I am a Railroad Conductor, and I somehow only seem to catch trains that run at night. The lanterns they provide us are adequate (single mode 390 lumens powered by 3 C sized batteries) and built like the finest Dollar Store toy. There are times when I need to walk my entire 7,000 foot train for inspections and air tests. Again the lanterns they provide us do a good job but when something goes bump in the timber, or I hear a pack of coyotes a couple hundred yards away I wan’t to clearly see what it is. A light like the BLF Q8 serves this purpose well.
ThorFire contacted me asking if I’d like a Q8 for review. I received no additional compensation. Normally I carry a light for about a week to see what fits and what doesn’t for me. I decided on a good month for this one since, although it’s one of the best deals you can find dollar per lumen, the normal person would consider it a substantial investment.
The light comes packaged in ThorFire’s normal cardboard box with simple padding, the light, two manuals, spare orings, and a spare switch cover.
Build quality seems very good. Square cut and anodized threads (pictures in the waterproof test), good knurling, solid with no rattle anywhere, the glowing silicone switch cover is set well with no side to side or up and down wiggle, half of the light body is made of cooling fins, and well centered XP-L LED’s.
The operation of this light is very simple and has some advanced modes that I won’t go into but you can read the pictures of the manual for further clarification. To operate the light put in a freshly charged pair of 18650 button top batteries (they must be button top) into the carrier. I prefer Samsung INR18650-30Q but to each his own. Screw the head on and the light will flash a few times and the mode button will glow green. A single click will turn the light on, hold the button down and the light will ramp up from its lowest moonlight mode to the high of 5000 lumens. At this point the light will blink quickly indicating the highest point. To ramp down simply hold the button down again to lower the output. A quick double click will immediately bring the light to its highest output. I didn’t mess with the advanced options since I feel this fits my needs, and most of ours well. Oh and it will run on just a single 18650 for emergency use. That’s a huge plus.
From my testing the light steps down from its highest mode after about 3 minutes of use. The next level is slightly lower but in real world use not very different. It starts to warm up but doesn’t get uncomfortable to hold. To see how hot I could get the light I repeatedly let it step down, turned it off, and back on in it’s highest mode for 6 cycles. I then tested the temperature with a heat gun.
With practical use the light is just fine to hold for a while in its highest mode. After a few cycles, you might want to put some gloves on.
Some random and detailed beam shots.
High
High
Tree over 300 yards away.
Tree six feet away on moonlight mode.
Q8 lighting up a field.
Compared to a Olight X7 Maurader. The Q8 has less output but is more of a balance between throw and spill.
From a freshly charged set of 30Q’s I did a timelapse over nearly 90 hours of the flashlights drain from high. The average voltage of the batteries afterwards was 3.0 volt according to my Efest charger.
Also I did a 1 hour test showing the step down from high using the same set of freshly charged batteries.
One thing I like to do in my reviews is a somewhat realistic waterproof test. As in weather permitting, not just dunking the light in tap water. For this test I left the flashlight in a rocky river (tied to some good paracord of course) for half an hour. I found a shallow pool where the water was moving slightly.
The light had absolutely no water leakage in any part for this test….but….the waterfall test was a different story. I want it to be clear that the lights IPX8 rating covers sumbersion up to two meters for 30 minutes. Not water being forced upon it from a six foot waterfall. This is not a diving light.
The waterfall is directly to the right of the camera. You can see the waterfall in the background of this next picture. The light was left to bounce around on the rocks in the moving water for 15 minutes.
The light has a removable tail cap and this is where a very small amount of water leeched in the light. A quick wipe with my shirt corrected the problem. I checked again after 3 weeks and saw no issues.
Dry
Dry, and square cut!
Dry
Dry
Slightly wet
Dry
So using this light for slightly over a month at work and for late night walks made me realize that for most applications I don’t need the full 5000 lumens. I probably used closer to 1000 to 2000 lumens for most tasks where I needed a good deal of light. Now this is where this light really shines……1000 lumen lights seem to be the standard now for slighty larger EDC lights. While I wouldn’t consider this an EDC light since it’s pretty much the size of a thin soda (beer) can, it will sustain those higher modes longer than a smaller 1000 lumen light. Not only for runtime, but the large amount of mass works as a great heat sink. There are a few times where it was really nice having the full brightness. While the light weighs about 1.5 lbs. when loaded with 4 18650 batteries its not bad for a 2 or 3 mile walk. For the outdoor enthusiast, the farmer, or anyone who just wants to light up a large area for fun the BLF Q8 is a great choice.
For anyone interested I’ve been given a 20% off Amazon discount code.
20% off coupon code for BLF Q8: CTEBZBJT
http://amzn.to/2ksErZ5