Not a budget light, but another monster has arrived - 2200 lumens ANSI

Fenix T70 3xXM-L, 4D cells. Not a budget light but a significant development. This thing is ginormous though. That head must be at least five inches across. If the 720 meter throw claim is accurate, they have got those reflectors optimized nicely for triple XM-L. Fenix is generally at least somewhat close in their published specs so this is the real deal folks.

http://www.fenixoutfitters.com/fenix-tk70-shipping-mid-july-357

Fenixes are very good lights. I expected this to be expensive, but still think it needs to be $50 cheaper even for Fenix. I imagine it will drop in a few months time.

that thing is a monster, 2200 ansi lumens is crazy

I like this picture:

Those lumens frighten me. I'm going to crawl back under my rock.

You have to give Fenix some credit. They are cranking out some monster lights these days. EOwhat? :)

In the long-throw pic, how do we know those trees are actually at the 720 metre point? Or are they not? To me, they look closer (although it's a difficult call without something to scale their size against).

Nice!

I'm sure that the pic is not 720 meters. Its just a sample shot showing the thing does have some serious throw. I'd guess the distnace to trees is around 200-250 meters. At 720 meters, it won't be lighting up that good, although you can actually see it lighting up the tops of trees behind the first row of trees.

SR90 can do 1km advertised? It has nearly twice as much lux as the Dereelight XR-E aspheric, and we know its about 4x more lux @1m to double the throw. So Dereelight aspheric is 700m. Solarforce Masterpiece Pro-1 635.46 metres. Sealed

The 720m claim by TK70 is not inflated, but under very controlled conditions. Maybe 1 ultra dark site in desert 300km away from city lights, non-glossy white target perpendicular to the flashlight. You know, those sites which makes astronomers happy and you can see the milky way unaided.

New NiMH batteries needed + 4-cell charger. Luckily they are not that expensive. $80 should suffice. If you are going for the low discharge ones (else you'd be needing to recharge every month to top up) then its about $100?

The head of the TK70 is very big (the body tube is D size, not 18650 "thin"). You would probably get similar throw with 3 x Ultrafire C8 aimed properly? Maybe less, if the TK70 has slightly better reflectors, for the price they still can't be the ultra high-end reflectors that you see in the HID world which cost TK70 + SR90 for the reflector alone.

Now the Chinese are getting bigger reflectored lights out for the XM-L as well. Sky Ray/Trustfire/Ultrafire needs to come out with a 3 x T6 version 2 in September. Sealed

Yeah, but Fenix uses shitty tints. Haven't been happy with any of mine. If I spent that kind of money for a light and the tint was no good, I'd be extremely pissed!

Rich

what a monster light. If it was $200 cheaper i would be all over it..

Just wait for their 86% off Black Friday sale. :bigsmile:

I wonder how it will stand up to the big Olights, especially the SR92. I will probably do some test with them, when I can get them.

I am very interested in this shootout!

Price between the SR92 and this TK70+New NiMH batteries + 4-cell charger is not that much difference anymore

Also not forget there is maybe a possibility to buy only the SR92 head, so for the owners of a SR90/SR91 this is a nice and relative cheaper solution

Thanks SJ...

If this is not a silly question, why do manufacturers who quote massive throw distances never actually show a beam shot of the light at that distance (or at least somewhere close to it)? I can understand the logistics involved in locating somewhere physically to do that, but if they're marketing their flashlight largely as a thrower, what's the point of a beam shot at half its claimed throwing distance?

Even if we're feeling generous, and that long-distance throw shot is 360m, I can't see its beam being effective at 720m — from any practical, usable viewpoint. Surely at 720m it's gonna be in moonlight mode?

Or am I being naive and believing exaggerated marketing figures?

—Geoff.

360m is pretty easy for 42mm reflector XM-L. Ultrafire U-80 and UF-980L can hit a white building target 360m away, in bright city skyline conditions. Pretty faint, but with a dark adapted eye its pretty easy. Note that I said bright city skyline, its still somewhat dim (but definitely unsuitable for astronomy other than bright celestial objects like moon/venus)...i'm not talking about right in the middle of Broadway with neon nights. But detecting the spot does not mean its useful, you can't see a person even with a binoculars, and definitely you cannot light up a tree which is a pretty dark object.

Twice the distance, you'd need 4x the lux approx, eg 4pcs of UF-980L hitting the exact same spot. With the 3X XM-L running in slightly smaller reflectors, we should be able to do it as well. As mentioned previously, in a very dark site....there shouldn't be any issue with a white object. Eg white or silver 18-wheeler. But only useful for that. A person wearing a dark blue overall would probably remain undetected even assisted with a pair of powerful binoculars.

I've read all of the Fenix marketing materials and I think the new Fenix is the ideal light for anyone who needs to look at an object 700m away for 7 days non-stop using a handheld flashlight. IMHO its a great collectors piece and that's about it. But as a Searchlight I percieve a problem.

The circumference of a circle with a 700m radius is almost 4.5km. Assuming that the Fenix can illuminate a 25m area at 700m at one time that's about 2 degrees of the circle so about 180 points to cover. At two seconds per point that's 6 minutes to turn full circle. So the batteries are good for almost 1700 revolutions. The problem is that after 1700 revolutions on the same spot you will have drilled yourself into a small but deep hole and the last thing you need then is a super-thrower. So just make sure you have a nice low output, long life, floody edc with you. And on this occasion an SOS mode might well come in very useful.

But detecting the spot does not mean its useful, you can't see a person even with a binoculars, and definitely you cannot light up a tree which is a pretty dark object.


Good point 2100...

I guess it's true that we're more limited by the limitations of the human eyeball than the throw of the flashlight itself, in meaningful terms.

Its interesting that the modern assault rifle which took over from the fuller bore bolt-actions is pretty much optimized for 400m or below. I think that says it all. Certainly if a thrower can nicely hit 300m for me then that's enough.

Bro, that's a very interesting way of looking at it. Hahah.... Laughing

But some points. (1) Highly unlikely its 2 deg beam or 25m at 700m. Spot size is going to be slightly bigger than a 42mm reflectored XM-L light. Check out your regular Ultrafire C8 type @ 300m spot size on a house/apartment, its BIG.

(2) It won't do 7 days @ 2200lm. Everyone will be buying one if it can do that.

So each XM-L is going to be eating 2.1A to be able to do 2200lm combined. That's 6.3A total. Vf of ~ 3.1V at that current. 20 watts.

4 NiMH = 1.2V * 4 = 4.8V, so that's 4.16A from the batteries. It can probably do 2.5hrs on high with 12AH cells. Factor in driver efficiency in HIGH and you will be breaking up using the high mode in bursts (better cell discharge capacity this way), perhaps 2hrs. Still pretty good.

They probably reckoned that 32600 is too big a risk to take for a 3-cell setup, I mean they are somewhat an upmarket relatively well-known brand and "cannot change biz name in a night" and risk the reputation crash. 1.2V 12AH NiMH cells = 14.4 watt hour. 3.7V 5.5AH LiCo = 20.35 watt hr. Not much. Even if we take it to be 3.9V 5.5AH (since most of us consider 3.7V to be nearly flat), its 21.45 watt hr. They can definitely pack in more power for the LiCo, but not much R&D since there's no demand. 32600 tech is like the equivalent of 2000mAH 18650s.