This “needless mess” you speak of happens with literally anything in life, as with that cable example I posted earlier.
Research and learning is part of every hobby.
If you don’t have the time or patience to find research fun, then this is probably not the hobby for you.
PS- if you buy a good battery that is 18mm diameter x 65mm long and unprotected it will literally work in every 18650 flashlight.
I don’t know what crappy batteries you’re talking about, but all the high quality LG, samsung, sanyo, etc. cells all follow standard.
If someone buys some cheap chinese batteries and then finds out they don’t fit, that’s their fault for being cheap instead of getting a high quality option.
Yeah, this is the main reason these things are difficult for me here. There are fakes or extremely expensive branded ones.
Anyways I´m very happy with the 3 new flashlights I´ve just bought: beautiful EC4S that’s working well with old batteries, EA42 which is much uglier than it seems on pictures but a joy to use with Eneloops and a lovely Utorch UT-01 that has received the “paper clip ring” trick (made of a key ring) to accept long protected old 14500s.
For example my Samsung 35E doesn’t work with BLF Q8, Folomov EDC-C4, Haikelite MT09R, Astrolux MF-02. Because they all require button top.
OTOH button top Lumintop LM34C works at least with Folomov (haven’t checked with any other of those), but doesn’t work with Emisars.
There are no brand 26650 cells, so one can’t follow your advice. And it happens that the best cell about this size is actually slightly larger than standard and doesn’t fit all lights, regardless if you buy with button or without.
21700 is becoming another standard. And buyers realize that the extra 5 mm in length means that not all chargers can work with them.
There’s 20700 also which largely overlaps with 21700, but is compatible only one way. Some manufacturers go with 20700, some 21700….this is true both with cell and light manufacturers.
I haven’t yet seen “Protected 21700”. It will be interesting when they arrive…
I’d like to note that I wouldn’t use Samsung 35E in Emisar D4 anyway though - because its medium discharge construction is not a good match for this light. But this incompatibility is actually a part of the fun - you tweak component selection to get the best results. Not to work around needless limitations.
I love doing research. But research of intrinsic properties like capacity, internal resistance, low temperature performance, cycle life etc.
Not of “cell X is .1 mm too wide to fit light Y”.
No, it won’t. Most Nitecore lights, for example require button tops to make contact. With creative use of rare earth magnets as spacers, it’s usually possible to get it to work.
Well, thanks to all who posted their opinions.
My conclusion is that after some 4 years, there´s nothing 4 years better than my old Skyray King with 3 XML T6 or a Simple T6 Convoy S2 or a Nitecore EC25 or a simple T6 zoom or my E41.
The current champions put out 4000, 10000 lumens, but only for a few minutes.
A good (bad) example is Concept 2. Extremely beautiful but with a price far from what most consumers would pay for it and with welded not replaceable batteries.
Thanks to all.
I’m not disappointed in the flashlight market, quite the contrary. What I am disappointed in is how bloody HARD it is to import all kinds of batteries, not even restricted to li-ions. It’s R$15 per 30Q cell on average (not bad), and R$240 for shipping anywhere you look on Ali. That’s like a third of a minimum wage paycheck.
Guess who’s immediately going to start hunting for old laptop batteries?
Why do you say R$ ? Do you live in Brasil? I understand that LiIons can´t be shipped anymore. Am I wrong? I´ve never tried buying cells anymore, because some of my items took 200 days to arrive. Incredibly an EA42 took 16 days from Ali to my home, by “Ali standard shipping” that was sent by Sweden Post and cost 4 US$.
I don´t know if new notebooks still use 18650s. My Sony SB25 whose battery failed (and I opened it) had 3 rectangular flat cells like mobile phones.
I disagree. A lot has happened since then, some of it pretty compelling. An increase in sustainable output having a major impact on what flashlights in given size categories are useful for is not one of those things. Because of how human vision works, it takes about four times as much output to look twice as bright, so while we’ve definitely had improvements in efficiency, they don’t have an overwhelming impact on utility. Instead, here are some things that do, at least for some of us:
There are quite a few high-CRI production lights. A 20+ point jump in CRI does a whole lot more for helping you see clearly than a 20% increase in output.
High-CRI doesn’t mean a huge efficiency drop anymore. The Nichia 219C is quite a bit more efficient than the old 219B (though not quite as pretty) and has found its way into a fair number of factory lights. Zebralight is using 90 CRI Cree XHP50.2s. Hobbyists have started using the 90 CRI Samsung LH351D and usually see no meaningful loss of output when swapping from a Cree XP-L or XM-L2.
User interfaces have come a long way, and sophisticated open-source firmwares written by community members are being used in production lights from Emisar, Astrolux, Lumintop, Haikelite, Thorfire, and Sofirn.
Lights that can provide full output on low batteries are much more common now.
Many lights offer USB charging. A few people hate it, but it helps lower the barrier to entry.
Color temperatures other than 6500-7000K are much more common.
It’s easy to change the shipping location and currency to check if a country can get it and at what cost; after all, Brazilians aren’t the only ones in this leaky boat.
“I understand that LiIons can´t be shipped anymore.” That’s a misconception: you can import them, but under extremely strict conditions that push the price sky-frickin’-high. No free or low-cost shipping for cells unless you get a charger to go with them.
Failing laptops, there are also power tools like portable screwdrivers. It’s a matter of trying
