So I grabbed this little light with a 30% coupon. I got the E21A 5000K highish cri version.
This is just a warning. If you prefer 5000k over the 3000k version. Don’t get it. Save yourself some time and money. Just walk away. I had heard and read good things about the E21A and was excited to try one out. Don’t get me wrong, the light works great and the UI, though it borrows a lot of features from the 18650S, seems to be a tweaked version to make it more livable. It is, they succeeded in that area.
The problem is with the 5000k and >80 cri claim. There is no way this is 5000k. I have a lot of 5000k lights. All kinds of different manufactures as well. This E21A is nowhere near 5000k. Not even close. It has quite a bit of blue in it. I am pretty sensitive to blue so some of it may be just me but, it’s clearly not what it claims to be. It looks like a domeless emitter. That makes it pretty throwy, even with the OP reflector. Which is fine. Easily remedied.
The highish cri claim is far off as well. This thing doesn’t render colors even close to 80. I have Luxeon V2 >70 cri emitters that blow this thing out of the water. It’s just really that bad. Any light I have, 5000k or not, can render colors better than this light.
I try to like Folomov. I had one of the original 18650S lights in a 219D 3000k. If you don’t remember, the driver would seriously over drive the emitter and cause it to turn awful colors and get dangerously hot. I even got the updated driver 18650S as well, still in 219D 3000k. It was still to warm for my liking (4000k to 5000k) but I had planed on putting a new emitter in it anyway. They did at least fix the overdriving issue.
I haven’t tried to get into it yet. It looks like a pressed on bezel but again, I haven’t tried to open it yet. If I can I will put something else in it. if not all is not lost. It was cheap enough that I will give it away to my neighbor up the road. He doesn’t care about those types of things. He will be happy regardless of those short comings.
Anyhow, just a warning if you were on the fence about this one. You may be able to live with it. Temp and cri aficionados should probably pass. Again, unless it’s easy to get into.