Review with X-ray Image: Haikelite HT08 Mini

Agree. It is a decent budget light. Tint and flood are very good. Great for gift.

The rings visible in the spot beam probably aren’t caused by the fresnel lens. Most likely they’re reflections off the screw threads on the inside of the bezel.

I have a hobby light I modded a few years ago that used similar construction: fresnel lens with a glass lens on top. Its beam has no rings at all.

I also have a small AAA-sized aspheric lens zoomie that uses a threaded bezel. When unscrewed into spot position reflections off the screw threads inside the bezel produce horrendous rings similar to the pictures above for the HT08.

No, unfortunately it is not decent.

I completely agree. Somehow I bought 2; 1 from Gearbest and 1 from Banggood and I must says they are my most disappointed zoomies. Super light and cheaply built.
I also have their HT35 which shows great promises but arrives with glass broken at the edge, bad focusing and not bright enough, ie, insufficient throw.

Thank the OP for the review and the others for informative comments. Still looking forward to getting mine.

Despite its issues is still outperforms the x4 to x6 more expensive ledlenser P7.2 in all regards apart from the speed of moving from flood to throw. I’ll be keeping mine for refractography.

Has anyone ever managed to change mode groups on the light? I somehow managed to stuck it in the “Single mode” group. No matter what i did it would not want to change mode groups.

Anyways i did not liked the driver because it was running the led at only 2.4A, so i swapped it with BLF Bistro driver and dedomed the stock led.

Stock throw: 18000cd
Fet + stock led: 31000cd
Fet + dedome: 45500cd

Oh, another thing, this is how the light looks in full focus, big part of the lens is not even used. Design fail.

Thanks for the picture.
I calculated from measuring your picture that 50% of the lens receives light when focussed.
Of course the lens is a little larger than the hole in the bezel, so i estimated it was 30%, but that was still a too low estimate.
None the less, it’s a design fail.

Fixed the light path:

SST-40 in there which will be dedomed soon.
Good grief that’s a cold white as cold as Syberia… :confounded:

The driver has a R200 resistor between the + of the battery and the + of the LED.
It is a CC driver though, but i can’t see how the R200 resistor functions as a ‘sense resistor’, but i’ll bake a R300 (which i should have somewhere) over it.
I measured 2.7 Amperes by the way, my goal is 4.5 Amperes.

Anyway, the light hits all of the lens now.

The tail threads are quite bad on mine…
A lot of play and often nearly screws on crooked (skew).

My tail cap screws on straight, however, the threads unscrew more easily than the zoom mechanism, thus it is easy to accidentely unscrew the tail cap when zooming.

Mine screws on straight too, but you have to pay some attention and ‘follow’ the threads, otherwise it may go wrong, or almost wrong… (hope that makes sense)
Feels like when you would tighten it really hard, the threads may eventually strip themselves…

Such a shame, because this could have been quite a nice light.

I’ve just received my HT08, and I have to say that stephenk’s review is bang on target. It matches my impressions perfectly. Well done!

Thank you for the operating instructions :+1: I can’t believe there’s no instruction sheet in the box :person_facepalming:

Having seen some other members slagging this light off while I was waiting for mine, I was worried that I was in for a disappointment. I’m happy to say that the light wasn’t that bad in the end. Basically, it’s a OK light, but it could have been better. The light loss in the zoom setting is just as painful as people said it was.

I’m impressed by the floody setting, though, that’s a really wide beam. With the neutral tint, it’ll be perfect in medium mode for lighting up a decent area in a power cut, or whilst puttering about in the attic. No need to ceiling bounce, just attach it to a curtain rail or a light fixture and light up the area beneath.

I can report that this light has plenty of space for protected cells. It works quite happily with my Fenix 3200 mAh and EagTac 3400 mAh protected cells.

I get the distinct impression that heat dissipation is significantly better in flood mode than zoom mode. It occurs to me that the tube thread would be in contact with the widest, best heatsinking part of the head when the light’s in flood mode. I wonder if that’s what makes the difference?

EDIT: I measured the beam at full zoom; it turns out to be about 11cm at 1m, which is 6 or 7 degrees wide. Flood beam is about 90 degrees wide.

Hey Jerommel, did this path widening make the light considerably better? I just received an HT08 from Gearbest and I opened the bezel. It looks like a good amount of light is lost in throw mode... Also, how did you do that? In a lathe? Thank you!

I guess the combination of even flood and neutral white can appeal for photographers, maybe this light still has the chance to be a good, niche light

Yes, it’s the only zoom light I use for photography at the moment due to the neutral tint.

Got mine last week.
Super impressed with the flood at 30\35 yds or so
20 max at 50% beam.
Best short range lamp I have. And at $14ish….

Wass just wondering. Is there a “Reflector” avail that would fit IN the threaded area inside the head.
Then maybe screw body, out\in to fit.??
Just to see if it ’could be” a better zoom.
Giving more of the avail light output from chip, Rather than being absorbed by the black spiral (Threading) inside head area?.
Maybe worth a thought.
I use it as my spread torch 50% beam,
along with my C8 XM-L2 at 100%, for throw.

Coupla good. well built cheapies. Which is what this forum is about, hey.

Anyone know the voltage range (2xrcr123a’s)?

Whoa, old post already, but hadn’t yet seen it…
Yeah, well, a lathe, not really…
I McGyvered the head on a drill, and then i used a dremel clone with a very small mill bit…
Took some 2 hours to get it done…

Yeah, it made it better. Probably nearly doubled the output, but the fresnel lens sucks…
Works much better with an aspheric, but that will stick out the front in this light…
I haven’t (yet) bothered modding it further.

Linear driver, so it’s only suited for a single 18650 Li-ion battery.