Sofirn SP36 spewed toxic chemicals throughout my entire house

So, this could mean either a different driver layout or some other component burned up and all the heat on the other side could only leave traces on a very distinct spot (around these small holes in the driver's surface).

So as it stands now I have thrown away a couple of USB cables. I am not exaggerating at all when I say my phone omits such a strong horrible smell that I am unable to use it without feeling nauseous unless I put tape over the usbc port. I have spent a lot of time cleaning. I threw out everything that was edible in that room, and there is still a strong smell that made both my girlfriend and I pretty sick. Sofirn has not offered to do anything for me other than make the return process more complicated than Amazon makes it.

I’m honestly not surprised that some of the people here are attacking me. I understood that sofirn worked closely with members of this form before posting here, but I thought that would make it a good place to post. I wanted to get as much info as I could about my situation, and give people a heads up on what is possible with this light. I appreciate you guys encouraging me to take pictures of all of this. I honestly might not have touched this thing again otherwise. I will be sure to post them on Amazon with my reviews.

To the guy calling me biased you can think whatever you want. I’m not selling flashlights for a living. I’m honestly wasting my time on here at this point just trying to help other people. I don’t expect that anyone will be able to help me any further than they have so far.

I went into all of this having no biases whatsoever. I point out that the finish, the machining and the packaging of sofirn are the worst of any brand that I have bought simply because it looks like you get what you pay for when it comes to internal build quality as well. I honestly don’t care about a box, but it seems to reflect the quality of the product when you look at the packaging of some of these top-shelf brands. I have been buying high-end flashlights for more than 20 years. This is the first time I’ve had a problem with any of them. That is not bias that is just the objective truth. I’m not saying that reliable brands like Fenix or acebeam are perfect. I personally don’t like the UI or the color temperature on most Fenix lights - heck I will go as far as to say that I strongly dislike the UI on most of the modern Fenix lights. I don’t like the fact that most Acebeams start flashing when the battery goes low and don’t have any good indication of battery status before that. Nothing is perfect, but those brands have been reliable for me. They work exactly the same way they did when I bought them, and they certainly haven’t poisoned me. The fact that I bought a cheap brand and it filled my house with fumes and gave me a massive headache is no coincidence in my mind. If you want to pretend like it’s a coincidence that’s your prerogative. Hopefully most people reading this have a little bit more common sense than that though.

All I said about the support is there’s no one I can call and it does not have a long warranty period. Both of those things seem to be true. With acebeam I can call a reputable dealer with fenix I can call a reputable dealer and back when I was buying novatech and surefire I could call reputable dealers as well. What north american based reputable dealer can I call about sofirn? The shortest warranty of any of these other brands is 5 years. How long is sofirns? I’m posting opinions based on objective facts not based on biases.

I honestly don’t particularly care what’s wrong with the light at this point. Poor quality control and R&D caused charging board or charging chip to burn up. That’s good enough for me. I’m not going to buy another one of these products. I’m not part of the R&D. Frankly the R&D should have been done before I bought this thing. I was buying a finished product. I was not signing up to be part of a forum project to develop a flashlight that doesn’t work properly yet which is I think what some of you expect me to be doing here.

I am going to stick the quality brands moving forward. If sofirn and wants to do something for me to actually compensate me for the damages and inconvenience I have incurred here then great I will figure out how to send them the light. Otherwise I’m going to do what’s easiest for me and send it back to Amazon and get my money back. I personally used to sell through FBA, so I can tell you that if sofirn wants the light back they can get it from Amazon. If they want it back from me they can compensate me at the very least for all of the things I had to throw out because of this incident.

You guys can call me biased, you can call me ridiculous, you can call me sensitive, you can say I am having psychosomatic issues. You can really tell me whatever you want. I don’t care. I’m not part of the flashlight online modding community. I’m simply a guy who owns some nice flashlights and wanted to give people a heads-up about this particular brand while hopefully getting some advice. This thing spewed toxic fumes all over my house. It made me sick, and it made my girlfriend sick. I still smell all of this stuff. I would say this particular flashlight is probably not a good one to give people for Christmas because if this happens to them they will remember it.

The charger is whatever charger is included with an LG v30. The cable is an anker cable. Both of these items still function fine. They have been used for over 2 years to charge multiple other lights and many other devices without any issues. To blame this on the charger is absurd. A fast charger will provide more current to devices that have that capability, but if a brand name top-shelf charger like this causes an incident like this and you want to blame it on the charger then what charger should I have been using? And how should I have known what charger to use when the instructions don’t say anything about this? This is a dangerous low quality product. If people on here who have an agenda want to pretend something else that’s totally fine with me. I’ve done my part. I can move forward with my life with a clear conscience knowing that I at least tried to warn people about this. I will do the same on Amazon.

Like I said before I would have gladly paid three times the price for a light like this that was built properly and safely. I have no problem paying $200 for a good light. I only bought a bottom shelf low quality brand because they made the triple cell high CRI that I wanted. I won’t make that mistake again.

Ahhh the search for high CRI …

Down that rabbit hole you go. :wink:

Look for it, find it, pay for it and get it.

Have you been in contact with Sofirn?

Jake257 You seem to be convinced that Sofirn is at fault. Maybe they are and maybe they’re not.

Even if the flashlight is shown to be defective, it could have been due a faulty component from suppliers. Or it could actually be due to negligence. Or a host of other possibilities. There simply isn’t enough information to definitively conclude anything.

It’s one thing to suspect a likely cause, it’s quite another to know.

You’re not obligated to do anything. If you really want to help people avoid dangers, you can send it the problematic light to be investigated, maybe independently, so we can all figure out what happened. After all, even if Sofirn is ultimately responsible, how can they fix the problem without knowing what it is?

In your shoes, I would be quite frustrated too. I’m not sure why you feel people are attacking you. However, jumping to conclusions does not help anything.

Ill smoke those rabbits by tossing my high CRI exploding light down their rabbit hole …

Itll cook rm nicely as well :wink:

Jake, Jake — we’re attacking the lack of information. You’re not the first person to arrive here with a problem and insufficient information to reach a conclusion.

If something happened to your phone, as well as to your flashlight, why blame the cable?

The cable isn’t going to make your phone smell really bad.

EDIT — I’m wrong about that:

An overheated circuit board, however, will do that, if the charger is overloading the device and the cables are providing the overload.
If Sofirn provided the cable you used, you should send that back to them along with the flashlight head they’ve offered to look at.

Odds are, I’m guessing, it’s the charger, .

What charger, what spec, have you looked it up at HJK’s test page (links provided above)?

Facts, please.

From what I’ve read the USB-C specification allows a device to call for as much voltage as it can stand.
If the charger receives a request for 20 volts, it’s probably going to try to provide it.

Could it be that the charger is hallucinating and sending too much voltage?

Tell us about your charger.

Whether a third party vendor produced these components or not sofirn put them together and they failed. If you go buy a new BMW with a warranty BMW can’t tell you their car is unreliable because of Bosch. They have to fix it. They have to test it to make sure it doesn’t break before they sell it. I have used this charger more than once a day everyday for years to charge my phone. I am charging it right now. It’s not the cable and it’s not the charger it’s the flashlight. You can see burnt components in the flashlight. The flashlight no longer charges. After charging my phone literally more than a thousand times with this charger there is nothing at all wrong with my phone. Those are the facts.

Thanks for the posts Jake. We understand you are an average consumer, and you have done well describing the problem as such. Please understand we are a bit more tech-savy than average here, and will not stop the search for answers at the nearest logo. I’ve never owned a Sorfirn. I do think the most likely answer is a compatibility issue between the wall charger firmware and the flashlight charger firmware. We will have to live with the suspense of ending the discussion here. Thanks again for the posts. Take care.

Well since, Sofirn!Barry has already said (on this thread) they will take care of the shipping cost sending it back to them so you can simply do that or has someone investigate the cause of the problem before doing so, as has already described by Barry himself. To be honest, that’s already a notch above other Chinese sellers which usually want me eat the shipping cost to sent it back to them.

As far as “sensitivity” and the lack thereof, and that people will often calling out other on not having the same level of sensitivity as them, are concerned, you might be better off ignore those remarks and move on. And this is rather hypocritical of me to not ignore the ongoing issue and leave this in here. :beer:

What precisely would you like them to fix?

If your flashlight contains the clues to some hidden defect, that makes your SP36 the most valuable of them all. If it’s an external or interaction issue, that might be harder to figure out, but still very relevant information to gather.

Plus even the very best products have some failure rate.

Something similar used to happen every week on the old “Mission Impossible” TV show but by the end things usually turned out alright.

Looks like one of the chargers that is packaged with the LG V30 is MCS H06WP. Youtube link . Screencap

100-240v 50/60hz/0.5A

Output:
9.0v = 1.8A
5.0V = 1.8A

I have seen charger data for laptop chargers… maybe on a UL site, or similar regulator site. None turn up in a quick search for this model. I am guessing part of the WP may refer to the color (white).

Still speculative, may be a different charger. Also don’t know the cable.

Are you avoiding contact with Sofirn?

I fixed that link I posted earlier.

Here’s an excerpt:

Dwn at the bottom of that page you’ll find a link to this:

Recommended USB Type-C Legacy Cables

===

Also a quote from the Verge article, also linked earlier.
These should inform someone at Sofirn.

No I’m not avoiding contact with them. They offered to refund twice my money so I guess at least they’re doing something

and you didn’t mention that

The light itself is a good concept. I wouldn’t have bought it if it wasn’t. I don’t care about the finish issues I don’t need a fancy box. I bought two of them and they stepped down kind of inconsistently and got hot unconsistently, but aside from that the beam and the temperature were very good. Of course I would prefer low CRI cold beam if it meant not having to inhale toxic chemicals and feel sick

Because it just happened 3 minutes ago. Sorry for not keeping you up-to-date.