Review: Haikelite MT02

Hey Pete7874!

Cheers man! I ordered the silver MT02 from Banggood as well. Hopefully within a week Iā€™ll have mine. Less than $40 for such a beauty, haha! Itā€™s my first Haikelite, so Iā€™m stoked alright. :sunglasses:
And thanks for the recently uploaded videos rizky_p on youtube; I checked them all out. :+1:

BTW, is there any risk running this light on only two Samsung 30Q batteries? Would the max brightness be less than if I ran it on 3 cells?

I only have two 30Q cells, so itā€™s either that or running on 3 NCR18650B cells instead.

A single 30Q is about three times more powerful than a single NCR18650B, so technically you should be able to power the light with just one cell. But itā€™s straining the cell quite a bit.
Iā€™m not too familiar with driver design, so I donā€™t know whether it will influence output. If there is a difference in output, then two 30Qs should be brighter than three protected NCR18650B. Haikelite advises three unprotected NCR18650GA, and maybe three NCR18650B could be insufficient.
Anyhow, two 30Q should be no problem, as long as they have a button top or solder blob for contact.

Mine are flat tops, and they still work in this light.

Ah I see. Didnā€™t know they would make contact. :beer:

Thanks man i really really appreciate that! :+1:

I have a few more side-by-side shots incoming if you interested there all uploaded but still in private including MT03 but i will release it along with my MT03 review. I also have Haikelite MT01(silver) sample by Banggood incoming and probably arrived on Monday so more side-by-side video along with it.
btw I am more interested in receiving my emisar D4 though hahahaha also on Monday.

Nice photo Pete7874. i wish i had the gear and skills to take awesome picture like that.

Should not be a problem i think As hIKARInoob said 30Q is more powerful, i tried running it with single Panasonic 18650B and it is doing that ā€œramp-down and upā€ stuff it is like the voltage sags a lot. I also run my MT02 with 3xNCR18650B,

BTW my flat-top Samsung 30Q doesnt make contact without solder blob, and it damaged the wrapping slightly because of the circular motion.
I havent tried unsoldered NCR18650B since all mine are soldered-blob already

Thanks. Iā€™ve got some 30q button tops on the way for this light.

I walked around with it running two 30q cells last night, and even after 10 mins on turbo, I could still hold it in my hand. Not sure if it would have gotten any hotter running on 3 cells. Outside temp was in the 60s F.

One thing Iā€™ve noticed is that visually there isnā€™t much difference between high and turbo.

Has anyone been able to measure actual current draw at various modes?

I am not sure how much different between High and Turbo in your light with 2x18650, in my case not much but noticeable.

I will measure the current when i got the chance and report back.

Thanks. Since this light does not have a traditional tail cap, Iā€™m not sure how to go about measuring current.

This is the result, but bear in mind since the driver is using boost topology it doesnā€™t reflect emitter current.
I was using a single Samsung 30Q.
low = 0.19A
mid1 = 0.57A
mid2 = 1.5A
High = 2.8A - 3A
Turbo = 6A(start) 6.15A(few seconds afterwards)

On high and turbo the amp draw steadily climbs this reflect current regulation to the emitter to maintain stable emitters current. in lower mode should be the same but not that visible since the battery doesnā€™t sags as much.

It is interesting though, with some basic math on turbo with boost driver efficiency of 80% the emitter probably get around 1.4A.

Thanks! Would you mind telling how you attach your DMM to measure this?

what i did was removed the green board at the tail-cap and use jumper wire from battery to the flashlight body and measure it with DC clamp meter.

Thank you!

Ughā€¦ one of the springs fell off already. Hope that is not a sign of things to come.

Looks like I need to buy myself a soldering ironā€¦ :frowning:

what happened? i have done assembling disassembling battery tube and board many times during testing, nothing get undone so far. one thing that could unscrew probably driver retaining ring due to friction but it is still holding fine so far.

I dont know what happened. It just fell off.

Im thinking that me trying to squeeze in protected cells put a large strain on it and weakened it. But in my defense, there is no warning on haikelites page NOT to use protected cells.

Another question, does this light have any kind of low voltage protection?

I am sure the rest of the light would be ok once you fixed the tail spring, could be the protected cells but none of my protected cell is short enough to power the flashlight so i gave up on that.

I am not sure of the of low voltage protection it is not mentioned anywhere in the manual, but the ramp up and down thing when battery almost empty is not documented either, in my opinion that ramp up and down is a battery low indicator since i could reproduce it every time.

btw. i have asked Haikelite to answer some of the questions posted here.

Eventually the light cuts off at 3.0V according to this review: https://www.lilahand.de/2017/07/09/laufzeitdiagramme-haikelite-mt02-sc01-sc02/

Got it thank you.

btw. This what Haikelite said.

All haikelite lights have low voltage protection.
Ramp up and down is low battery indication signal.

So it is true that ramp down and up is a battery low indicator.