A friend at work loves his SK98. I’ve shown him a bunch of my lights (and he has shown interest in a couple; he bought one for his wife) but he just loves his SK98 for work (we work QC Engineering in a manufacturing plant).
He wants to buy another SK98 for himself, and asked me where to find a good one. He recalls when I mentioned that the SK68/98 are budget lights, are frequently cloned, and are hard to find a “good” one among the sea of “how cheap and poorly can we make it” versions.
What do you think?
Do you know a source for “good” SK98’s?
Should I try harder to steer him in another direction? If so, what would you recommend? He is only interested in a 1x18650 zoomie light.
Also, we are definitely talking “budget” lights, he’s probably not willing to spend more than $20 or $25 on a flashlight, no matter how much evangelizing I do.
If he loves the SK-98, then roll with it! Mine was purchased in late 2015 via an eBay auction for $5. It turned out to be decent as a mod-host. Unfortunately, that listing is no longer available. Hollow pill, but with wide shoulders, and a junk emitter. I replaced the emitter with what ultimately became an XP-G2 on Noctigon, replaced the driver with a Nanjg 105E (20mm Qlite-style) and filled the pill with a JB-Weld/Alcohol mix to assist with heat transfer. Depending on his requirement, give him a Cree or a High-CRI Nichia…
It turned out to be a really nice light and the hollow pill hasn’t caused any issues with the emitter overheating from the 2.8A current…
cbrake, I showed him my OTR i3 as an option, it was too small for him, he wanted something more substantial and with better battery capacity. Is the Odepro a rebranded Brinyte? I haven’t handled a B168, but I freaking love my (several) B158s.
Keltex, he is considering my offer to mod a SK98 for him, that option is definitely on the table.
Yeah sac02 from all reports they are identical, though Odepro’s version of the B158, the KL52, was the B158B before that was available from Brinyte. I love my B158s as well
Cheap zoomie?
Warsun X50/X65 he will be blown away and very nice cell compability 18650/26650/3*AA
I think I saw it for $12 and that is real bang for the buck.
Should be good as-is if you get the same emitter as in Barkuti’s pics. My preference is for the smaller-die XP-G2, but the XM-L2 would still be a good option…
I was in the same situation - liked how affordable the SK98 was and that it used just one 18650, but wanted better quality light and a better driver. So I made my own driver and put a XHP50 CRI90 LED inside and it gives me about 1700 lumens (from datasheet, likely less OTF but still bright!) of nice high CRI light, but with good runtime on lower modes too!
I typically purchase all my electronics components from Digikey or Mouser. I believe most people on the forum typically purchase from flashlight-specific sites like mtnelectronics, but I frequently buy stuff from Mouser/Digkey anyway so I it just makes sense. The good thing is that I can buy whatever LED I want, and they typically have lots of options. The bad is that sometimes the highest efficiency bin is not in stock, so I have to buy a lower efficiency one.
Sadly Nichia do not offer their LEDs for sale. Osram however has a lot of very nice offerings too.
Finally regarding linear drivers, I don't quite get why everyone is using the 7135 ICs. They are a great choice for low-cost mass-produced flashlight uses, but for custom linear drivers (especially when people start adding a lot of parallel 7135s), I think we can do much better with a proper current-regulated driver with more capable linear regulator ICs, and in a smaller package! This will allow not only true constant current drive, but also brightness control without PWM, and with less of the complexity and cost of a switching regulator.. :) Hm maybe I should make one!
loneoceans, maybe the main problem here with driver development is an utter lack of cross-platform microcontroller knowledge/development. I may be wrong but, sometimes really good drivers get 0 attention just because the etched words over their microcontrollers look something else besides “ATtiny”.
Sorry fellows, don't get me wrong but, because of such microcontrollers' limitations (sheesh!), you gladly continue PWM driving the emitters (sheeesh!) using a fixed constant current linear driver which simply cannot switch on/off quick enough and thus the load is not regulated and becomes some sort of über-fast switching strobe (sheeeesh!). The load should only be PWM driven for the silly flashes' modes you so gladly make use of when high in some sort of party.
One advantage the SK98 has it is very short. It’s supposedly one of the shortest 1x18650 zoomies around. All of the other suggested zoomies in this thread are bigger, without necessarily being any brighter or throwier.
If your friend really likes the SK98, and his is broken, your best bet is to find a replacement. I think at least one post had a suggested SK98 replacement with a good emitter.
Alternatively, if you don’t mind modding and have basic soldering skills, you could mod a light to be much superior to the SK98.
I think one of the easiest zoomies to mod is the Supfire A2 (or its much cheaper, but identical in build quality on Amazon clone: the “Joly Joy”). No extra parts are needed to super-charge this light. All you have to do is move one wire a few mm over to virtually double the output.
That looks like a beautiful light. However, for EDC one concern would have is whether it is too heavy. Even in a very lightweight light, 26650 cells have quite a bit of heft. It’s not something that’s going to vanish in your pocket.
I recently purchased my first 26650 light: the DQG tiny III 26650. I’m immensely impressed with it. It’s like having a miniature pop-can light. Unfortunately, despite being not much bigger than an 18650 light in volume, it just feels a lot heavier because of the large cell. Definitely too heavy for pocket EDC in my opinion.
