Okay, I did some lumen testing on the SP70 with the Sofirn HD 25A, the black Liitokala and the Aspire 4300 with my Texas_Ace Lumen Tube and Maukka calibration light.
I noticed the light didn’t get hot as quickly as it did during my tail cap amp draw test. Sure enough, the springs on the tail cap do reduce output, so I did tests both with the stock “tail cap on” as well as with a short 8ga wire eliminating the tail cap resistance. I took measurements at Turn on and 30 seconds.
SP70 —————————————— T.O. —— 30s.
Sofirn HD 25A with tail cap - 5270lm, 4890lm
with 8ga wire across the tail - 5800lm, 5390lm
Black Lii 5000 with tail cap - 5250lm, 4700lm
with 8ga wire across tail - — 5570lm, 5200lm
Aspire 4300 with tail cap - 5080lm, 4720lm
with 8ga wire across tail - 5900lm, 5350lm
I took the wire across the tail measurements first then took the tail cap measurements second with about 3-5 minutes of cool down time in between, no recharging. So the “tail cap on” measurements might be a tad higher if I had recharged the cells fully in between, but not significantly higher. I just didn’t have time to do full recharges between every test.
These numbers are quite impressive. They are pretty much equal to my Lexel made FET driven L6 with bypassed springs dual BeCu springs from BlueSwordM and 5700K emitter from MTN E. I tested that light with the same black Liitokala 5000 and Aspire 4300 cells. I measured the L6 a short time ago with the tail cap on. I did “Turn on” and 20 seconds because the light got hot so fast. Here are the results.
Modded L6 ——— T.O. —— 20s.
Black Lii 5000 – 5300lm, 5100lm
Aspire 4300 – 5500lm, 5250lm
The Sofirn HD 25A cells also seem to be impressive. They beat the black Liitokala’s (maybe 60 cycles on them) and are really close to the Aspire 4300 cells (maybe 20 cycles on them). The Sofirn HD cells did not seem to draw the same amperage as the other 2 cells, yet the lumens don’t reflect that. It makes me wonder what spring bypass wires alone can do.
Just remember that lumens are tricky to measure with high accuracy and the Turn on numbers just flash for a quick second so I’m not sure how accurate that is. Maybe 1 second numbers are more accurate.
I also measured the parasitic drain at 1.88 milliamps. This is a lot lower than on the S70S which had a 4.43 milliamp drain. So it’s better, but still pretty high. I wouldn’t leave it powered up for months on end. Turn the tail switch off for any type of extended storage.
I plan to do a review thread with all my measurements and beam shots put together. I’ve just been super busy the last couple of weeks.