Eachbuyer was kind enough to send me this flashlight for review.
The light came in a box that protected it very well. The box does also a nice job at presenting the headlight.
The box contains the headlight and nothing else. You will need to buy a pair of 18650 batteries and a charger (if you don’t already own many 
).
The headlamp (the part that contains the LEDs) is made out of aluminium and can be detached from the headstrap. Unfortunately there is no easy way to fix it to a bike as no handlebar adapter is supplied.
The front part is composed of 3 LEDs.
The middle one is an XM-L which is driven just above 1A (unregulated)
The sides ones are XP-E LEDs. They are both driven at about 500mA.
That’s a total of about 7W.
It’s tear down time!
It’s quite easy to open it up. The front bezels unscrew easily and give you access to the LEDs.
The middle optic is a standard smooth reflector.
XM-L (middle):
Unfortunately there was no thermal grease on the back of the LED. That means that the LED may overheat and its life shortened.
R2 (sides):
The side optics are new to me. They look like a light pipe and concentrate the light very well.
Same thing with the side LEDs, no thermal grease. The LEDs simply sits on a piece of metal that’s stuck inside the tube. That’s not very good thermal management. The LEDs are not driven very hard so this should be fine at first.
Removing the back reveals the switch on its PCB. this PCB contains nothing else as the driver part is in the battery pack. (see below)
This is the back of the XM-L pill. It is quite big and if some thermal paste is applied the emitter current could be pushed a bit (2A or so IMO)
The head strap and the battery tray are made out of plastic. It is fully adjustable and I didn’t have any issues with it, it’s very comfortable. the white part on the battery tray is translucent and there is a red LED inside. that makes it a perfect headlight to have on your head while walking or when you are on your bike at night.
The battery tray can hold two 18650 batteries. I didn’t have any issue with long batteries, however some batteries had a tendency to pop out too easily. This is not a problem when placed on the head as the head puts pressure on the batteries.
The battery tray contains a board that contains the electronics. It simply uses resistors to reduce the current. This means that the current will gradually be reduced when the battery discharges. this is not very good, I would much rather have a regulated driver (for example based on 7135 chips) to get a constant output.
The chip is there to get modes. The modes are as follow:
- XM-L only
- R2 (both sides) only
- All 3 LEDs lit up
- Strobe of all 3 LEDs.
- OFF
There is no memory.
To switch the light off you have to cycle through all modes.
Total weight is about 290g.
Conclusion
This is a cheap light (it’s sold below $20USD). For this you get a headlight that feels good on your head and has a good balance between runtime (about 3 hours on max) and light output.
Unfortunately it is far from being perfect. Here is a list of all the points that annoy me:
- Not waterproof (not even for rainy days)
- Bad thermal management that will probably cause a short life
- I would have liked to have 1 floody mode and one that throws light far away. But all 3 LEDs throw more than flood.
- The driver modes are bad (It needs to have memory and a long press to switch it off)
- The light output is not regulated
- No low voltage cut-off
On the upside:
- It is well balanced on the head
- It throws light far away
- The coiled cable is very good and won’t annoy you as with many other headlight
- It can be moded very easily, everything unscrews easily.
In conclusion, I would recommend this headlight to people that need to see far away (not for close up work). It is fine to ride your bike at night. Just don’t use it on rainy days…
I would highly recommend to buy something of better quality if you can.
