steadier.

Great pictures SirJohn! Frontpage'd and Sticky'd.

That photo of the firefly mode is fantastic :)

It's a shame to hear that the light is a little bit shoddy, as you say at this price there is no excuse. I suppose the only upside is that no one else here will buy one thinking it's going to be great.

From what I've heard, only the 1A suffers from this, not the 1C.