Imagine my surprise when I just received this new bugger today, an SF31 (nb: no relation to the SP31 dual-switch) tail-clicky in a wonderful warm-white! I’m kind of eager to get a quickie “review” out there, so it’ll be brief. No pix nor disassembly, but I’ll try to “flesh it out” as I get the time.
As far as color-temperature and tint, my best guess in Cree parlance would be a 7D tint (just eyeballing it, no instruments). Not a hint of green, and I don’t look positively jaundiced (skin tinted a sickly yellow) as I would with other lights, even a 4C. It’s very… “incandescent”… ie, quite orangey, but it shows off colors across the spectrum quite well. Reds just pop, blues are vibrant, yellows show up very well… I’m impressed! If I don’t get bit up by skeeters and lose a pint of blood in maybe 30sec (I’m like sugar to them), I’m going to go outside later for an outdoor viewing.
Sizewise, it’s shorter than a Zanflare F1, and about on par with a Convoy S2+.
Goodies: removable pocket-clip (which I immediately removed, haha), O-rings, lanyard, silica gel (do not eat!).
Oh… my… God…
Everything comes apart! No glue! The head unscrews from the battery-tube. The driver’s held in with a retaining ring (2 holes for ring-pullers). The front bezel unscrews with a little prodding. The (very mild OP) reflector comes out, and I can see the Cree chip on the 16mm mcpcb… with thermal goop (probably Fujik… I don’t want to go poking at it quite yet) clearly in evidence around the wires coming out from the pill!
I think I’m in love… :heart_eyes:
The beam is quite nice, too. There’s a bit of a “bullseye-ness” to it, different fading concentric sections of light, but no nasty artifacts at all. And I can’t find any “tint-shift” to save my life. The color seems quite uniform from hotspot to the outermost edges of the spill. Certainly no “fried-eggness” to the beam.
I can’t guess as to the actual number of lumens on high, but it’s definitely “mellow”, not nearly as strident as CW or even cooler NW. It doesn’t quite daylight the room when used via ceiling-bounce, but it’s still bright. And I’m using (for now) a LG cell pulled from a usb power-pack-thingy. No idea if it’s even charged worth a damn, as I was EDCing it for a few months without a charge. I’ll throw in a topped-off 30Q when I get the chance.
Modes are pretty simple: moonlight (pretty low, quite nice), low, medium, and high. Doubleclick and you get to Evil Strobe (yecch!), but a single click shakes it loose and back to whatever mode it was in previously. Mode-spacing is nice and even across all 4 levels!
In a word… wow! I thought this would be a WW version of the SP31, but it’s not. It’s a whole different light. Honestly, I never really got used to the side-clicky of the SP31, and the up/down stepping threw me even more, so this back-to-basics tail-clicky low→high interface we all know and love is a pleasant surprise.
What’s funny is that with my experience with 4C lights (again, looking jaundiced under that light), I figured 5s and especially 7s would be hideously yellow. Nice to know that this CT/tint shows up things really well.
My only suggestions? Ditch strobe and have doubleclick for high. This way you can keep it at moonlight or whatever lower setting you want, and doubleclick for running it wfo, then a singleclick to bring you back to your previous mode.
And a forward-clicky. God, how I love FCs for flash’n’dash… Okay, most lights have RCs and that’s what people seem to want, or at least are used to. But hey, I can dream…
There seems to be a bit of a delay to change modes, especially doubleclicking to get into strobe, so it’s not too in-the-way. I guess I can live with strobe, even though I know it’s there.
In short, I’m… happy! This is my first warm-warm light (I considered 4000K on the edge of “warm”), and I’m getting to like it quite a bit. Maybe it’s the novelty of it all, but I definitely like the pseudo-high-CRI, at least as far as reds and browns. And there’s definitely no shortage of yellow (seltzer label) or blue (backpack), as these show up very well. So yeah, I’m happy!
Anyway, thanks to Tracy at Sofirn for the late-birthday/early-Christmas surprise.
(I didn’t buy the light, not even for a discount, but then again, I don’t even see it listed anywhere yet.)