Review: Trustfire F22

Initial brightness on an alkaline (1.539V) on high is about 85 lumens. Down by about 20% after 5 minutes. Not designed for use with alkalines on high evidently. But since the alkalines are consumables I'll run the light to shutoff. Even then they may be useful in my backup mouse that can use cells nothing else will still work with.

Down to 7 lumens and nearing the end I think. Not a light to use with alkalines on high. Gave up when I could comfortably look into the emitter. Not really useful at that level of dimness unless your eyes are completely dark adapted. Got 1 hour 52 minutes out of it to useless. The conventional runtime is to 50% which gives a runtime of 27 minutes 45 seconds. Chart to follow. Medium runtime under way.

For some reason i would never use an alkie for runtimes since im afraid of the cell leaking..........but another thought i have alkies in my rc radio when its not in use, and that radio cost me.

It's normally when you leave them in something after they are flat that they leak. Or so I'm told. But I never leave alkalines in anything with significant current drain and faithfully throw out ones from clocks, remotes etc. annually. And I only buy Duracells for the purpose. Personally, I've never had a Duracell leak.

At least since the crap they used to sell in the 80's like the carton of around a thousand of the things (We sold a lot of them in the camera shop I worked in then) that had been put together the wrong way round so that the nipple was negative. At the time I used only Japanese batteries.

But I'm not about to risk it. The cells I am using for this are a variety of whatever my employer (Which employs over a million people) can get cheapest. But since a stores order can take three months to arrive I took in a box of my own (Our pagers eat AA batteries) on the understanding I'd get whatever we got when they finally arrived.

It was the Lucas branded ones that got me laughing - evidently they didn't realise the reputation of Lucas electrics amongst bikers. There was a reason that Joe Lucas of the firm was known as the "Prince of Darkness". I do remember various occasions when Lucas electrics failed spectacularly - sometimes with smoke.

At the moment we're getting Rayovacs but doubtless it'll be a different brand next time. I'll tell you when the order arrives. Our pagers are horrible things that cost a fortune (Over $600 each) - it would take about two leaking alkies to blot out the national savings on buying cheap garbage.

Thats another thing i dont understand, if your company is willing to spend so much on good electronics then why not spend the money on good cells to go with them. Im topping off 8 Duraloops now for the radio.

The Cree docs are now talking about up to S2 bins - hopefully these will be available this year. At that point I'd be tempted to do an emitter swap as long as they are in XP-E format, though it seems they are moving to XP-G dies instead. The XR-E (and I think the XP-G) is now rated at up to 1.5A with adequate heatsinking (not that you are getting this in a stainless steel light) so some brutal driving of the latest bins could be seriously bright. The XP-E emitters are only rated to one amp.

But at saner currents they will be more efficient and run cooler while still giving more light. Using the stock driver which gives 1200mA or well above spec for the XP-E emitter in it a brighter bin could be fun. 300 lumens out of it ought to be achievable by early next year.

Comes of working for the public sector in healthcare. Short-term financial objectives are all that matter. Someone has mistaken "accountability" and "accountancy". "Accountability" seems to mean taking the blame for decisions made elsewhere. Budgets have become sacred. Someone saved a LOT (tens of millions per year) of money by centralising stores orders. Junk alkies are merely a side effect.

That said, I've never had a pager damaged by a junk cell. I have dropped one down a toilet when the clip broke and driven a bus over one. It fell out of my pocket when the clip broke and I didn't notice as I climbed into the driver's seat. I've also lost one somewhere. When I got back to the office, the clip was still on my belt but I've no idea where the pager fell off. the current one got its clip modified the day I got it. It won't break now (It weighs about as much as the pager) but the battery cover which contains the + contact is now held on with duct tape. I think I've had it about ten years now.

About 1hr 35 min to 50% on an alkaline on medium. Again, will let it run down to cell death since it isn't a rechargeable cell. Graph to follow when the cell finally dies.

Just messed up the medium runtime. Saved it in an unusable format. Low runtime now running. 45 lux - about 10 lumens at start on an alkaline. This is at Fenix E01 levels. Should run for ages. Fan cooled - which is almost certainly unnecessary.

Nice man.......What light meter do you use......and what program do use as well for graphs and runtimes.

The meter is a cheap one from DX. http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.20170 though the runtimes are done using a solar cell built into the lightbox which is a medium sized cardboard box painted white internally with 4 coats of gloss paint and a baffle to prevent any direct light from the torch hitting the solar cell or meter. I use a cheap USB connected multimeter that I got locally http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?moduleno=222041. It is probably available under dozens of different brand names around the world. I got this on offer for about half of what they used to ask for it.

I use the software that comes with it which is not wonderful, but is usable. I just feed the data into a spreadsheet to produce the graphs, copy and paste the graphs into a graphics app to save them as jpegs. But I have to remember to save the data as a spreadsheet - the native DB format isn't understood by anything and the software can't open the files either - it appears to be some sort of binary format which is a pain.

I am beginning to wonder about the linearity of the response of the solar cell but that will take a lot of time and effort to sort out and calibrate properly.

I get the approximate lumens figures from a Preon 2 which is 160 lumens out the front according to several sources. It read 720 lux on my lightbox so I take a lux reading of whatever I'm measuring, divide it by 720 and multiply it by 160 to get an approximate lumen count.

Okay thanks for the input...dont know if i want to go there yet, but thanks for posting the info for me.

Now approaching 50% after nine hours. Unfortunately I'm going to have to sacrifice another alkaline to get the medium runtime graph. It runs for a little over 90 minutes to 50% on medium with an alkaline. NiMH and 14500 runtimes to follow in due course.

Still better than 50% at 11.5 hours when I left for work.

That's very impressive! You might just convince me to buy this light if you get 24+ hours of usable light.

It did the first 12 hours fine, but I don't expect it to do 24. We'll see though

Gave me 2hr 15min of usable light on an alkaline in medium and around 16hr on low. The alkalines were all cheapos though most weigh 22-24g. A Duracell weighs 24.6g. Weight is a reasonable proxy for quality in alkalines. The lightest one, a Rayovac that did one of these runtimes was 22.4g

Next up NiMH runtimes. Time to top off some cells to make sure they are fully charged.

Starts out on an NiMH at the same sort of brightness as an alkaline on high - a hair over 85 lumens.

NiMH low. Down to 39 lux or about 8.6 lumens. Looks like NiMH runtimes will be comparable to alkaline ones but it'll take some time yet to be certain. I expect the light to go out tomorrow about noon.

9hr 13 min to 50% on low with an NiMH. Graphs for NiMH high and low added, NiMH medium and 14500 graphs next.

39 min 15 secs to shutoff - it was still pumping out over 150 lumens when the cell protection kicked in rather early I suspect. Initial brightness around 220 lumens.

Pretty good runtimes overall. What capacity are nimh cells used.