Sofirn C01S SST-20 4.000K 95CRI / Low-High version available again!

Output 3200K C01 ~5lm
Output 5600K C01 ~7lm

6 for warm, 8 for cool according to the Ali page.

That is a conciderable increase. Is anyone working on a group buy or do we just request a discount on the website?

Not a group buy for this one, but there will be a BLF edition that is slightly different.

I think 3 & 100 is a good compromise. Ideally I’d have ML, 5, 20, 100 but that would probably be a bit hectic, and annoy the hell out of people who only want two modes.

If we were to do more than 2 modes, I’d like 1, 10, 100, but I’d rather just save Sofirn the headache of trying to make a decision based on us forumers and go with 3 and 100.

Amen to that!! :+1:
They would have to make ’at least’ a hundred different options for the C01S, and that still would not cover all the different requests…. :smiley: . :smiley:

I got 2 C01S lights in. Ordered black and red but received blue and red.

Some quick observations:

*they look nice, in fact exactly the appearance of the C01
*output on an Eneloop: high 84 lumen, low 2.7 lumen
*tint/CRI differed on my two lights:
Blue: 3920K, duv +0.004, 97CRI R9=90
Red: 3750K, duv +0.0063,95CRI R9=82
Tint is not perfect but the positive duv I find not distracting from the very good colour rendering in practice.
*the hotspot of the red one is considerably tighter. Both have a (not too annoying) ring around the hotspot.

Since I’m not so into the blue colour, and I got these for the very low price when they first put up the selling page, I will ask my son for another torture test here outside on the square.

Wow, that was quick Jos! I ordered mine the same day they were offered for sale and still it has not even left the warehouse. I can‘t wait to see some hardcore testing videos on the playground. :smiley: :+1:

Hardcore testing postponed for a day, we were having dinner late and my go-to tester needed to go to bed on time to be fresh for another school day.

I tried opening the blue one and was already preparing for a battle, but no, nothing glued, the bezel just screwed off.

Edit: Opened the red head as well and that went just as easy, but I did notice blue stuff in the threads and actually it is in the pic above as well. Seems like blue threadlock (at least not red) but applied after the threads were lubed, it was doing nothing.

I tried to order then as well, but the credit card processing consistently came back with a security problem, and wanted me to submit a scan of my photo id, my card, and a statement for that card. I can live with giving them a picture of my photo id, but I absolutely refuse to send anyone scans of my credit card and a monthly statement. Might as well just mail the card to them.

In fact, that’s weird to ask for a photo ID, a photo of your CC and a statement from your CC company. They must be nuts! :person_facepalming: But I’m sure it’s not Sofirn to put the blame on but AliExpress and their payment system that seems to have issues with some cards.

Torture test done. And the C01S seems a bit less robust as the C01 (but N=1, just one sample tested of both). At the end of the test the light did not work anymore, but after screwing off the bezel and back on again it worked fine again.
I think what is going on is that the bezel can be over-tightened, I did that with quite some force (am a bit OCD about tightening things in flashlights) just before my son got it, so that if too tight the bezel touches the battery tube before the driver does. Threadlock btw prevents that :innocent: . If it happens too easy, an easy (but not goodlooking) fix is sanding a fraction of a mm off either the bezel or the battery tube.

Man, I really want one. But from low to high is too extreme for me for an AAA light. If it was 5 low and 30 high; I would definitely get one or two.

I’d love to see that with that one 25 lumen Yuji LED (don’t know it’s name)

5 and 25 with a nice, smooth TIR based beam.

Because of the optic and small-die SST-20, the 2.5 lumen from the C01S is brighter than the 8 lumen C01, I find it not dim but plenty for all things that just needs some lighting up, good for reading too. And the 87 lumen feels very bright, good for searching stuff around the house (likely my #1 use for my EDC :person_facepalming: ).

I (or someone else) have to do a runtime test still btw, and I suspect that for most of the runtime, with Eneloop and certainly with an alkaline cell (btw alkalines are not really suitable for this light when primary used on high, not enough capacity for the current that is drawn), the high setting is considerably lower than 87 lumen (87 lumen 95CRI would be probably 150 lumen with a low CRI led, so more than 400 mA is going through the led, more than an amp from the battery; it is a pretty good boost driver that is used here).

I know it was AliExpress’s problem. Outfits like Sofirn use AliExpress the same way a lot of US sellers use Amazon. They handle the payments & shipping, usually at far less than the seller could do by themselves.

I did a not accurate runtime test with the C01S with alkaline on low, checking after one day and after two days. After one day it put out the same 2.7 lumen, after two days the light was off and the battery completely empty.

In an efficient flashlight I expect 2.7 lumen of 95 CRI light to be caused by about 10 mA, plus 2.5mA for powering the MCU, but that is at over 3V, before boosting that would be 32 mA . An alkaline at low drain is about 1000mAh, so that would be a bit over a day. This is with a lot of approximations but it seems about right.

Got mine today:

It would be nice if low was lower, but it’s fine, and that’s as close as I can come to a complaint. Beautiful beam. These lights are awesome.

Can anybody link some tritium vials that will fit easily?

tritium vials
mixglo