Sofirn SP36, impressions of a sample

Wish I could just pounce on it right now, really pleased with what I’m hearing. (that ugly 66 never even tempted me! :stuck_out_tongue: )

Unfortunately, I’m in the middle of a rather large build that just cost me nearly $90 in cells alone… I will have to wait for the wallet to recover.

Besides, Sofirn knows they are about to get into me for some more moolah when they get a certain something ready to sell… :wink:

The only reason I haven’t snagged a sexy 66 (I should trademark that name) is the battery carrier. I have several lights with that design and I just don’t like them. Plus, I think soda can lights really, really need to have built-in charging.

Multi-cell lights are typically best charged in an independent charger where you can keep an eye on them and check rates before and after. Charging multiple cells in a light is just wrong in my opinion. A simple example is my Nitecore TM16 with series cells. I checked it one day after it’d sat for quite a while and one of the 4 was dead while the other 3 were at 4.17V. The one cell unexplainedly decided to take a hike. That could have been really bad if an internal charger had been applied with no way to check each cell first! These were quality LG HE-4 cells, not very old and seldom used.

Always best to check cells coming out of the light, coming off the charger, and keeping an eye on the temperatures as they charge. If I have to leave the area when I’m charging cells, I remove the cells and start over when I come back. And sometimes I charge up to 30 at a time! Yes, I have multiple 8 bay and 4 bay chargers. (And 2 bay and single bay)

I have over 300 cells to go with my over 200 flashlights. Been doing this for a while now…

This is a different situation in a parallel setup though. Much safer.

That’s going to be difficult. The reflector is screwed in from below, so emitter swaps require removing the driver first, to access the reflector screws, to access the MCPCB. And the driver is glued.

It can be done, as djozz did, but it’s not trivial.

To be fair, my test showed 2.5 minutes, and it was on a cold day.

That’s entirely up to Sofirn. I got it working and published though, so there’s always the possibility of flashing it yourself if you can get the driver out.

Just got feedback from Sofirn that they will be selling the SP36 with Andúril later on. :-) I don't know when, though.

ROT66 looks much better in real. It's become the magnet of my collection when friends drop by.

How does this compare to Sofirn Q8?

The SP36 is a Q8 a bit shrunken, a bit more lightweight, a bit less thermal performance (lower runtime in turbo before stepdoen, but still minutes), but becasue it uses the lower voltage XP-L2 instead of XP-L, the output (stock) is the same as the Q8, with some yellow corona around the hotspot as is typical for XP-L2 (I do not find it disturbing). Also the same as the Q8 is the UI (Narsil 1.0), but (see above) there are plans for Anduril.

I think the most significant difference with the Q8 is that it has USB charging, and it is even the faster (2A) USB-C.

According to its manual the SP36 uses NarsilM 1.2 but I don't know (yet) where the difference is to version 1.0.

NarsilM v1.2 adds momentary/tactical (I think it’s from Off, do a 4 clicks or 5 clicks will go to momentary mode), this is not present on NarsilM v1.0.

Plus the strobes modes in v1.0 are a bit harder to access (non-cycleable), in NarsilM v1.2, the strobes modes can be cycled.

There’s a lot that I like about this light. I love my pair of Q8 lights but they’re kinda bulky for a coat pocket. I’m hoping that this one will be just that much smaller and easier to carry.

I’m waiting for a real-life sample to be posted and then I’d bet I pull the trigger and add an SP36 to my lights.

Any idea if it’ll eventually be sold on Amazon like the rest of the Sofirn line?

The most important difference is CC with around 5500K as stated in the lab report.
And hard to change LEDs or mod.
I don’t think I buy it, a D4S seems a better option to me. LED, optic and firmware changeable.

A pdf with the changes is in the Google dir
Should be all mentioned in the first post

40-45 dollar group buy.please

nice wishes … but I think you are too old to believe in xmas … :wink:

I have not heard anything of a group buy yet…

The price seemed to jump a few bucks from the first time it was released. If it can come down a bit and I can see a real-life sample, I’d be ready to order one.

I want one with XP-L HI !!!

The performance of the SP36 was definitely better than I expected. It’s like a BLF Q8, but smaller and with a pretty decent charger built in. I’m not sure how exactly it manages to throw as well as it does, since the optics are smaller and it’s not using a dedomed emitter.

I’m not sure how much I’ll actually use it, because multi-cell lights like this are a bit large for me to carry around, but I like it more than I thought I would.