Acebeam EC65 review (21700, 4x XHP35 HI, cool white)

Is the 30T one of the 21700s you’re waiting on to try in this light? I’d be curious to see how this light can handle that one. Thanks for the review!

The Liitokala 4000mah already smoked one, but Acebeam said they fixed the issue.

If the 30T doesn’t smoke it, it will probably allow it to run well on turbo until thermal protection steps it down. It might even allow Turbo to be used more than once!

Really, the factory battery might perform much better if the springs were bypassed. An unprotected high capacity might work even better. An unprotected high drain seems best.

Yeah I saw that thread. I’m curious to see if acebeam actually fixed anything at all.

@JasonWW, I do wonder why they didn’t go with a 2S2P configuration with something like the XPLs, or XPL2s.

That would made much easier boosting.

Also, unless they want the same problems with the Nichia 219C version, I am willing to bet they are putting the 219Cs in a 2S2P array.

Really though, it would have been way better in terms of cost, efficiency, and brightness, to use a 2S2P setup with XPLs and Nichia 219Cs and not even get close to XHP35HIs.

4000 lumens is easily done with these emitters and a single 21700, but only while boosting to 6V, and not to 12V, which is really hard to do as you are boosting to 4x the voltage.

You have to remember that the wattage is the same regardless of the voltage.

So boosting to 12v requires half the amps as boosting to 6v.

I believe the higher voltage is a little bit better. It’s less likely to burn up components or pcb traces. I will leave this detail to a driver designer. I don’t know for sure.

Lexels boost drivers can do 12v 3A or 6v 6A. He may have even been able to increase these specs lately. I know they are capable of drawing 18+ amps from a battery. That is some real power. :wink:

If only to run the higher capacity 21700 battery……? It seems to me that my Emisar D4 with XP-L emitters performs near identical for less than 1/2 the price…

Yes, but boosting 3,6V to 6V is much easier than boosting to 12V from 3,6V, due to the lower frequency used in the boost converter and the higher voltage delta.

Exactly, so what do we get for twice the price? Built in charging, regulated lower modes and a battery.

Acebeam has always been more expensive, though. They do seem to have better warranties as well.

Ps, I see their Nichia version is 2500lm max.

Here I did a test where I activated turbo and turned the light off when the output had stabilized after the stepdown. Then I let it cool down for five minutes with the help of a fan.

After the first activation the turbo is down to 3100 lumens. Now the Acebeam specification of 1 minute of turbo before stepdown also matches. It does produce the 3100 lumens at 0 sec and 3000 lumens at 30 sec consistently for several cycles so I’d rate this a 3000 lumen light, not 4000 and I feel Acebeam cheated a bit on this.

Has anyone tested the EC65 with the Acebeam ARC20700H-425A battery yet? How would this one perform in the EC65? I guess it’s the one that comes with the L30 and it has 4.250mAh of capacity.

I was making the same point on toobadorz thread. It just does not seem like it should be called a 4,000 lumen light.

On the other hand, if spring bypasses were done and a better battery were used it might be able to do 4,000lm multiple times for 1 minute each time.

Maybe this was their goal, but the finished product and chosen battery just has too much voltage sag.

Did you see the battery tests Toobadorz posted?

Yes I did but I could not see that he tested the ARC20700H-425A with this light. Have I overlooked something?

No. It’s a new light with a new battery size. Eventually more batteries will be tested. It just takes time.

Thanks for your review.

For a single battery flashlight this size, is using xhp35 with boost driver better than overdriven xp-l or othet 3v led?

Just doubt about efficience and other stuff.

They are all in the same ballpark. Look at the output of the xhp35-HI at 1A compared to a 3v led like the xp-l at 4A. They are both about 1350 lumen (before driver and optic losses).

The fact that the xhp35-HI has a bigger die than the xpl-hi (2.35 x 1.91 basically means the xpl is working a bit harder but it’s still not overly stressed.

I’m guessing they used the xhp35-HI because the beam color and output looked nicer than the xpl. There may be other reasons, like it gave them a bit more output compared to the xpl for instance. A more knowledgable person than me can probably say for sure.

They can try different emitters because I assume it’s using a 12v boost driver. They can make one mcpcb have 4 emitters in series (3v) and one that has 4 in parallel 12v.

Someone will probably swap the 4 nichia with xpl or xpl2 down the line just to try it out. The 50.2 at the same current is 1700lm. This would turn it into a legit 5,000 lumen light with the same current and heat. The beam might look ugly, though. You could also swap in a single xhp70.2 and have a legit 5,000 lumen light.

Interesting light and great review, thanks maukka.
Turbo times are really good.
I don’t like how they used a protected battery though, it just wastes 5 mm and increases IR.
Any chance to see driver pics?

You think a single instance of 15 to 30 seconds is “really good”?

Do you mean it’s good for such a small light that has such high output? Maybe you are comparing it to the Emisar D4? Even then a single blast of 15 to 30 seconds is not that great.

If they can fix the battery and voltage losses in the springs so it can repeatedly do 1 minute turbo times then I would say yes, they are good. Until then, I think they are really bad. Just my opinion.

Oh! Sorry for repeating the same question. :stuck_out_tongue:
At first, didn’t read other replies asking the same thing.

Thanks for the massive amount of data on this flashlight, that must have cost a few hours!

I really like the huge data table at the beginning, 75% of all information is already there and fast and easy to absorb! :slight_smile:

I hope that this copy of the EC65 holds up over time for you (I read the stories of dying EC65’s), it is a bit too nice flashlight too loose.