everyone list their light fails

(i’ve partially posted this in a different thread, but i think we should all call out fails we’ve had
as well as something that has stood the test)

now my fail list is
dqg tiny IV - switch fail
dqg tiny IV - different one - mystery driver fail - faded , was intermittent, then quit
xtar wk42 - inductor fell off, not replaceable
lumintop tool - switch fail due to alkaline cancer and bad design
manker u11 - switch fail - cover came off, driver glued in - switch fragile, surface mount, unreplaceable

others

the success list is so far:
astrolux S1 - seems well designed, though it is large, maybe that is required

my focus has been small + inexpensive
maybe i should spend more but i can;t really see how that helps
good design doesn;t have to be expensive. just smart.

wle

Fail, a $2 Sipik SK68 clone, all rattled, turned on once to show an horrible blue tint.
Win, a $2 Sipik SK68 clone from the same vendor, ordered at the same time, no rattle, nice neutral white tint.
The going for the bottom of the barrel lottery in action :smiley:

Zanflare F6 is a fail, won’t turn off if the hi mode runs for more than 6 seconds, and the whistle is unuseable.

Everything else I have bought has exceeded expectations except for one nasty cheapy “2000 lumens” 18650 light with power bank function and 3xaaa adaptor, never again……

i never have the really cheap ones fail because they don;t usually go into EDC due to other shortcomings

seems like either
a. heavy use of switch or
b. dropping a couple times or
c. leaky batteries
cause most of it

i usually don;t have water failure, but i also don;t usually expose to a lot of water either

wle

A TG06 that just stopped working for no apparent reason. Darned if I can get it working again.

Not so much a light fail and more of a BrianK fail… I had a PF04 and just had to put Li-Ions in it. That worked for a split second.

Plenty of switch failures of course…

First real light, XR-E R2, had driver failure after about a year of use. All was good, then it just stopped working in mid-use one night. Replaced driver with a NANJG 101AK, still works great.

Rook clone, purchased ages ago, bad driver, never worked out of the box. Never have repaired it since I can’t find a decent e-switch driver I like.

Astrolux S42 with loose cap. I tried to tighten it, spun the optic (which broke the legs) and dedomed the emitters.
It still “works” but has the most horrid blue (not cool white blue, but BLUE) tint. Awful.

Then there’s my first foray into building/modding lights: a Convoy S2+ triple that I can’t seem to get to work. Probably a solder bridge on the driver. Definitely my operator error. Anyone good at troubleshooting/fixing failed projects from other forum members?

Convoy S2+ triple XPL2 sunroof fail.

Left the sunroof open on my A4 durning one of the hardest raining thunderstorms I’ve ever seen. It’s a blue one with the metal switch and also I opened up the front on my lathe a little for the optic so no O ring there after a week of drying the car out I remembered it was in the center console, soaking wet of course. I was able to get it dried out and for my efforts I’m able to tell you that arctic alumina and water do not get along at all as there was some nasty white powder stuff left in there. I’m also left with a rusty Samsung 30Q I’m not really sure what to do with now.

Still way more pissed about the car than the light.

Astrolux (the Banggood house brand).

I’ve had two S41 and two S41S lights, so that’s four Astrolux lights in total. Two of them are now dead. Both of them failed within a year, for no apparent reason. They’ve never been dropped or abused in any way.

With quality problems like that, Astrolux won’t be getting any more business from me!

All the other failure lights I’ve had were cheapo no-name junk off EBay.

Balder HD-1. The piston switch stopped working.

Fails:

  1. Jetbeam BA20, DOA. Sent it back and it came back working great at least until I gave it to one of my aunts, who needed a light.
  2. Thrunite Archer 2A v2 (OP reflector and silicon side switch), dropped it once. The internal part of its o-ring got mauled, and the LED barely lit up, varying between 1/100 and 1/1000 of a lumen - just guesstimates, but point is, it was totally unusable. (Looking back, seems like a solder on the driver that broke.) Sent it for repair, and it came back working okay. Ended up given off in the same day as the BA20 thanks to a mixup and my unwillingness to break a promise.
  3. Thrunite Ti3 CW, worked nicely for four days until one night when I swapped the battery it flashed BRIGHT then never turned off again. Sent word to the
  4. Olight S10R. It just quit working about a month after arrival. Turned out to be a light I hate to death - between purchase, taxes, shipping back to the seller, shipping from said seller (they said it’d be express shipping, but then it turns out to be the slow lane when it reached my country), and yet more taxes, stupid thing cost me 120 dollars :rage: Lesson learned, not buying from Battery Junction again.
  5. Olight S30. Bought if off a clearance sale, and it seems to have driver issues - any modes past low flicker as badly as a faulty CFL bulb. Not too incensed about it, as I rarely use more than low and it’s otherwise totally reliable, but contacted Olight and they actually sent me an S2 Baton, total win :laughing:
  6. Thrunite TN12 2014, slipped from my hand once and I fumbled in a way that only slapped it downwards harder. It hit the concrete, something got totally loose inside it, and it turned out only moonlight mode would light up, the other 4 modes were totally dead. That was after a year of soft and moderate drops, though, so I don’t hold it against the brand. Sent it back, got a new and totally good one that’s still working nicely today. Unlike the old one, it actually tailstands too :smiley:
  7. Thrunite Archer 2A v2.1 (smooth reflector and black plastic side switch), got on an importer deal switcheroo from the bad BA20. About the same thing as the other Archer, except its brightness was normal but varied with the angle it was held off the ground. Sent it back twice, got it back twice, the problem came back with every bump. Got tired of it, cannibalized the pocket clip (fits in an Olight S2 better than its own pocket clip), lens and o-ring (the latter two, together, fit perfectly in a Convoy S# series, as I’ve found out when I broke the lens of my S2) then tossed it into recycling.
  8. Olight S1 Baton. Old UI that memorized moonlight, nice and tiny with good beam, but then I found out it had such a terrible parasitic drain, it drained a 16340 until battery protection kicked in in less than 2 days of standby. Sent word to Olight, and they sent me a new one (no fuss, no muss) that I’m grateful for, but it was the new UI that didn’t memorize moonlight and came on mid after a battery swap, and I was already not a big fan of CR123-sized models by then (too little runtime). Gave it to my mother (who also owns the hated-but-functional S10R), so it stays in the kitchen. It does utility work sometimes, but mostly I use it as a 3-minute timer when boiling my instant noodles :smiley:

Wins:

  1. Olight S2, gotten as a replacement for the not-totally-faulty S30 above. Totally solid light, super versatile too. Too bad it’s CW. It alternates between shelf queen and home’s utility light thanks to the uniform TIR beam and super strong magnet, always on top of the dining room table within easy reach for non-flashaholics.
  2. Convoy C8, my first and so far only thrower. Thanks to the OP reflector, it’s not bad when used indoors despite being 7135x8. Like all Convoys, it’s built like a T34 :+1: It sits in my backpack, ready to be used to sweep the empty overgrown lots near my home when I’m coming back from a night shift.
  3. Convoy M1. Runs Biscotti, a 7A tinted LED, and it’s all around lovely. The only problem is that the fins on the head are sharp enough to hurt if it’s at an awkward angle in the pocket, but that didn’t stop it from becoming my EDC.
  4. Lumintop Tool. Easily the 1xAAA light I like the most so far, punches far above its weight no matter the tint. When I’m home, I don’t feel like I need any other flashlight. Had a CW XP-G2 one (not too bad a tint, surprisingly) that I gave to my mother on Mother’s Day (she loves cool white), and got me a CRI with the Nichia 219B that always rides on the collar of my shirt as a backup EDC. (got both for US$10 each, on two separate Banggood sales)

Meh.

  1. Convoy S2, old 3/5 firmware. It’s a nice light with great form factor (some lights just feel good in the hand) and the beam pattern is one I love, but two things disappointed me. First is the 3/5 firmware that came in it (purchased it on Banggood, not off Simon, so couldn’t request Biscotti): on-time memory and the blinky on low just don’t work well for an EDC light. The other was the lens that came in it that seemed to have bad heat treat; they cracked when I dropped it on a rug, then almost broke completely from couch height on a tile floor -
    fortunately the AR-coated ones Simon sold me are far more solid. Shelf queen until I purchase a couple Biscotti drivers and learn some soldering.

Hello wle:
About your sentence: “lumintop tool – switch fail due to alkaline cancer and bad design”

I think your Lumintop tool not fail…I think is your fail for use alkaleaks…I have lost a lot of items for alkaline problems…the cause of the problem is not my radio or my TV remote….the cause of the fail is use alkaleaks…

Agreed. Bad design had nothing to do with an alkaleak failure.

Indeed. Why should manufacturers care to make their products easy to clean alkaleak remains off of if that’s a battery they do not recommend using in it? Doesn’t go just for flashlights either, any electronic device goes.

Fair enough, you can’t blame Lumintop for the alkaleak, but the light should still be designed in a way that lets the owner make simple repairs.

Unfortunately, too many manufacturers don’t bother to think about the long-term maintainability of their products. The bean counters would rather sell you a new light than a new switch, after all. That attitude is why the consumer electronics industry is ultimately responsible for vastly more electronic waste than it needs to be.

Not that many that I can think of…

• Sofirn SP31, almost a fail, as the switch sometimes needs a couple of extra clicks to turn off, but never fails to turn on. Might be a “sticky” mechanism inside. Not enough of a bother to warrant screwing with it.

• UF AT-01s, two of ’em. Garbage, garbage, garbage. Switch flickering and random mode-changes (due to the switches) after minimal use. Got ’em to give away to someone who can’t be trusted with Li cells, got back both of ’em. :stuck_out_tongue:

• Ancient SK98, the come-with driver just went mental, starts in random modes (vs high), everything else is okay, will eventually (pfft, if I ever get around to it) do a 1-mode driver-swap to avoid all this grief.

Can’t think of any others right off. Generally had good luck with lights.

ALL of mum’s lights. She buys garbage, then is surprised when they all go south. 9-LED lights by the dozen, showerhead lights, all sorts of craptastic lights you’d find in drugstores and the like. “I’m not gonna pay 30bux for a light!”, so she paid several times that amount on craplights that don’t work. :person_facepalming:

Too true. Silly unenlightened folks :smiley:

You ain’t kidding. I enumerated all the costs for the lights I saw, and it was close to 100 at least.

She leaves lights on, lens-down, then forgets ’em. Then claims she doesn’t.

Yellow “lantern” lights with 3 “1W” Angry Blue™ LEDs, that take one of those 6V cobblestone batteries. Okay, that should last for months of heavy use, as I doubt those 3 piddling LEDs ain’t gonna be pushed very hard. Dead in a week or less. And she denies leaving it on.

One night, I head down to the kitchen, see a faint arc-shaped glow. My first thought was she left the burner on (wouldn’t be the first time), and it’s reflecting off a can or something. Nope, 2D hotwire flashlight by the sink, lens-down. :person_facepalming:

So, definitely no Li cells…

A coupla lights I gave her to try, she complains the switches are too hard to operate, but they’re the same rubber-booted tail-clicky switches of her stoopit 9-LED lights!

So I stopped trying, except for the AT-01s. And that was a mistake.

the S42

Just give her something with a crenelated bezel :wink: