I’ve been thinking about this as well, and at this point I have no concern. It’s indeed only 350 lumens, but it’s pretty much an all plastic device. And heat transfer in plastic is pretty terrible, almost non existent. So even with just 350 lumens, heat will accumulate inside the light. There is only one way of getting rid of the heat, and that is via the metal battery tube, and the metal/magnetic tail cap.
So this could also explain why you have a metal battery tube; perhaps this is actually a well thought design? But it is wise to do as stated in the manual and don’t charge the battery while using the lantern in max output.
As stated before the max temperature is well below what becomes troublesome, nevertheless swapping the battery for a Samsung or Sanyo will provide me extra assurance. :sunglasses:
P.S. Since output reduces over time with depleting cell voltage, it is possible that max temperature of cell/tail cap is reached before the cell is depleted.
You’re right… my mistake… I meant: cool white… dimmed to roughly 1/2 to 2/3… not full brightness… sorry for the confusion… it was at least 1/2 … rather 2/3…
No problem. :+1: It’s good to know with reduced output heat is not an issue. All I know is that with max output with WW on my sample, my tailcap was on the warm side, but not worth worrying.
I think I will do more testing if I have time.
Maybe I should have post this at the “stupid questions” thread but here it goes.
If I understand correctly, electricity leaves the cell (discharging) from + pole and enters the cell (charging) from - pole. I would expect + pole to get warmer while using the lantern and - pole to get warmer while charging the battery. So, why and how the - pole gets hot when using the lantern?
Electricity is produced by a chemical reaction in the cell, throughout the whole cell, and flows as a current through the whole circuit. So there is some heat produced by the internal reaction which will be evenly distributed, some heat produced by the current flowing through internal cell resistance, which is again throughout the cell and evenly distributed, and some by external factors, such as the heat produced by the LED and distributed unevenly throughout the whole light, and heat produced by resistance to current at any point where there is a bad connection, thin wiring, or any other reason for bottleneck.
Thinking the current leaves the cell at one point and heat should be generated there is like thinking of the cell as a barrel of coal, burning from the top down, it just doesn’t work that way. The cell is more like a barrel full of AAA cells, each one generating current and heat evenly.
Used the T1 for 2 - 3 hours every night since I got it about 2 weeks ago.
The diffused lighting gives a really nice glow, I wonder if the multiple LEDs make a difference from a single LED.
With regards to the heat, I have a potentially stupid question- is the magnet being heated by induction? I would test it myself but I don’t have pliers to remove the magnet!
Just for something to do, I ran the lantern on usb power for a few hours with the magnetic tail cap removed and then got a reading of 134F for the inside of the metal battery compartment.
Although high CRI would be nice, I’m a bit of a tint and CRI snob, I run the lantern around 3500K and have to say the light emitted is pretty tolerable, perhaps it’s the mixing of the two different LED spectra.