Anyone got a zanflare T1 lantern?

There’s room for improvement on everything. But for 18 bucks, this lantern is darn good. Way more adjustable than the Fenix CL25R and more than $40 cheaper. Will it hold up as well as the Fenix? Time will tell.

It ramps down smoother than it ramps up.

RobertB , derfyled, and Pete7874 Good information, thanks for the feedback.

After reading I feel for the money it would be worthwhile, I am considering to go for more than one, maybe four of these. Two for gifts, two for me. Right know I am waiting for the outcome of the Freeme interest list.

I’ll drink PBR’s :beer: for awhile and my savings will go towards the lanterns :+1:

I’m glad it actually has a 3 lumen low instead of something like 50 or so.

3 LM is nice. 1 LM would have been even nicer, but I am not complaining. :slight_smile:

EDIT: actually, per Instruction Manual, the lowest mode is 3 LM for cool white, and 1 LM for warm white, but it still seems pretty bright in a completely dark room - it might be too bright to sleep with it in a tent.

Put it on low in red light mode should be slightly lower?

Eta: then again, prolly doesn’t ramp in red light mode :person_facepalming:

That’s right - no ramping in red. The red mode is somewhat brighter than the lowest ramping mode.

As others have replied, whether it is a deal breaker or not is subjective. 30-70 lumens is very difficult to hit but the colour temp ramping and the low-low means this lamp is a winner for me.

This lantern is going to become my bedside lamp in about a week; I work at a remote site, accommodation units are lit with double 5ft 6000K fluro tubes which are hideous so I ceiling-bounce a 4500Kish flashlight to read by. Will run the T1 for about 3 hours a night for a month and report back.

Looks like a finally have a good use for the 20,000mah power banks I stole from Walmart.

Has anyone tested the charger for termination voltage and power trickle?

I can check for termination voltage later today.

The trickle charge current test might be tricky.

Any other suggestions lol

Today I received my Zanflare T1 as well (ordered 2018-05-20). Quite happy with it, and will use it as my bedside lamp for the coming days. Yes the UI could be better, however all-in-all great value. Good to see some serious competition to Fenix and Nitecore in the portable 18650 driven LED lantern domain. Most important advantage for me, and quite unique, is the warm white (2700K) light. In my view both this light, as well as the Fenix CL25R stand on the shoulders of the innovative design of the "R-PAL lantern":https://r-pal.rtg.com (2014!).

For the price I paid (about 15 euro with a coupon discount shared on /r/flashlight) I think this 18650 lantern offers good value. It has a magnet in its tail cap, it supposedly has LVP, it takes flat-top 18650's, I do not see any PWM, the lantern does not make any resonation sounds (like the Fenix CL25R when held close to your ear), it has *WARM WHITE* output, it has moonlight (1 lumen) low output, it has mode memory (in this case I think that is a good thing), it can be driven by a USB power bank without any cell in the lantern itself (on high it takes 1.0 A), although then you need to put the lantern upside down ;-)

On the other hand the user interface certainly could be improved; especially ramping up. Also the physical design could be improved by decoupling the multiple functions from the top button into multiple (physical) switches, in order to make operation of the light less confusing. The touch button on the top now has several functions at once: on/off, changing color temperature, and changing light output intensity. Personally I had rather seen a Warm White only version (without cold white light), with a dedicated button for changing light output.

To put things in perspective, I think the UI of the 60 USD Fenix CL25R could be improved as well. There is no physical lock-out because the tail cap lacks anodization, so for long term storage I would certainly take the 18650 cell out of the light.

Edit: like already mentioned the red mode seems quite bright, and its intensity can not be changed. It seems more geared towards "signaling" purposes than to preserve night vision. https://imgur.com/a/1d0IC9F

About 4.12V is what I am seeing.

1.9 mA of current is flowing once charging is complete.

Nothing wrong with that. Longer cell life.

I redid the measurements, this time right after charging completed. Previous time I probably did not catch it in time.

I was wondering: you can feed the Fenix CL25R two CR123A’s instead of a single 18650.
Would this be possible with the Zanflare T1?
Or would that release the “magic smoke”? I am a bit reluctant to try, because the user manual only mentions the use of a single 18650…

At least I can confirm that the reverse polarity protection works correctly in the Zanflare T1, just discovered by accident :slight_smile:

If the lantern can handle the 5V from the USB, I would guess the 6V of the 2xCR123A’s would not be to far off, especially if Zanflare built in some tolerance to deal with non-standard USB power banks providing too much voltage? Or is there something I am missing.

I doubt the 5V USB input gets passed “as is” to the light. It is most likely down converted to lower voltage.

EDIT: Just checked. When powered via USB port, internal voltage is 4.22V when off and drops to 3.57V when running at max brightness.

Not too fast, just linear vs logarithmic.

People were beeyotchin’ about the RJ02 doing that, ie, a linear ramp vs logarithmic, so even though the increase is linear, the bottom/dim end of the scale zips right on by, vs the top/bright end of the scale where it just draaaaaags.

So 5–25 (20, 5:1 ratio) goes by in the same amount of time as 80–100% (also 20%, but only a 1.25:1 ratio). Former is dramatic, latter is hardly noticeable.

I grabbed a ZanFlare T1 to test, which arrived a few days ago.

The included battery “BFN 2600mAh” tests 2720mAh (charge to 4.20v, drain to 2.50v cut-off voltage @ 0.50A discharge rate, using MC3000), IR test ~ 55mOhms.

Haven’t had time to do a full charging test of the built-in micro-USB port, but I did a quick charging test of a VTC4 I have here (it was around 4.00v when I inserted in the ZanFlare T1 to do the charging test):

(max charging current is probably 1.0A, but since the battery is nearer full, the charge current quickly drops to around 0.6A (USB current) and declines until around 0.14A ending USB current)

Immediately removing the battery when the charging indicator became full, tested to be 4.145v on my DMM (quite similar to Pete7874’s result).
I notice there the USB still has around 0.01A current when finish charging (but it could be power consumption of the “light indicator” LED on the lamp?)

demo of changing color temperature for ZanFlare T1 lantern:

The quick double-tap to change color temperature seems to need a bit of getting used to get it right.

I do have a complaint for the tailspring used — it doesn’t seem to be that good quality, and mine has the plating/coating come off already when it arrived (looks tarnish/rusty).

Thanks for pointing this out. Mine seems to have the same issue.