FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

I haven’t seen it in person; I’ve just been looking over the forum for other people’s results, and found some comments like this:

If we do XP-E2 with photo red, green, and royal blue, I can totally make it do a bunch of pretty color patterns. I already have the firmware about two thirds finished. Just add an extra-long diffuser to the front, and it makes a pretty decent lightsaber. Or maybe a shoto. Laser wakizashi!

FWIW is it realistic to state that an XP-L version will ‘only’ incur a $6 premium? Will the manufacturer be willing to use them with zero markup?

For example, while not a perfect comparison a 4 LED D4 in XP-L is $18 more than the Nichia & XP-G3 versions.

When I asked how much extra it would cost, that’s the number Neal gave me. So… yes, probably.

On a related note, D4 XP-L HI is now $9.64 extra, not $18 like it used to be.

As with other Lumintop community projects, I’m guessing the price will go up after the initial group buy is done. I don’t know how much though.

CRI baby is an insult? Whatever. I’ll take it.

All of these are at least 80.

Hard to beat info direct from the horse’s mouth. :smiley:

Mountain Electronics still has the original difference. When I wrote the initial post I hadn’t checked IntOutdoors.

$x extra for more expensive LEDS does not directly translate into $x extra on retail price. Far from it. Perhaps twice. That’s even assuming the materials are available, and consistent and have been evaluated and found especially good by The Team in prototype 3. At least three reels of them, that’s a significant investment, LED cost is a substantial proportion of the materials cost (not selling price). Plus the NRE for the mechanical design, and CNC programming/tooling, operator/assembler training with good QC, and the tooling and procurement and production-engineering of the driver and MCPCB.

Get real, if Lumintop are going to make say 1000, for BLF/TLF combined, at say $30 each , packaged well (this costs real money, whereas a poly bag and some bubblewrap doesn’t, and is just as good once the torch is in your hand), delivered around the world, including any duties, that’s a maximum of $30,000 turnover. If they recoup even $3 per copy they can maybe make $10,000 from this.

Hardly enough to pay just one good Western engineer for for a month or maybe two.

Push up the materials budget by just $1 and the economics start to fall apart. This was also the case with the Q8, where I think we got an absolute bargain with substantially more delivered than was originally specified, the price held, and it turned out even better than I expected.

Armchair pundits are welcome to their (sometimes repetitive) views, but in the real world things have to be affordable for the purchaser, and at least break-even for the manufacturer, at the BLF discount price.

I am price sensitive too, and don’t wish to see it increase beyond the original offer, despite the intervening years, inflation, tariff changes and other uncertainties.

It’s a great idea, but by no means an essential thing for me to own.

Lumintop are doing us a good favour by participating in this, and the GT, I thank them for it, hope we all learn how to participate equally, and imagine The Miller looking on with a wry smile.

Good……. :+1:

I don’t care, just gimme a host :smiley:

… and make sure the FW3A’s head is NOT glued. That way we can swap in our own choice of emitter later.

And while you’re at it, don’t glue the tailcap either. Some of us like to perform a “clipectomy” on our new lights. That might be difficult to do if the clip cannot be removed due to the tailcap being glued.

I tried to carefully describe the tint of the LH351D 4000K 90CRI, which as you can read in the link above I described as very nice, but in the description the word ‘green’ is present, as part of a complete comparative tint description that is very favourable for the led. But the word ‘green’ is bad so that is of course all that is remembered. Just like ‘rosy’ is the good word and will give good vibes however unnatural the tint is :smiley:

djozz, do you think the current-based tint shift shouldn’t be mentioned? Is it equal to or less than the effect seen on other emitters?

  1. is where the beauty’s at!

Nude Gnus
the Silent Majority does not want 5000k

jon_slider, don’t you think that’s being a bit manipulative? I mean, of course the 5000k doesn’t get 50% or more of the votes, but it DOES have the highest percentage for a single CCT choice in that poll. And the second choice, as you can see, is 4500k, which isn’t really that much different. So, MOST people would, in fact, be happy with a ~5000k light.

+1 DavidEF :+1:

Or perhaps most people would be most happy with a 4500k light, since it’s the least different from the three as a whole? :stuck_out_tongue:

Jon sows chaos wherever possible!
But seriously, it’s obvious that the BLFers who voted 4500 were wanting to vote 5000k but tried to appease the warm tint crowd. They would take a small loss for the greater good. That’s how we 5000k folks roll.

The HI option is sounding good for a versatile pocket light.
Love listening to you smart folks talk about all the differences in beams and optics. Who would’ve thought all the crazy differences in optics paired with different emitters? Sounds like you’ve almost got it worked out for a perfect combination.

I’ve made this awful vow to not buy another light until Black Friday, unless it’s this one (technically 2). I need this special elegant triple!

I decided to show that a floody light can be perfectly usable outdoors. The treeline is 200ft away according to satellite images.


This is roughly what it looked like in real life with eyes that had just been looking at a white computer screen for an hour; so they were not at all dark adjusted. However the eyes have better dynamic range; the nearby stuff doesn’t glare like that and the darker stuff isn’t as dark. This is using a d4 219c which due to the cells in it, their state of charge, the lee minus green filter, etc should throw pretty close to the same as the fw3a would with the samsung leds. However the fw3a would actually have significantly more lumens than this d4, oddly enough. That’s impressive, from a light with 1 less emitter.

So what can I conclude from this? Well, if this is how it looks without dark adaptation, then with it, I would not need anything like turbo. Furthermore, even this amount of flood is still not even covering the width of the frame; so it’s maybe 55 degrees of light or less before it fades off. As you can see, this is a much nicer angle of view that doesn’t make for tunnel vision when you’re looking around with it. It covers a good area with light, so if you were looking for something, I daresay you’d find it rather quickly. If I wanted to look around for longer, of course I’d switch to something with more mass and heatsinking like a q8, or move up to a c8 or d1s if I really needed to keep whatever was happening 200ft away lit brightly for the longest time possible. But for EDC use, checking out the area around me and then dropping back down to say half of that brightness, which gives you 141ft if this is 200, or even 1/4 of max brightness, which still gives you 100ft, seems like a perfectly reasonable thing. Heck, just for keeping an eye on what’s within a ~70ft radius would only take 400 lumens or so; the fw3a can surely dissipate that amount of heat with a lh351d easily. It’ll even smoothly ramp down the brightness so you will barely notice the change.That’s all assuming the same exposure as here, which is based on a NON-adapted eye!

Somewhat, but to say that most would be happy with 5000K isn’t necessarily correct either. I love 4500K and 4000K, but wouldn’t be happy with 5000K. 5000K is decent during the day, but I personally rarely use flashlights during the day. For me 4500K is perfect for daytime and decent at night. 4000K is great at night, and decent during the day. Under 4000K is great at night, but terrible during the day.