EDCGEAR Glo-Tube AAA green review (budget Glow-Toob clone)

LED Flashlights – General Info 1 x AAA Flashlights
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Here my brief review of the Glo-Tube AAA made by EDCGEAR, as being sold by Cnq for 8 bucks shipped. This is a clone of the Glo-Toob AAA and i picked it up to just get a feel for this type of light, to see if it would actually be useful and if it would be worth spending over twice the money on the real deal.

What you get;

The light, a spare o-ring, keyring, a spare cap, and you standard quality Chinese lanyard in a plastic ziplock baggy.

The light worked fine out of the box on three settings;
Full on - pulling 160mA from alk, 120mA from eneloop
Low mode - pulling 25mA from alk, 25mA from eneloop
Strobe - pulling somewhere around 50mA on both chemistries (no equip to do exact measurement)

The light is a simple twisty, has no memory and always turns on in high and will swap to the next mode if you turn it off and back on again in under 3 or so seconds (>3sec and it will start as high again). Size-wise it is quite bulky, its almost exactly the size of a 18650 battery (a bit fatter).

It all works ok, however it all looks like its been assembled by a bunch of very angry hamfisted monkeys. There’s not a single part that doesn’t have scratches, dirt or blemishes. Even the printed text on it is terrible. Poor craftmanship just oozes out of everything you see, and since its a clear-body light you can see everything. Here’s some pictures to illustrate;


Dirty threads with very poor machining, unlubed o-ring



Heavy scratches on both the inside and outside of the plastic body


The aluminium inner battery-tube that should be reflecting the light making the tube more effective is oxidized matte with dirt and scratches on it. Text printing is very bad both in quality and content.


And the caps are quite rough

Given the heavy oxidizing on the inner tube i doubt the connection between it and the outer plastic shell (press-fitted) is watertight so even if you were to lube the o-ring i doubt it would be very waterproof (theres is no seal of any kind between the cap and the plastic part of the body tho a second o-ring can fix that easy enough)

Ill see how much use the light gets, if i like it enough i will buy a genuine Glo-Toob and ill do a little head to head comparison between the two.

If you would like to give this type of light a try its hard to ignore the low price, but unfortunately you really do get what you pay for. Granted it does what it should do but it just looks like crap which is a real shame as ive seen plenty budget lights by now that have been built and assembled with care.

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Any update?
How long does the battery last for any modes?

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I have not run down batteries completely flat just yet for the sake of testing but given the measured power-use it should not be too difficult to get a rough estimate on cells with a known capacity. 800mA Eneloops for example should get you well over 24hrs on low setting, possibly more as i suspect the power draw will drop with the voltage as the cell dies making it last even longer tho at lower brightness. I do not know the lowest voltage the light can work with tho, ill try to remember to stick a nearly dead aaa in there to see if it light up when i find one.

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Thanks RepProdigious!

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I’ve had the “FX” multi-mode Glo-toob lights for years (amber, for dark night camping tent lights and trail lights, and for the earthquake emergency kit).

Those are solid performers, using 12v type 23A cells. I’ve never had one fail yet. Have been wondering about their newer models — they’ve got quite a range now: http://www.glo-toob-usa.com/#!products/c66t
Shop around patiently, and from time to time you can find the real thing at a good price.

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Thanks for the review. Im surprised Cnq would send you something that looks like its already spent a year on a battlefield. You might want to contact Ric for a replacement or refund. Sorry, but that’s just terrible service and a blatant oversight.

I wonder if the fasttech inventory is any better? The pics look good.

non-aff link
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I picked up a ?fasttech? one, and it looks maybe a bit better than the reviewer’s version. It’s less scratched up, but my first impression when I opened it was, “Yup, this is the cheap version.” Actually I quite like it as a cheap proof-of-concept. I’m kind of thinking about pulling it apart to see about shining the internal silver part, but I’m not sure if the risk of breaking it would be worth any gain. I’ve also never used the original one, so I’m not sure if there would be anything to gain. I do find subjectively so far that the light shines a bit more than it glows, but that’s fine for me.

edit: Was it really fasttech one, or dx, banggood, other… I can’t seem to find the order anywhere

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Got a white and a red one this week from CNQ. Both are a bit scratched up, but less then the reviewers version. And since they where so cheap I really don’t mind. Also they will be abused anyway, I think I will use them on a boat as bow and stern lights.

The white one is much brighter then I expected. I think it will be enough to be seen from a distance in the dark. Maybe I will test them on a road, to see at what distance and speed they are visable. Maybe they could be used as beacon lights in case of car trouble.

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Took my green one out on a four day camping trip. It worked great for a table lantern, though maybe white would have been a better color choice for that application. Green though was a good choice for gentle lighting that wouldn’t bother others. My favorite use for this light was in the the washroom after dark. I think it would have been a good choice for a marker light and for area lighting along the trail, but I didn’t have a chance to use it that way. A little feature I found was that the paint at the top of the unit is glow-in-the-dark, making it easy to find in really low light. Actually I liked it so much that I’ve got the red version in my cart, probably will get the white one as well.

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Has anyone tried out the orange version? How’s it for illumination at night without destroying night vision?