[Review] Odepro TM30, Dual-Switch Flashlight

As always, let’s start with the box.
Nothing fancy here, the flashlight arrived in a simple cardboard box.

The contents of the box are protected by foam padding on both sides, while the light itself was bubble wrapped.
In total, you get the flashlight, a couple of spare o-rings, two protected batteries rated at 3000mAh and the dual battery charger.

After taking the first look at the light, one can acknowledge its tactical look.
Of course, the aluminum parts are anodized with a black matte finish.

Two things caught my attention in this light:
First is its cigar grip, something that I hadn’t see in a while.
The second obvious thing is the weird placement of the side switch.

In the beginning I thought ‘How am I supposed to change modes with the switch back there?’.
After a while of playing with the light I understood that the switch is placed there in order to compliment the use of the cigar ring.

Once the cigar grip is utilized, it feels very natural to rest your thumb in the part where the side switch is placed.
Also, when having a reverse grip of the light you are enable to change modes with your index finger.

The pocket clip has quite a bit of retention force.
Both the clip and the cigar ring can be removed.

The threads are triangular, yet the are cleanly cut and arrived decently lubricated.
The tailcap threads are fully anodized, while the head ones aren’t.

The driver looks clean.
It doesn’t use a spring for the LED+ contact, but rather a brass tab.
As a result, the light can only work with button top 18650s.

The TM30 comes with an orange-peel reflector.
The XM-L2 is perfectly centered due to the utilization of a centering ring.

Both the LED and the driver are cased inside an aluminum pill.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take the pill out as it was tightly set into place ~ It’s probably time to invest in a pair of fine needle nose pliers

And here’s the tailcap taken apart.
The retaining aluminum ring is reverse threaded.

I am not sure how the side switch is working, but it seems that the modes are saved to its own PCB.
If I directly connect the battery to the light, bypassing the tailcap, the light doesn’t remember last mode and jumps to high.

User Interface

  • Turn on: Single press of the back switch
  • Mode switcing: Single press of the side switch (Turbo - High - Medium - Low)
  • Strobe mode: Long press of the side switch while the light is turned off

Tailcap Measurments

For some reason, once the side switch is removed from the circuit the flashlight doesn’t remember modes and instantly turns on in High mode.
As a result, I was able to only measure the tailcap current of the High.

I used short DMM leads (18AWG) and the Odepro labeled batteries that are included in the package.
The current I got was 2.10A which according to XM-L2’s datasheet translates to roughly ~900 Lumens.

Batteries and Charger

As seen, the flashlight bundle includes two 18650 protected batteries with a rated capacity of 3000mAh and a dual battery charger.

The charger itself is nothing special. It uses CC/CV to charge the 18650s.
Its cutoff voltage is set at 4.19V.
According to the imprinted specifications, the max current that it can provide is 1000mA per cell.

Once operating, there is a high frequency noise produced.
The high pitch noise is probably caused by the switched-mode power supply of the charger.

The charger also has an LED per slot that indicates the state of the charging.

In order to test the real capacity of the cells I used my BT C-3100 charger.
The cell tested was charged at 4.19V and it was discharged at a rate of 700mA. The charger’s cutoff voltage is at 3.2V.

I got around 2600mAh, but the result should be a bit higher if I had used a lower discharge rate or a lower (2.8V) cutoff voltage.
Either way, the cells seem to be good quality.

Highly appreciated for your great review to our TM30, which means a lot to us.