Is Haikelite Suicidal?

LED Flashlights – General Info 18650 Flashlights
1

This is my first post. Not really. I was a member of Candlepower at the beginning. I quit when a certain Bully took over, Greta or something like that. Hateful person. She pretended to wear red sequined shoes.

Anyway, I was here when the XINTD C8s were hot stuff. I bought 2, the first one and then V2. I still use them all the time.

By my bad luck, I came in and got a Haikelite HT08. Don’t bother.

A 10 yo XINTD is better.

The lens chokes the light and reduces it to low levels, however tight it looks.

2

Would you like to elaborate on what exactly is wrong with the light? I don’t have one handy to test it.

3

Rather than ranting about irrelevant stuff, it might be more useful to actually explain what is wrong with HT08, so people have something they can constructively respond to.

4

Sorry to have intruded.

5

No, rather, sorry for Pete7874’s unnecessary rude response.

6

smiles Both you and he are welcome.

7

I have an HT08, I don’t think it’s comparable to a C8 but I’l curious to hear what you don’t like about this 15 bucks zoomie

8

The OP vents about CPF, gets a CPF style response…

The C8 is indeed still relevant, a very good light with much modding potential.

9

Allow me.

The HT08 is a total design failure.

First you’re confronted with a high - strobe - SOS group, and no manual as to how switch groups.
Member freeme posted you have to half press 5 times to change groups.
This sometimes works, but i still don’t know what i did to get it to 3 modes (low - high mid - high)
But that’s just the driver, and once you manage to get it into the preferred group it’s okay.

So how about the rest then?

Well, the tail cap threadings have a lot of play, reminiscent of cheap C8 lights.
Not anodized, but that’s not a problem in itself i.m.o.
The rubber switch button is mushy, there’s too much distance between it and the switch, but it works okay.

The lens has a really big focal distance, so it catches relatively little light when focussed.
But maybe some would prefer it like that, because it will give a tight beam.
As a consequence the head has to be able to travel a long distance from flood to tight beam.

On a positive note, the lens almost touches the LED when in widest flood position, making it a very wide flood.

But what happens when you focus to full collimation?
This is where all is wrong…
The inside of the head is a narrow threaded tube.
As a result, only 30% (estimated) 50% of the lens is used, only the centre of the lens receives light from the LED.
This is because the head is narrow on the inside all the way.
I consider this a major design failure.

More annoyance:
Rings.
I think it’s because the threads inside the head, which are shiny from the lubricant.
You get rings projected in most head positions.

Solutions?
Well, first you’ll have to remove the retaining ring right behind the lens.
Probably by drilling 2 holes in it and unscrewing it with needle nose pliers.
Then you can screw down the head further until it’s unscrewed from the main body tube.
if you want to be able to use the whole lens when focussed, you’re gonna have to grind away a lot of aluminium to get a conical shape inside the head.
You’re probably gonna have to be careful too with how much you remove, because the top cooling groove in the head is very deep.
If you get it right, you won’t be able to screw the head to the widest flood anymore, because you just removed some of the inner threads inside the head…

Good luck y’all.

10

OK. The head of the flashlight is the same size as a normal C8. When screwed down to “flood” it is about 4.5 inches long. That is an inch less than an original C8 and 1.5 inches less than an XINTD C8.

Does anyone remember who put out the Number 1 Original C8? It was under the Ultrafire Logo, 12 years ago.

This HT08 has a head that is the same as the 10 year old C8 and is a bit shorter in lenght. It also takes a lot of work to crank it out to a tight beam, which is .33 as bright as the XINTD C8 was.

11

Yeah, the Convoy SS bezel fits the HT08, more or less. Same threading.

12

40mm lens. Pretty common I think.

I don’t have any idea who these Haikelite people are. I suspect that they are more Sales People than Engineers who know what they are doing

I could be totally wrong. Everything that I believe now replaced something I used to believe. I change my mind when confronted with better evidence.

13

Thank you for editing your post to add what the actual issue is. That’s what was missing from it initially.

FYI, HaikeLite has a thread running, where they take improvement suggestions:

14

Hi Pete smiles I knew already that aspheric zoomers are no good. I hoped that the flat lens was better. Nope. I only paid 15.99 USD.

15

The Brinyte B158(B) is a very good aspheric zoomer

16

They’re a young flashlight manufacturer.
I agree engineering is not their strong suit…

17

Actually initially they made some really nice lights. But it seems they went downhill….
BTW, I have HT08 on the way too.

18

I agree the HT03 is really nice, but definitely not perfect and some strange ‘solutions’ are used.

19

I love zoomies. The Haikelite HT08 looks interesting as it uses a fresnel lens instead of a conventional aspheric lens.
That said, I don’t own the HT08 myself.

I’ve modded smaller zoomies to replace the aspheric lens with fresnel lenses. Compared to a conventional aspheric lens, a fresnel has the following features:

Fresnel advantages

  • With both types of lenses the shorter the focal length of the lens the wider the hotspot. This doesn’t affect throw which is mostly governed by the width of the lens, but a wider hotspot will let you see more in the distance than a narrow hotspot.
  • Since the lens is flat you can use a very short focal length fresnel lens without any extra bulk.
  • A flat fresnel lens also needs little in the way of bezel to protect it. This means you can get a considerably wider flood beam than you can with an an aspheric zoomie.
  • Light scatters at the tips of each fresnel ridge produce an extremely wide area of dim spill outside of the regular beam.

Aspheric advantages

  • As the focal length becomes shorter, the lens becomes thicker. Using a short focal length aspheric lens adds bulk (from the mass of the lens), and increases the length of the light. It also reduces the maximum width of the floodbeam as the angle of the LED to the edge of the bezel in flood mode isn’t as wide.
  • For the same width an aspheric lens will always outthrow a fresnel lens. Fresnels are inefficient as some light is lost at each ridge. In the same diameter a $0.99 aspheric lens will easily outthrow a $30 aspheric lens.
  • A well built aspheric may emit little or no light outside the main beam.
20

Yeah…
HT03 - nice.
MT07 - nice. I don’t own one, but this is the one I like the most.
SC01 - nice.
There are quite a few lights which are not so good, but far from bad.
MT35. MT01. MT02. SC02….
But several months ago Heikelite began to fake specs (initially very accurate). I think MT02 is the most extreme example with specs showing 215% of actual throw. MT07s is nowhere near what they claim as well.

Then came HT08. The cheapest Haikelite to date. With obvious, but not problematic cost cutting in several areas.
But the most positive comment I’ve seen about it (and from someone who got the light for free) is “for the price it’s the best zoomie”. Which may actually be correct. But nevertheless we could expect more from the company, couldn’t we? Not taking care of the light path seems like a fatal design flaw. And I think: are the people who designed MT07 the same as those who did HT08?