Review: CQG XM-L T6 3*18650

LED Flashlights – General Info 18650 Flashlights
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A friend of mine, a flashaholic himself, laughed when seeing this thing :)

Pro: Solid, good heat sinking, good brightness, good runtime, tail-stands, nice modes (L/M/H), low current from each battery, 8*AMC7135 linear driver

Con: Parallel battery setup requires taking some care, big, no lanyard

More pictures are here; bought from CN Quality Goods for 60$ incl shipping

Details:

Well, it's quite big, probably not made for small hands. The design speaks for itself and may be a matter of taste. It clearly can tailstand well and illuminate a room that way - for quite a while, due to the triple batteries. It runs from a single battery too, btw - but a single 18650 might not be held that firmly when shaken hard.

Machining: good. Machining seems very good to me; one thread wasn't lubed well, but that was easy to fix. Funny: the switch sits on the battery holder. For that price an AR coated front glass would have been nice.

Heat sinking: good. The LED has good contact to the pill, which itself has quite some mass and good contact to the quite solid head section of the body, so this light has a good heat capacity and heat transfer to the outside, and probably sufficient surface to finally get rid of the heat. It only gets warm after a while on high indoors; it does get hot after a longer while, but not too hot to touch. To warm for the batteries to feel well though...

Performance: good. Luminous flux (acually the ceiling bounce) is better than most of my XM-L lights; My Fenix TK35 is 15% brighter, the Manafont UltraFire XM-L drop-in (3.6A!) is 7% brighter; my modded 1*18650 8*AMC7135 are a bit lower - you get the idea. NEMA-Throw is 270m (intensity 18kcd), thats ~7100 the effective reflector diameter, quite good, could probably be about 310m with a SMOoth reflector. Beam quality is quite nice. Current is 2.8A on high, that's less than 1A per battery, so you can even use your 'low-amp' ones :) I did not measure runtime, but with 3*2.5Ah 3h seem plausible (with the current drop on nearly empty batteries taken into account).

The parallel battery setup requires you to take care when putting the batteries in: Make sure all 3 batteries have the same voltage then. Otherwise high balancing currents may flow or trip the protection circuit.

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Thanks for the review DrJones. Feel comfy when you are holding it? It seems kind of big.

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Thanks for the review. It's not that wide/big. The DRY triple XM-L's body is even slightly wider.

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I guess I'd be more nervous about the parallel battery thing if it weren't for 4Sevens just introducing something similar. You don't usually see batteries installed in parallel. I guess I'm still a little nervous about that. Most people probably are going to have a hard time knowing if their batteries are well-matched or not, especially since people usually buy them in pairs and this takes 3.

I laughed when I saw the light too, but it's a pretty utilitarian shape. With 3 18650's side-by-side, it's going to be big and so the reflector might as well be that size too. I like the fins at the head. I don't like the look of the rectangular lights Fenix has where there are 2 batteries side by side.

Thanks for the review!

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I was under the impression lithium-ion in parallel is safer than in series.

My plans were to drive this light at 3.5A, hopefully sourcing a driver from someone that could program a super low mode.

Thank you for the review!!! I've been waiting... :)

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Nice review Dr Jones! Very well done. Looks like you found a pretty nice product there. Frontpage'd and Sticky'd.

My opinion: I would like this design with 3 XM-L emitters. A little bit disappointing that it's dimmer than a regular Ultrafire XM-L drop-in.

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Yeah, that's why I was hoping to have mine driven at 3.5A, also incorporating a low low mode. I just need someone here to do it for me

But maybe I'll pass if it turns out to be too much trouble.

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In the real world using longer it is not dimmer, at least not for all my wrapped P60s which all still drop like a rock just that they drop slower.

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okyeung: It would be a bit more comfortable if it were a bit smaller, but it's ok for me. I have relatively (but nor very) big hands though.

Parallel setup: Yes, it is safer - as soon as the batteries are in. You can even mix batteries of different quality and capacity - no problem at all.

The only somewhat critical moment is when putting them together: If they have different voltages, they will balance each other to the same voltage, i.e. the ones with higher voltage will charge the ones with lower voltage. High currents might flow. If a battery's protection circuit trips, it may even electronically take that battery out of the circuit permanatly (depending on the circuit) - until you take the batteries out again. I have the feeling that this is not very likely to happen though.

BTW, instead of charging the three cells individually, you could even connect the whole battery holder with 3 batteries to a charger as if it were one big battery. Takes longer then though :)

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To be safe, just buy 3 quality cells, adopt safe Li ion practices and be done with it, there will be no explosion.

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Getting me some XTAR cells along with an XTAR charger (will give mine to my dad) through our fantastic BLF discounts

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Yes, it is.

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Wonder if the battery carrier/holder is available separately? Screams with custom mod possibilities.

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Smart Spam these days.

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They're creating jobs! Now they're having to read posts and respond accordingly. That takes more time and one person will be able to contribute less, therefore additional help will be needed to yield the same quantity of results.

Nah.... they're parasites

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Pictures won't load.

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Changed my order from the Sky Ray L1 5 x XM-L to this one. :D

Funny thing, the Type II anodising is pretty nice. Actually it is flawless, not a single flaw and not a single nick. As in ZERO nicks. It's somewhat matt and even smoother than the typical DRY or Trustfire 3T6 host.

As posted by Hikelite, you can remove 1 of the battery carrier rod and use 1 x 26650. Just nice, i have an extra 26650. This means that this can be safe + more capacity than if you were to use 1 x 18650. So you do not need to balance the voltages of 2 or 3 cells (if you do not care for that). The battery carrier quality is extremely good, as good as what you get from Fenix/Olight. True blue CPFers might not believe this, but it is true. This is at least 2 leagues above the TK35 clone, which isn't that bad to begin with anyway.

Very nice to hold, a bit smaller than the DRY triple XM-L. Not slippery at all.

Can't really measure the current due to design. But the T6 3C is very nearly pure white but also with a slight hint of red. It could be 3D tint and also biasing more towards 4. But for my copy of T6 3C the low mode does not have any green tint in it. NW fans will simply love this, this tint is absolutely beautiful. VERY NICE! My Dereelight T6 3C, Xeno T6 3C have green tints in the lowest modes. Comparatively the Shadow JM07 Pro T6 3C is quite warm. My Xeno T5 3C is warmer still (seriously i don't think it is even 3C, maybe 4 something) <<-- I speak for this particular batch only as of now. Manufacturers themselves even high-end ones do not know which batch they get sometimes whenever they do re-runs....this is normal and unavoidable.

Who cares about tail current measurements anyway. Output OTF / Out the front - 30/220/630 lumens. Low is decently low.

Can't do any Hz measurements, but from the eye the PWM is fast fast fast. Probably in the 4kHz range. It is as fast as the UF-2100 which i measured 4.172k. It is highly unlikely for anyone to pick this up in real life, unless they are shining on a moving car.

The GITD tailcap has to go! (And Ric forgot to send me the black tail boot which i requested for...so next order then LOL!). I have a blue one though, also provided by Ric. He did send me 3 extra switches though....so this one should be with me for life.

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Ok, hooked up some wires, took the carrier out and did current measurements.

High- 2.805A

Medium - 0.879A

Low- 0.145A.

Should be able to do 64hrs in low with Panasonic 3100s.

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There was a loose neighbor's dog over the holiday, and I was (surprise) in charge of providing illumination for the searchers.

The Longrun XM-L was the only one that lasted the entire search. I replaced cells on all the other torches once, but this one was the winner in actual use.

I miss my TK41 just a bit less today.