Hi everyone!

I happened to notice a posting here last month advertising a flash sale on Banggood offering the XANES WT518 for $3.99 USD and, well, I just had to have this. Today, about three weeks later, it is now in my hands and I was giddy with excitement. It came wrapped in bubble wrap, inside a little white box, inside a China E-Packet tyvek baggie. A USB charging cord was included. I popped in one of my premium UltraFire 3000mah 18650 to check this bad boy out.

It is a nice size and has a good feel. The lens is a glass bubble that sticks out and will probably get scratched rather quickly. It has a little metal pocket clip, and a flippy rubber cover for the USB charging port.

Successive presses of the button cycle through this lights incredible three modes: First is the nowhere near 1000 lumens HIGH setting, followed by the flickery and about half of what it was before LOW setting, and finally the seizure inducing STROBE setting. A fourth press of the button turns it OFF. Each button press cycles through the modes. It does not remember the last setting and always starts at high. You have to cycle through all the modes to turn it off; waiting for a while before pressing the button just takes you to the next mode.

It has an adjustible focus by sliding the head in and out, going from a brilliant square thingy that shows the conductive traces on the LED emitter chip, to a wide well defined circle wash. My cat is intrigued by the light it emits, but he much prefers my laser pointer over this light.

I did not try the USB charging feature. It might work. Might not. I don’t know if I want to gamble with one of my precious UltraFire’s.

My conclusion? Undoubtedly, the XANES WT518 is quite possibly the finest 18650 flashlight that $3.99 USD can buy.

EDIT: here’s the images I wanted to put inline in this post… I haven’t figured out how to do that in this forum yet….

https://imgur.com/zsnF87a

https://imgur.com/9dKssDq

https://imgur.com/CEL8he1

https://imgur.com/NFDlqtb