I don’t know if the head removes, it looks like it should separate, but hasn’t undone with ease, so I’ve left it for now. I can see a retaining ring at the positive end of the body tube below what would be the driver, it looks removable, but access seems limited as you’ll need something to reach the entire length of the body tube.
The lens is most certainly a TIR optic and my guess would be it is the same or very similar to the Led Lensers.
Retail they may well be over priced. But I paid £15 quid for this POP lite, now that’s pretty cheap tbh. Cheaper than buying a new incan Mini MagLite for instance.
As for old tech….
Not really. Ok it’s an older XP-E emitter, but just look at how many Ultrafires, Trustfires and so on still run Q5’s.
The body material and anodising would appear to be just as modern as other makes. The switch too. And the TIR is arguably more modern.
Don’t get me wrong, I know what you are saying, but I think it’s being overly harsh. And lets face it many of these more modern torches have poor PWM, far too many modes, poor user interface and overheat too easily. I’m not truly convinced such things are really an advancement.
The price is high, but then if they can sell them at that and make money, who is to really complain?
The output is still quite good overall, remember these are probably XR-E’s and it’s not as if you’d actually say it’s dim and candle like.
I also don’t know of another zoomy light at any price that can match the X21R’s output and throw. A well driven XM-L won’t be at 1600 lumens OTF and with an aspheric on zoom it’ll be a heck of a lot less.
Thanks for the review, I was curious about this light ever since I have seen it at dx. And being me (and for some others? ) the question is: is it moddable? I suppose the led is on some kind of pillar, like the XR-E led lensers, really curious how that can be worked on.
I still don’t know how modable it is. I’ve updated the pics in the op and you can see the one of the battery tube. There is definitely a retaining ring of some kind down there, but no idea how you are meant to get to it.
I have so far been unable to unscrew the head either, it has a visible join, but is either tight, sealed or something else. As I haven’t been wanting to damage the light I haven’t tried as hard as possible, but it certainly has a reluctance to move.
I ordered a POP Lite t62 from IceBay.com because it was cheaper than from DX, but I have no confirmation email and the Web site is not working. I guess I’ll see in a few weeks whether I really get something and what it is.
My Fasttech Lenser P7.2 convinces me that these lights really have reproduced Fresnel’s lighthouse work and therefore have a big advantage in terms how much light they put into the spot. I don’t know why there aren’t more lights like this. Other companies wouldn’t really have to do there own optics or risk law suits, because one could just scale down a lighthouse design and mold it in clear plastic.
The t63 appears not to have its own optics. It looks like they used the optics from smaller lights but made the head bigger than necessary to maintain the looks.
I’ve got a thing for Lensers myself. I was a bit surprised that the Poplites are not that cheap at all… Shop around and you can find some nice Lensers for reasonable prices; well at least reasonable for a Led Lenser anyway…