The listing was pretty confident in mentioning XP-E R2, repeated several times… quite bold for an ebay listing Hopefully this guy didn’t just take his supplier’s word for it… I kinda suspect this is an XR-E, because I have an UF-S5 with XRE that looks exactly like that. And also the emitter in the ebay picture looked like it has a ring around it.
My S5 was $5+, has the utmost crappiest driver I have ever seen, with puke-inducing pwm (really!) on mid & low and not recognising soft-click in between blinks during SOS mode (meaning you have to noob yourself and full-click your way back to High).
But it works nevertheless. And for $3 it’s good for the host & emitter alone, XR-E or XP-E doesn’t matter, so I’m in for a couple myself.
I emailed him and he sent a tracking #, but also it is now appearing in my.ebay.com. Also got notification email from Ebay, but that didn’t have the tracking #, but it does appear in my.ebay.com.
Does the tracking number work? I’ve never had any luck with those ‘direct in eBay’ tracking numbers. They usually just say “shipped” with no further routing info.
That’s actually what surprised me when ohaya mentioned it… why bother with a tracking number on this? They should have the option to go for free ‘slow boat’ shipping. Must be ePacket or something…
I’ve always had a suspicion that sellers always pay for tracking, even if they don’t give you the tracking number.
Think about it, if you were a seller, and you sold me a $100 light, and then shipped something with no tracking, and then I complained that I never received it.
What would your recourse be?
So, I think that, for their own protection, they have to get tracking numbers…
I know that that’s what I’d do.
I also think that it’d be kind of a bother for the seller to get tracking for some shipments, but not for others. I’d just be easier to get it for all shipments.
ohaya, that’s a good point. The alternative is to get tracking on significant items (say $20-30 or more) and take the risk on lower priced items. The profitability of this would depend on how many shipments are lost. i suspect very few (I’ve had close to 100 in the last six months, one was lost). Using that statistic, if they saved $100 by going with no tracking (assuming $1/package) then that sub-$20 lost package still nets them $80. Just a hypothetical, but they would have the real stats and could make a much more knowledgeable decision.
Not sure how that tracking would work. No codes are attached to any of the ‘untracked’ packages I receive.
Maybe there is some hidden code or something somewhere, but I don’t see it anywhere.
I also only have to sign for officially tracked packages, ones that the sellers ship untracked go straight in my mailbox.
Just noticed this flashlight on ebay too. Really nice price, worst scenario I’ll sell it at twice what I paid for it, at best I’ll keep it as a day to day beater. J)
Also, if meanwhile someone receives one, don’t forget to post your opinion. (that way I might not order one as I’ll only be able to order in about a week or so)
There are other sellers and different prices (from ~US$3 to ~US$5) for what looks like the same flashlight, there’s one that shows ‘the other side’ (i.e. the brand logo side) of the flashlight that looks just like the US$3 one, seems to be a JinLongBao XD-S6.
edit
A closer look at the US$3 flashlight and the photos show it’s UltraFire branded. Guess we’ll find out when the first one arrives to someone.
I received two of these today. They’re “Ultrafire S5” as someone suggested earlier. This is one of the ones I got (can’t get the head off of the other one for some reason):
I haven’t measured the diameter, but I think that a 20mm triple emitter or the Carclo 3up lens probably won’t fit (the light is very narrow diameter).
Were you referring to what I said? If so, I wasn’t referring to the pill, but rather the head section of the light. It was really tight one of the two I got, but I just got it off now using nitrile gloves.
P.S. Also noticed on the pic I posted that there was a small nick, just above the logo area, to the right.