You can turn off the thermal stepdown off if you want. What is the “holy grail”?
Will the turbo heat ruin the led/driver/etc or lead to significantly shorter life?
Holy grail would be cheap, and all the desirable quality
Get the SST40 version. I have run it for over 5 minutes on turbo does not get very hot and no stepdown as far as I can see.
Ask about flashlights here, not on reddit.
Ok I am sold, will get that. I see the xhp version, sounds like that’s a less turbo friendly one?
How hot do you want it to get? If you generate a lot of watts, the heat has to go somewhere. It should handle 80°C with no issues. I assume your talking about the 50.2 version since it’s the really bright, powerful one.
The SST-40 version makes less heat. People have disabled the thermal stepdown and ran it on turbo until the batteries went down.
I have both. The 50 is a higher output light, so I am guessing it may get hot faster.
I just ran them side by side. At two minutes the XHP stepped down. It was uncomfortable to hold and tested at 42C, my set stepdown
At FIVE minutes the SST40 stepped down, it was warm but not unpleasant to hold, tested at 41C
So make your own choice.
I agree. The SST-40 generates a LOT less heat. It does not have as much total light output, but I find it throws farther. YMMV.
Sst-40 can draw 36 watts with high drain battery.
Xhp50.2 can draw 60 watts with high drain battery.
Neither really needs a high drain battery, so you can run a high capacity cell to get less heat and only a tiny bit less lumens. Not really enough lumen loss that you could tell from the naked eye.
Cool
I had high drains in both for my test - Vapcell 21700 in the XHP, AWT 75 AMP (alleged) in the 40.
But I took the XHP out with me to walk the dog, I can confirm it does get hot in a hurry.
Man, now I see the chaselight photo, and I am tempted. It seems brighter, but the photo might be lying since you can also see the sky with cloud, so the white balance? Seemed different, but if it wasn’t then it’s cheaper. Only thing is it’s using xhp50 so it might also have heat issue, despite the larger/longer body?
What about any xhp70 thrower? Anything comparable to ft03?
I may have missed it but how do the two compare with run times?
What do you mean? How long each of the 150 brightness levels can theoretically run on a particular battery? I don’t think anyone has tested that. Maybe someone has done some type of test and can link it.
The Chaselight is good for the money. It has a good throw, not as good as the S70S or L6, but way cheaper. It does not get hot. At one point I ran it all the way up and it did not step down for like 45 minutes. It is a good cheap light. That you can have in your hands tomorrow or Monday from Amazon.
I think I see the Chaselight your talking about. It has a xhp50.2 (maybe clone 50.2?). It is maybe 18 watt and 1800 lumen seems plausible. (I don’t think it will do 2300 lumen). This is much less lumens than the FT03 50.2. It should run pretty cool, but throw distance will be shorter. I would recommend reading reviews on it. It might be a junk light or it might be good. I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it. The user interface seems very crude with only 2 brightness levels. That’s old version. New version has ramping of some kind?
There are not many 70.2 throwers because it’s a big led. They are not available in 3 volt version so you either have to use 2 batteries in series or use an expensive boost driver. I have not seen anything the size of the FT03 in 70.2, but they are probably out there. If they exist, the throw will be short.
I could be wrong but I believe this has an aggressive thermal stepdown rather than thermal regulation.
So when temperature sensor goes above the set limit, it does a huge arbitrary stepdown. And never steps back up, even if the light becomes cool. Kind of like if you were to 1mph above 70mph speed limit on the highway and your car goes NOPE! and slams the brakes and instantly limits speed to 10mph.
It sounds like you want a light with thermal regulation where it tries to find an output level that keeps temps just below (or at) the set limit.
The two cell light probably does 2300 lumens. It is pretty darn good. No, it does not out throw or out light the FT03. But it does ramp down and up, has a long run time with the included batteries, and a nice focused white beam. I bought three of them, they are great utility lights to have around. Nothing fancy, just a good strong flashlight.
What I mean is one more efficient than the other I guess.
No, NarsilM has never done such a thing, at least not on a bigger light like this. You might be thinking of Anduril on a small light. Toykeeper has programmed Anduril lights like the FW3A to have a panic mode because it’s very small and very powerful so a small stepdown will allow it to get too hot.
I think NarsilM will stepdown 32% from Turbo, wait several seconds then see if it needs to step down again.
I’m sure someone here can comment on how much the 50.2 version steps down.
You are correct that NarsilM does not use PID (thermal regulation) to allow the brightness to increase after a thermal stepdown. Of course, you can manually increase the brightness if you want. I never had need for fancy “step back up” software. As long as I can set the light to stepdown at a temp I’m comfortable with, that’s all I care about.
Not if they still use the same 1.43A@12v. You typically don’t see a 500 lumen jump unless the driver is changed. It’s possible the driver is cranked up a bit higher and their pictures are just old. If this new driver can put out 1.8A or so then it would seem reasonable.
Maybe the 2 cell light is using a completely different type driver that runs at 6v?
The 50.2 version is more efficient over the same lumen range as the SST-40 simply because it’s bigger die can put out more light for the same battery amperage. Once you get past 1800 or so lumen, they are not comparable.