As all recoil type flashlights very little spill (almost none)
Quite massive construction
Properly driven regarding thermals
Even anodizing
Cons:
Underdriven emitter (see pros)
3 modes with 1 being strobe is weird for a thrower... i prefer 1 mode
No mode memory
Lens could be coated since it does matter in long range flashlights
Features / Value: ★★★☆☆
This recoil thrower would be far better in my book if it were 1 mode only. Since it has 3 and no mode memory it deserves at least 1 star less but i might have been overly stern. At this price point it should have mode memory. Even good one. Does not differ much from other recoil throwers. It does it's job and does it well. For indoor use such flashlight is inapropriate but outddors it really shines. The strength lies in a tightly focused beam with almost zero spill. Hardly noticed any. Comes with a strike bezel but still something civilized and not intrusive at all.
Design / Build Quality: ★★★★☆
Here this flashlight really shines. Very heavily made with thick walls, tailcap and head. Also fatures a decet tailcap with about normal switch. Good orings where matters. Even anodizing and good machining are also worthy of the asking price. It would be 5 stars easily if HA coated. Threads are about average, nothing special or bad either. It is not prone to crossthreading. I like the fact the black anodizing is matte instead of shiny. The "drop-in" is not snug fit into the head but i think it would hardly matter improving that but i would like a better fit nonetheless. Recoil throwers are infamous for relatively bad heatsinking of the emitter. They opted to underdrive the emitter rather than have it fry prematurely. Toughtfull. The diver is press fit unfortunately so fiddling with another might be tricky.
Battery Life: ★★★★★
This one should run quite a while. Why? Current draw!
At tailcap:
- High: 700mA
- Low: 180mA
Plenty of runtime with 2400+mAh batteries. At high it would not surprise me to see 4,5h and over (with sag). Low mode should be in 15h range probably. Who would like a strobe in those is open for debate. I dislike any form of strobes but that's me.
Light Output: ★★★★★ SPECIAL
Well... it's a speciality device. It does just on thing and it does it good. Pretty much as expected. No spill and a a little blurred emitter shape projected far away with a few artifacts along. Even if the Q5 is underdriven or driven at around 70% of it's max potential the range of this flashlight is great and gives a hard competition to deep reflector throwers.
Images are heavily overexposed. You can't really reason with a point and shoot fully automatic pocket camera. :/
Summary: ★★★★☆
Small Sun ZY-A1B may not be perfect but it is a good recoil thrower while being also good looking. May not appeal to all but i always liked the Conqueror thrower. The price tag was a little above my budget. This one quenched my thirst for a recoil being aesthetically similar to the conqueror. Personally i would have preferred that came single mode and perhaps with a forward clicky. Overall i am satisfied and this recoil thrower will find its sweet spot in my pretty modest flashlight collection. The deep long reflector throwers failed to impress me. This one did. I like the no spill "feature" of the recoil design.
Great review Budgeteer, thanks a lot! Sweet shots of the beam toward the trees. Looks like there was a bit of fog or something to diffuse the path of the light? Looks great. Frontpage'd and Sticky'd.
Quick ignorant question: What does "recoil" thrower mean?
Oh it's just a term i learnt here which probably mean that the light gets bounced off the mirror pad (kind of firing back) before leaving the flashlight. I would think ricochet or rebound would be a better way to put it but the term grew on me. Perhaps the term was adpoted from some silly translation and charming was ditched along the way. :P
Surely with all those XXXFire productus it's best that is not called backfiring flashlight. :D
"recoilor "recoil thrower" is a flashlight design where the LED is mounted on an arm just under the center of the lens, facing backwards into the reflector. Such a light can produce a very intense hotspot with great throw and very little spill. One downside is there is not much heatsinking to carry heat away from the LED."
I copied this from the Wiki. It's not just a cute name, it seems.
The pictures are way too bright. But, if you compare this to a 18650 zoomie this recoil thrower beats them down single handedly even if the zoomie is overdriven.
I imagine that it's smart that they don't drive the diode too hard, since there's limited substrate for the die to dissipate heat. Given that they can't just put a huge lump of opaque material in the lightpath, I think the only way that they could drive it harder is if they used something like a heat pipe (think computer overclocking) or some type of peltier cooling, neither of which have been done in a flashlight before (to my knowledge).
It is a rather nice looking light and it certainly does what it's supposed to :)
They're always called "recoil" but I've never quite been able to figure out where that name came from, presumably it was the name on one light and it just caught on.
They really should be called "Parabolic Focal Point Reflectors" or PFPR...neither of which is very catchy :P
Heatpipe approach could be a good one! Peltier? Naahh, that thing is notoriously soo inefficient that will eat 3/4 of your battery capacity that should have gotten to the emitter.
Still think "recoil" is pretty much the most tolerable term for it (althrough i don't see the point to it). Could be much worse.
I'm fairly used to hear technical nonsense being a computer technician.
We often hear:
My computer froze from excessive overheating....
Now, everyone know what happened but really... how doumb does it sound when you reread it the second time?
Great review as always, Budgeteer. I haven't played with recoil throwers much at all, becaue of the limits to how hard the emitter can be driven. But it seems the reflector efficiency might overcome this to some extent for a pure thrower.
Someone should make a "flood to throw" recoil thrower. Perhaps by having it so the arm with the led could rotate 180 degrees. It would face backwards into the reflector for throw or face forwards out of the lens for a very wide smooth flood.
Nice review but if you wished that this one was only one mode (I agree) why do you also wish that it had memory?
As it is it will always come on in high mode (which is what would happen with one mode). If it had memory it might come on in low mode or even strobe. I'd say that is is a positive that it has no memory.
I ordered one of these last week from Manafont. I don't know why, I really don't like spotlights and I already have seven flash lights. I guess it was an impulse buy, which sucks because of the new AA/14500 lights from Spark just came out and I want one. As of right now, tracking shows that it left Hong Kong.
I will be sure to do a review with beamshots when I receive it.
