Got mine yesterday and I agree with all this - especially the last sentence!
Great review - thank you.
I actually prefer the higher voltage cells, so the AAA option is no big deal to me. If it is, there are many AAA lights in my collection - some with Nichia 219 and tail switches, that will use AAA. (Seems like every time I turn around Massdrop has some variant of the Lumintop for sale.) What sealed me on this one was the different LED. It looks very close to the R9080 Nichia 219B SW35 that a few of my lights have….and I love that tint.
The appeal of these small lights for me is those days when dress pants are required. The normal EDCs seem a little heavy - these little lights are great for those days. This little light has that appeal plus the appeal of the tint. Plus it’s a solid “budget” light. YMMV.
The driver is very inefficient in this. The whole system gets about 46 lumens per watt on average over the whole runtime, even worse on moonlight. The E21A is much better than that.
Folomov is smaller, lighter, warmer, and does not suddenly go dark
otoh
the battery is UNprotected. Therefore, I cannot recommend the Folomov.
I found the light would not turn on after living in my pocket, and the battery was at 2.6v.
The Folomov wont turn on with AAA, so I recommend the Lumintop Tool over the Folomov.
I’d have to see a lot of outstanding successes from Folomov before considering one of their lights. The emitters being damaged by turbo on this and whatever that 319A light they released a while back is unacceptable.
I see that the Folomov websites shows a new model, confusingly named EDC-C1 though it’s actually somewhat different and clearly not meant as a replacement but rather a slightly different light. Old, I’ll call it C1.1 New, I’ll call it C1.2
Differences
C1.1
C1.2
Material
brass
alu
length
66.8mm
70.9mm
diameter
13.5mm
14mm
LED
3000K CRI98 (call me suspicious)
5000K CRI80
reflector
SMO?
OP
lm
335
400
cd
951
1280
mode sequence
L-M-H-M
L-M-H
I have a feeling they view C1.1 as a connoisseur item while C1.2 is more general purpose.
I also don’t quite understand the performance increase. By changing CRI/tint they got 19% higher output and 34% better intensity while changing reflector from SMO to OP. From the look of the head it seems that the new reflector has slightly larger effective diameter which may be a partial explanation. Maybe the previous reflector was not focused properly or something. The numbers seem weird.
I’m sooo tempted to buy one of the new versions for a neck lanyard light. I like it better than heavy brass. Two things stop me though. The lack of a lanyard hole in the tail, and the low cri 5000k emitter.
Neck lanyard lights are my “creeper” light for when I’m moving around camp and the house, trying not to disturb others and also preserve my night vision. I prefer incandescent type color for these types of lights.
Illumn has the v3 brass version, and according to them they test at an actual 2 lumens on moonlight which is unacceptable.
What a shame, they could have had a hit with this light. I love the size and electronic tail clicky.
Maybe I’ll buy an aluminum version, press fit a lanyard sleeve on the tail, and change the emitter. The sleeve can be made thin so it doesn’t add too much to the diameter, can be higher than the switch so it can tail stand and to avoid accidental activation and have a hole in it for a lanyard or key ring. Maybe I’ll make it have a clip on it too, for lens down carry.
Sorry, you’re right!
As both are the “new” batch, I didn’t make the difference bewteen the body material and focused on the revisions made to the light as a whole!
Anecdotal but the L1 (penlight version of this) I have is listed as 3000K as well but matches the 2700K bulbs in my house almost exactly except for being a bit rosier. So some variation in the emitters they’re using… or a copy and paste job on the stats like they did for the runtimes.
Looking at the Folomov website, they appear to have kept the runtimes the same and increased the output on the 5000k CCT version vs the 3000k CCT version (on their spec sheets, anyway - real life testing will show what they really are).
So far, their published runtime and output specs haven’t been reliable for any of their small lights.
They’re still showing the LMHML (wave) mode sequence for the 3000k brass version on their website.