Does anyone have a long runtime moonlight mode LED light that uses 1 AA/AAA and they want to trade for 1 of my XTARS ?
I dont care about hi lumen output or different modes. Im looking for a small led light, that puts out 1-3 lumens for at least 48 hours or more on a eneloop 2000 mah battery. I would be putting a light diffuser on the head of it.
The point I was trying to make was that unless you have a better crystal ball than I do, when you suddenly discover that you need these emergency lights, Murphys law states that most of your eneloops will be drained and waiting to charge. Energizer Advanced Lithium cells are claiming a 12 year shelf life. So they should be in better shape then those eneloops.
PS - don’t be surprised if the shelf life is substantially less than 12 years!
PPS - advertising is worse than politics when it comes to honesty, sorry to break the news.
I do a monthly recharge on all my eneloops, even if they have just been sitting on the shelf.
But most people dont do this, so your points are well taken.
I imagine the price difference between the Energizer advanced lithiums, and the eneloops, is substantial ?
Actually there should be a market for such a light. Storm shelter type, camping etc.
Single AA, single mode (5 lumens or so) with built in diffuser.
Preferably sporting a warmwhite high CRI Nichia 219B.
With only a single mode, it should be easier to optimize the electronics for a really long run time, without making it expensive.
Yes, Energizer Advanced Lithium (EAL) are pretty expensive. And while just now looking for a price, I realize that EAL is last weeks technology. Now we have Energizer ULTIMATE Lithium (EUL) which are claiming a 20 year shelf life for AA cells, Amazon has them in a 4 pack for $5.89 which is $1.47 each.
In response to your previous post, I would suggest that you try a Manker A01, which according to this thread was pushing 100 hours on moonlight from a AAA dollar store battery.
I have several of these, in use in places from Keychain lights for my kids to zipper pulls on my tents. We might be able to trade if you are still interested.
[edit to add]
More than a few people have suggested that embiggerizing the A01 to a AA battery and changing nothing else would be a great idea. I don’t know what is keeping Manker from doing so.
a single mode of around 3 lumens, with diffuser attachment in AA/AAA configuration that runs for 3 days or more…for $10 . This seems like a hit to me….
or
a dual mode with 2 lumens low that runs for 3 days or more and a hi mode of 60 lumens with a built in magnet on tailcap .
I’m a sub-/low- lumens, runtime, AA-size enthusiast; have quite a collection of sub-lumen AA lights; and also test my favorite low lows with a well calibrated lightbox; and I do runtime tests/current measurements.
It’s hard to find good low lows in the budget light range since massive runtime and moonlight lows tend to be more of an “acquired taste” appealing to the enthusiast. I also believe efficient moonlight circuits tend to be pricey. Best if you could find mid-priced lights that are on clearance - I’m sitting on dozen boxes of lights you’d probably love for$20.
I agree with Lisa that this Xtar light is spec’d for Alks and NiMhs (which is what the specs should be based on) the best of which are going to be 2500-3000 mah range, so maybe ~45 hrs runtime on an Alk. Assuming the 3 lm output is correct (eg, you could have 6 lm sample variation that yields twice the output at half the run time), even getting half the spec’d lumen-hours is pretty darn good from a light in this price range. As an example my ZL SC52 claimed a 170 lm-hrs (2000mah Eneloop) moonlight (0.34 lm, 500 hrs), while my sample tests ~24 lm-hrs (0.08 lm, 300 hrs), or 1/7th spec…. now that was disappointing.
I have similar multipleX over-exaggeration experience with Thrunite, Armytek, and Olight in the sub-/low- lumen modes…. not that these brands are inefficient, rather they are just not nearly as efficient as they claim in their low lows. Olight claiming 300 lm-hrs (0.5x600) from a “AA/14500” hahaha …maybe from a SAFT 14500 lithium-thionyl chloride primary. I have two S15s and the moonlight outputs were closer to 1/3rd spec (too dim for me).
Best low lumen: mode spacing, regulation, efficiency, consistency, and spec accuracy I’ve had are from 47 Quarks. Their clearance 1xAAs are currently not listed on eBay so may be sold out, but I’ve seen them disappear, and re-appear a few days later - some folks mentioned they were accepting $19 bids (+ shipping). As mentioned above, the XMLs can be a green tint lottery, but the XPG2s all seem creamy white (although throwy beams), and I’m measuring ~0.45 lms at 8ma (250hrs) and 3.3 lms at 32ma (63hrs) from a 1.28v 2000mah Eneloops on my current EDC. I use this “bright” moonlight/low low combo about 45/45% of the time. Quarks are boost/buck driven (1-4.2v) and are also easy to rig on ANY battery in pinch… (hehe… almost 3 months on D cell).
I hadn’t thought about that. I too have a 47 Quark (1-AA) from 4-5 years back with an XPG-R5. Its low-candle mode is around .2 Lumens, supposedly only draws 1mA, and in theory should run for many days depending on the capacity of the AA used. Its low mode is 4 Lumens and draws 10mA. I hadn’t thought about ebay and the used / discontinued market… good suggestion!!
hehe… can’t be 1 / 10 ma on 1xNiMh… that would imply 2000 / 200 hrs - I list the 1xNiMh ma current draws in the last paragraph above, and 1x14500 will draw about 1/3 those numbers with output current regulated stone flat. The moonlight output has come up a lot since then - I love bright moonlights, which are my primary use modes for camping and power outages. So many manufacturers overstate their ML modes by multiples (as I mentioned above)… very hard to find a true “bright” moonlight… I quit looking - too many disappointments, but I will admit to being a low lumen mode spacing snob.
These are new in box lights btw… no warranty though.
Actually, now that you mention it, I do recall mention of the 1ma, 10ma thing on 47s site way back…. I think those were the currents delivered to the LED at its Vf (forward voltage) so that’s after the boost (or buck) drivers and regulator feedback loop (what ever it’s called). The head runs so many different battery tube configs, that battery current draw would have need a spreadsheet to map out.
Just to point out something no one mentioned, at really low currents, the Vf of an XP-G2 is 2.65V. For a 1.5V alkie, it has to boost its full voltage by 1.8× (76% more) to get there. For a 1.2V NiMH cell, it’s 2.2× (121% more).
That’s almost a 2:1 difference in boost, meaning that the 1.2V cell has to put out that much more current to get the same level of output.
Think about how a 2-cell flashlight only has to put out half the current to get the same amperage to the LED as when using 1 cell. This case is similar, that instead of having 1.5V to play with, your eneloop only has 1.2V, or 0.3V less (25% of its voltage).
To take it to a ridiculous extreme, if you had a boost converter that could run off 0.15V, it’d have to put out 10× the current as the 1.5V cell.
And these cells are rated in mAH, not mWH, so 1A from a 1.5V cell is 1.5W, but from a 1.2V cell is only 1.2W. To get the same 1.5W from a 1.2V cell, that’s 1.25A, not the original 1.00A.
And of course, that’s not taking into account voltage drop from any pass elements, etc. 0.2V from a saturated bipolar xstr is a lot bigger to the 1.2V cell than a 1.5V cell.
Ugh… all these numbers make my head hurt. Just keep in mind that not all mAHs are created equal.
You’d always have (significant) boost losses with a 1×AA light. Better to 3-up the cells to 3.6V (NiMH) and connect it across the LED through the right value resistor.
I wouldn’t waste a high-CRI LED at such low output levels. Red items would tend to look black anyway (Purkinje effect), so ironically an Angry Blue max-output LED would be best.
There’s no differential - the “1.5” nominal V of an Alk is near its peak charge while the “1.2” nominal of a NiMh is a dead cell. If you load up HKJ’s AA comparator, and compare an Eneloop to any Alkaline at 0.1A (the OPs runtime test implies 0.07A , so quite close) you will find that the AVERAGE voltage though the batteries discharge curves to be virtually identical, and the 2450 Eneloop Pro will be a bit better than Alks (so add 25-30% to the OPs runtime).
I find it kinda funny that folks are trying to defend/justify a $10 light’s manufacturer specs. I see plenty of mid-priced lights that are much further off than this in the low lows that reviewers rarely test. Actually, I’m impressed that this light’s other mode specs only claim ~180 lumen-hours per AA (very realistic) vs some claims I see from 1AA Thurnites (near 800! lumen-hours) and Armyteks/Olights (~400 lm-hrs).
The big hole in this test is that the OP has no way of measuring the output. For example, I have a SWM D40A that spec’d low at 30lms for 30hrs (900 lm-hrs) and my sample metered 15 lms, but a runtime test yielded 60 hours (2000mah Eneloops) so still 900 lms-hrs efficiency, and I was really happy to have the lower, longer runtime low (it’s moonlight is also quite accurate for output and runtime, btw).
Assuming we already all own smartphones and multi-meters, for a additional $5 BLF plumbing elbow “lighbox,” you can easily test your own lights for output and runtime and find out which manufacturers are full of it.
This is what I was claiming about this XTAR that with a properly and fully charged 2000 MAH eneloop only getting 28 hours runtime , I find it difficult to believe the manufacturers claims that it would get 80 hours with a alkaline battery. Then, we had a poster trying to make me like foolish, by claiming the 80 hour runtime, was specifically for lithium battery, which the manufacturer doesnt even mention on their spec sheet ….the only 2 batteries they mention are nimh/alkaline .
For about $8 , this XTAR is a good light …but I was only interested in it for the long runtime on moonlight mode, which it does not perform as rated.