Trustfire F25
Reviewer's Overall Rating: ★★★★★
Summary:
| Battery: | AA NiMH 14500 |
| Switch: | Reverse Clicky |
| Modes: | 5 |
| LED Type: | Cree XP-E |
| Lens: | Plastic |
| Tailstands: | Well |
| Price Payed: | $21.39 |
| From: | Lightake 24th Sept 2010 |
Pros:
- Stainless steel (But suspiciously light)
- Distinctive styling (Which may be a big turn-off for some)
- Battery orientation marker in body tube.
- Nice beam
- Nice beam colour on my one
- Brighter than I thought at first.
- Not a hand-burner despite respectable output.
Cons:
- Suspiciously light
- Rather excessive packaging - obviously designed for some sort of bundle with cells and charger
- Packaging weighs quite a bit more than the light
- Nasty graunch on tailcap thread till I lubed it.
- It is going to eat the second O ring at the tailcap end.
- The styling will not be to everyone's taste. Personally, I'd call it garish.
- It irritates me seeing GITD O rings in places that aren't going to be exposed to light.
- Seems to have a low battery warning that cuts in too soon on NiMH.
Features / Value: ★★★★
Stainless steel is always a plus for me. My personal preference is for a more matte finish than the high polish of this one. But it has been knocking around in my pockets or bag since I bought it and there's no scratches or dents in it.
It is almost exactly the same size as the Ultrafire C3, and their heads and tailcaps are interchangeable.
Lego shots, tailcaps and heads swapped.
IMO the C3 head looks better on the F25 body than the F25 head does.
Five modes (Including the two usual annoying flashing ones), the beam is good and the colour of my one is good.
Trustfire F25 on left, Ultrafire C3 SS on right. Both of these appear more green in this picture than my eyes saw. The blue patches are some weird artefact of JPEG. They aren't there in the real world.
It is always a surprise to see a smooth reflector on a Cree LED as with the XR-E series a fairly heavily textured reflector was necessary to tame the "Cree Rings" which were almost certainly to do with the metal ring holding the dome over the LED. XP-E's do give better beams than XR-E's and cost less. But can't be pushed so hard. That said, it does get hot on high - while doing the runtime with a 14500 it got unpleasantly hot to the touch and that is with a fan blowing on it. It is not the hand cremator that the stainless steel C3 is though. I would not normally be prepared to run it for ten minutes on high.
But it costs more than $20
Build Quality: ★★★★☆
Lots of O rings, some of them I suspect will fairly quickly become casualties. But you have three of roughly the right size attached to the body in an outbreak of "styling". I can't say it does it for me.
A nice touch is the marking inside the body tube to show you which way the battery goes in. It seems like the O ring nearest the top ought to be eaten by the tailcap but it has been on and off many times and it hasn't eaten it yet. The threads came dry and badly needed lubing, but this is not unusual.
Build quality is perfectly acceptable. I'd like to see more threading on the head end.
Here are the various assemblies gutted. The head has notches for assembly and disassembly which is a nice touch.
Nothing glued, so the pill comes out easily enough.
The LED sits quite deep in it.
A side view shows just how deeply the LED is recessed. The aluminium part of the pill holds the reflector in place and makes sure the LED is properly centred. Nice idea and it probably doesn't hurt for heat dissipation either.
I've not tried to pull the pill apart as I prefer my lights working.
Reflector and lens. Now that I have the lens out, I am pretty sure it is plastic. Good quality plastic though. I hope it isn't polycarbonate which a lot of optical plastics are, as the polycarbonates scratch terribly easily.
When putting it back together I tried a new approach to lubing. I ordered a dropper bottle with a blunt syringe needle from DX a while back. I filled the bottle with some engine oil I happened to have lying around. The needle dispenses tiny drops which work quite well. Makes it much less likely that you have to wipe liquid lube off of everything. To clean the light I oiled it heavily then wiped it all off - the tissue I used came away more or less clean so it clearly had ben cleaned in the factory. Then I lightly lubed it.
Switch assembly
Empty tailcap
Battery Life: ★★★★★
Surprisingly good for a bright AA light.
Current draw on high with a 14500 is 1.3A which gives over 180 lumens.
| NiMH |
| 14500 |
14500 high runtime - 42 minutes with a brand new protected 14500. I think this is pretty good for the output which is around 200 lumens at switch-on, 175 lumens at ten minutes, 165 at 15. Without setting fire to your hands though it does get hot.
14500 Medium runtime: 1hr 46 minutes to shutoff. 94 lumens at switch-on, around 60 at shut-off. These are protected cells.
On low with a 14500 it ran for more than seven hours which is quite remarkably good. Unfortunately the meter's battery gave out so I can't be more specific than that - it might have had an hour or thereabouts left in it at that point. Here are the first 3.5 hours till the meter decided to stop working. The dog wanted out at 3am - it was still producing light - this graph stops at 11:30pm.
NiMH Runtimes
High - 673 lux at switch-on / 121 lumens. 3 minutes, 578lux/104 lumens which is pretty respectable for an AA light. 1hr 11 mins to 50% is pretty good for a bright light. At 90 minutes it was still producing usable light at around a lumen. The low battery warning is annoying - at least I assume it is low battery warning.
Medium - at the end producing 0.2microamps which is 3 lux / under 1 lumen. Still (just) usable light.
Low - the Windows box decided that working was boring and crashed, taking the logging data with it. I do know it will run for over 8 hours till shutoff with an Eneloop.
Light Output: ★★★★★
I reckon any AA light that can hit 200 lumens is very good. This one gives 242. My initial impression was lowered by a faulty set of readings from the lightbox, my canine assistant must have dislodged the meter. 50kg of dog "helping" can have that effect..
One thing I don't like about the output is the GITD O ring that intrudes into the edges of the beam. This is not really visible beyond a foot or so but it is dropping the output.
The 14500 on high is giving over 240 lumens. Probably, like all stainless steel lights, this is best treated as a "Turbo" mode as most such lights can get extremely hot - stainless steel is a far less good conductor of heat than aluminium. The runtime on a 14500 is quite remarkably good, giving over seven hours on low.
| Lightbox | ||
| Light | Battery | Immediate |
| Trustfire F25 High | 14500 | 1347 |
| Trustfire F25 Medium | 14500 | 585 |
| Trustfire F25 Low | 14500 | 118 |
| Trustfire F25 High | AA NiMH | 449 |
| Trustfire F25 Medium | AA NiMH | 192 |
| Trustfire F25 Low | AA NiMH | 47 |
For comparison, here are the 14500 numbers I have. Differences of 10-40 lux at switch-on are probably within the bounds of experimental error.
| Lightbox | ||
| Light | Battery | Immediate |
| Aurora SH-035 Low | 14500 | 36 |
| Trustfire F25 Low | 14500 | 118 |
| MX Power ML-310 Low | 14500 | 216 |
| Aurora SH-035 Med | 14500 | 269 |
| Ultrafire C3 (P4) | 14500 | 457 |
| Smallsun ZY-C85 full zoom | 14500 | 581 |
| Trustfire F25 Medium | 14500 | 585 |
| Ultrafire C3 (P4) No. 4 | 14500 | 865 |
| Smallsun ZY-C85 | 14500 | 867 |
| Aurora SH-035 High | 14500 | 898 |
| MX Power ML-310 High | 14500 | 900 |
| Uniquefire S10 | 14500 | 1112 |
| Hugsby P31 with P32 Gold driver | 14500 | 1176 |
| Ultrafire C3 (P4) No. 3 | 14500 | 1176 |
| Trustfire F22 | 14500 | 1254 |
| Uniquefire AA-S1 | 14500 | 1255 |
| Trustfire F25 High | 14500 | 1347 |
| Ultrafire C3 (P4) No. 2 | 14500 | 1347 |
| Ultrafire C3 Grey Q5 | 14500 | 1359 |
| Ultrafire C3 SS Q5 | 14500 | 1391 |
| Trustfire R5-A3 | 14500 | 1630 |
Beamshots
14500 High
14500 Medium
14500 Low
NiMH High
NiMH Medium
NiMH Low
Control
Summary: ★★★★★
This is a much better light than I first thought, it is both bright and long running.
If you like the styling I'd reckon it is worth the money - I don't like it enough. I still think it is worth 5 stars. In many ways a better light than the famous C3 stainless steel as it isn't far off it in output and is way below it in heat output.
The C3 stainless is a nicer light as far as I'm concerned though. But tastes vary and this one is pretty good.
A fraction on the expensive side, the Manafont Ultrafire C3 stainless steel sounds like a better light (for me) for a little less money. If I'd known about it first I'd most likely not have bought the F25.
