ALIVE: Astrolux S42 groupbuy: US$ 25.95

Agreed, I’m not exactly a puritan, after 10 years in the Marines my language can get a little “salty” but I found myself using the rude button for the first time in this thread.

I save that sort of language for discussions involving umpires and referees :wink:

Using same cells (Enercig IMR18350), I just compared the S42 (Nichia 219C) with the S41 (Nichia 219B). The hotspot is less well defined on the S42, so it appears less bright than the S41.

Then it hit me: the S42 is NOT an improved S41, the S42 is a BUDGET S41. No copper in the head, cheaper driver, not as good optics etc. means less costly; which I guess is OK, as it is cheaper to buy.

I’m really happy that you posted this. I was thinking this light would be relegated to a drawer or shelf. I was half thinking I’d return it but doubted that BG would just accept it because I didn’t like how it performed. I’ll try to be optimistic when the replacement tube arrives.

I think a lot of people are displeased because they were already familiar with the S41 and expected the S42 to be an S41 with 219Cs and an e-switch. Instead, it has a different driver with very poor performance, a battery tube that doesn’t fit, a USB cover that falls out and a broken UI.

They could have just built an S41 with 219Cs and an e-switch, used the S41/A6 driver and asked someone here for a firmware for it. The necessary components to do a good job were already in place.

Of course, no matter how hard you try, it is impossible to use, and I do not pay 29 $$ with a tube, of bad quality paint, to keep in the drawer, why it does not work, the idea was good, but it did not work , For not trying well before

I’ve said earlier I’m pretty happy with the light as is. The UI isn’t awesome but I’ve seen worse. But as a pocket megalight I like it in it’s smallest size. Here are the simple things I did to get it to work with a buttontop IMR. If I had gotten flats it would be an even easier fit. But this worked great.

Firstly I’m no great fan of this particular beer, just only thing I had around. Found it in the luggage. But notice the relative size of the light.


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I didn’t want to touch the spring located in the driver positive pole of the light. I don’t like cutting springs because it’s too easy to leave them sharp and they can cut into the battery wrappers.

Little neodymium magnet at bottom or negative pol of WindyFire IMR button top 18350.

Remove the tailcap spring with your fingers or small pliars. It might help if you give rotational pressure as you give it a pull. A small amout of Al foil was used to space up the gap on the tailcap of one of the lights. Tailcap with Al shim on the left. Also please note NO BATTERY DENTS! If you dent your batteries you most likely damage them permanently and possibly increase internal resistance. But that aside you might not get as good of output as you paid for. But most likely it’ll all be ok and nothing noticeable.

Notice there was a crack in the lens on the closest light in the pic at 1 to 3 O’clock position. It arrived this way. I didn’t contact BG about this.

Given the knowledge re: Tube & USB cover issues this is still pretty cool for $25. Since GB is fixing those my only remaining complaint is that the 4 level “muggle mode” doesn’t include turbo. This light will still get some use but it would be more frequent if it had more range w/o the blinky modes. I guess my point is basically that I couldn’t build anything this cool this cheap so I’m still OK with the light despite its faults.

I’ve got the light and it’s got issues. They can be fixed in Version 2. Aluminum head is too little for the heat on turbo - Copper. UI is a pain - use old UI. If we do a BLF style rendition. I’d be happy with the Manker E14 II with no charging port any where. It keeps the light small, simple and already using many existing parts. Bezel, tube and tail would still be an off the self item. My dislike of a charging port is that they tend to break first and destroy the water proofing.

This has probably been answered in the thread somewhere, but do aspire 18350s fit in this light okay?

Do people recommend cutting the tail cap spring a bit?

I bought 5 aspire with plans of using one in the S42 but I think I will wait till the updated short tube comes. Mine works fine with the 18650 tube w/unprotected flatop.
With my brain’s demented state the UI is more than a challenge…….

I bought 5 aspire batteries…answer is no.

You can make it work by adding a couple copper wire rings inside the tail cap. That way the body tube will make contact without being screwed all the way and you gain the 2-3mm needed to fit an unprotected flat top 18350.

Wait for the longer tube BG is going to send before unsoldering or cutting anything.

I got a mail from the Banggood customer service they send the replacements. The answer took 4 days.

Hi Martin - Think you need to be aware that people are trying and BG are not really interested.

I sent a very clear message I wanted to return for refund (paypal offer will cover the postage). I clearly explained I bought the light as a present, it doesn’t work, and the offer of spare parts to make it work is fine but no use to me as they don’t have stock till this week earliest and parts would arrive weeks later than the date present is needed.

Three times I have repeated myself to customer services these two points clearly, here is their latest answer today:

So probably people are getting wound up a bit about that?
(not me, will just dispute with paypal if they send me another reply like the above for 4th time ignoring points presented clearly)

This too.

I don’t have an S41, I assumed S42 was just adding USB to existing design that has rave reviews, I prefer to gift lights with USB to avoid people needing a dedicated charger if possible. Bought two, wish I hadn’t.

I understand and tend to agree, but I wouldn’t give a FET quad to someone who doesn’t already have Li-ion batteries and chargers, and I’d probably want such a light to ship with a battery. The whole thing strikes me as Astrolux having no clue about the market they’re serving. When they were just making full production runs of BLF special editions that were built to specs provided by flashlight geeks, that was fine. Their attempts at more original designs really aren’t going so well.

They’d do better to bring someone here on as a consultant. I imagine some of us would do it for minimal compensation - a few samples of the lights in question. Said consultant could then give useful input like “This UI makes no sense; imitate the one from the Thrunite Neutron instead”, “The efficiency of this driver is horrible; use the hardware from the BLF A6 or X6 instead” and “Nobody will ever buy this with the XP-G2; don’t bother offering it”. I’d volunteer for that.

I know you were using this as an example, but not sure if you are serious bout this. I was wondering about Maukka's poor efficiency measurement, whether it is equal to a PWM'ed FET driver, like the A6/ Bistro/Narsil based FET+1 drivers. Of course the modes operating on the FET and less than 100% are inefficient - goes with the territory, just wonder if the S2 driver is the same or worse. I suspect it was the same - doing the same thing we are doing, PWM'ing a FET so efficiency is not good, unlike a buck, boost or true PWM-less current controlled driver.

Of course down side of buck and boost drivers is they are complex and expensive, down side of current controlled is unable to do high amps as easy - again, complex, can be pricey, and amp limited.

Entirely serious. Here’s Maukka’s graph of the S42 at 443 lumens running on a VTC6 (3000 mAh):

And mine of an Astrolux SS running at what I estimate to be 414 lumens with my smartphone and integrating shoebox on an HG2 (3000 mAh):

215 minutes is nearly twice as long as 112 minutes at nearly the same output with a similar shaped graph. This comparison isn’t quite apples to apples: the XP-L HI may be a little more efficient than the 219C, but one emitter is a little less efficient than three. The VTC6 tends to have slightly more capacity than the HG2. A bit of difference is to be expected here, but not twice the runtime.

The ~1500 lumen output maukka measured from the S42 on a VTC6 also falls well short of what I’d expect from a 219C FET quad. My triple, with D240 bin 219Cs and a MTN17DDm is over 2500lm@30s on an HG2.

Yea, the 219C 90 CRI is a low bin 219C. If the XPL HI is a high bin of V2 or V3, then there's a pretty big difference in efficiency. There's a price to pay for high CRI, and the price is measured lumens. The new gen CREE's especially are like this. You can now get at top, or near top bin CREE LED's in neutral tints, but at low CRI, 70 or lower. To get high CRI, you drop a good amount of bins.

To get 2,500 lumens from a triple with D240 bin 219C's, it's gotta be crank'n a lot of amps, I'd guess 13A-14A (maybe more) based on TA's 219C D240 tests here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/43426, taking TIR optics loss's into account, which is considerable.

Still, 1,500 lumens from a quad taking 10.6A doesn't make sense either - there's some major loss's goin on somewhere.

~15A sounds about right to me for a 219C triple with good bypasses. I don’t have a clamp meter, so I can only estimate based on light and sanity check that based on heat. For a quad to pull so much less, and then not make the expected amount of light from that, something’s definitely off.

Your logic is sound, but he know’s what he’s doing its more the convenience factor, plus it was coming with a new eFest 18350… at least it would have been if it would fit in the light… :person_facepalming: