Upcoming Astrolux S42 18350/18650 quad w side button and usb charging

This is why I don’t like the shift into doing group buys and issuing coupons before a light has been tested. By the time faults are discovered, most of us that are interested will already be stuck with a dud.

Has Banggood been responsive in fixing issues with problem lights? I recall reading about some nightmare lights in the past, but can’t recall if it was through Banggood and if they fixed the issues in a timely manner.

I think it would salvage a lot of goodwill if Banggood showed some common sense here in the way this is resolved. Requiring customers to go through the rigmarole of lengthy problem reports and uploading videos to prove a light plagued with issues has an issue, well that is just too much. In the end, I suppose many people can simply submit Paypal claims which I don’t think would do BG any good. They should, at this point, be simply looking to proactively fix this and quick.

I can compare the cell I used with the second new one I have (two pack), but its not pushed in at either end, just slightly concave. EDIT: I saw the note on 4mm deformation, I would say its like 0.5mm maybe?

Using the battery in tube test, I can push the battery flush with the top of the tube without too much effort.

Lets see what BG do, I have not had to deal with their customer services in the past, but attempts to get my points back from an order they themselves cancelled (the day stock arrived) would leave me to believe your not going to have much luck as they don’t answer emails.

Hello Guys,

First of all, thank you very much for your support all the time, besides, on behalf of banggood, deeply apologize for the inconvenience to all of you.

About the problems of S42 you mentioned above, we advice you do as follow now:

1. The tube can only works only with unprotected flat top cells, please stop testing the s42 with 18350 or the 16340 with protection, Astrolux is testing and try to find out where the problem comes from.

2. We give solutions to solve this problem within 48 hours, the S42 is temporarily off sale now, we will try our best to perfect the after-sale problem.

3. If you already ordered one but have not shippied, please don't worry, we will ship to you until the problems was sloved, send you a new S42 without any problems.

Really sorry for the trouble, we will do better in the future.Thank you for understanding!

Best Regards,
Swi

Does this mean that we shouldn’t use 18350 at all? I don’t own any 16340 cells and don’t want to buy any new ones when I bought this light to use with the 18350 cells I already have. All of my cells are unprotected.

To me it sounds like the intended meaning is not to use protected cells - 18350 or 16340.

After all, the product is sold as an 18350 flashlight; advising not to use that size of cell would be absurd.

The recommendation to only use flat-top cells is new - not unexpected given the issues with mechanics discussed already - but a PITA as almost all of my cells are button-top.

That's not true at all, whatsoever. It will dent the shortest unprotected flat top 18350's I have. I consider a dent to a cell "damaged". Doing simple measurements validates this.

ADDENDUM: As of today, my review has been deleted from the Banggood product listing.

I’ve noticed this with Banggood before. I tried to leave a well-deserved negative review for the Astrolux E02, which came with an MCPCB that has a bad thermal path and it was never published.

GearBest does this too. I love Ganzo knives, have about 30 of them, and rave about them in reviews. But when one arrived with an uncharacteristic design flaw, I wrote a 3/5 star review (instead of the 5/5s I normally write) and outlined the problem.

And that was the one review that never got published…

as f ar as i see the Problem i suggest not to use the lights with cells longer than 34mm as long as the batterytube has been replaced!

they used the tube from the S41 but did not notice that the S41 has retaining rings both on tailcap and driver where the springs can compress into.

i think a ~40-41mm long tube will solve the problem and allow most cells to be used without the danger to damage it.

There shouldn’t have been a spring on the driver.
Removing it solves most of the problem.
And then shorten / replace the tail spring with a shorter one to solve that problem and then a 18350 will fit just fine, maybe even protected ones (which you probably shouldn’t use in this high current light anyway).

keeping the two spring design allows button top and flat top imho

Can go either way. From other projects that I did some #'s on, the springs on each end is really the best way to go to accomodate the widest range of cell lengths. Think bout it - for an 18650 you need to support a 5-6 mm spread (65 to 71), and in order to do that, you need at least some decent compression on the shortest cells at 65 mm, maybe 3 mm of compression, depending on stiffness. On the largest 71's that means 9 mm of compression. So how do you get 9 mm of compression without over pressuring the cell? Well, a spring on each end makes it a whole lot easier since each would compress only 4.5 mm. One big semi stiff or soft spring? Maybe...

For these high performance compact lights, I don't think it's a bad thing to make it a requirement to use only flat top unprotected cells, but that's a call to be made by the seller/manufacturer.

Hi Martin.

With all due respect, this is simply not your problem.

However, it may be that you can exert more influence than others to Banggood, with a view to them adopting a swift and painless solution to this problem. As you say, a longer tube should resolve most of what is wrong. Some forum members are grudgingly happy to tinker. I am not. I just want a torch that works. Any talk of which battery should or shouldn’t be used is superfluous. I don’t want to buy a torch where my existing batteries are rendered useless through bad design and a complete lack of quality checking.

Do you think therefore that you could perhaps intercede with Banggood?

SP

My S42 219C measurements on a VTC6 18650 (none of my unprotected flat or button top 18350s fit of course)

Very nice and neutral ~5000 K color temp with great tint. Turbo is useless since it gets unbearable to hold after 30 sec. UI is slow and cumbersome. PWM used but not visible on any mode.

Output

Turbo
0 sec: 1500 lm
30 sec: 1030 lm (head too hot to touch at this point)

High 2
0 sec: 446 lm
30s sec: 442 lm

Color data

Turbo

High 2

Tint shift graph

Modes

Spill

What LED's? Assume 219C's, if so, good to see you got bout the same results I got in lumens, and super hot in 30 secs, andd good you confirmed the fit of the 18350's, same as I'm seeing.

Notice the S42 has been removed from the BangGood site? A search doesn't show it, but a link from my order list gets to the page, but listed as all sold out. Glad they did this.

Yes, 219C. They pulled them from the site because of the problems.

Thanks for the data maukka!

Even for a small light like this, a 30% output drop in 30 seconds makes me suspect that people should check the heat path, perhaps the ledboard is not fixed flat onto the shelf?