[Review] Sofirn SD05 Diving 21700 Flashlight

Anyone else notice that lumens on Medium change when stepping up and stepping down?,

Low to Medium 760 lumens
High to Medium 920 lumens

This is manually changing modes, not from thermal or timer step down

Interesting! I’d test mine, but it’s stuck at work and I’m stuck at home (covid).

I got both a Sofirn SD05 cool-white and SD05 neutral-white. I don’t have a lumens tube, but have a lux meter and can do some ceiling bounce test.

I’ve observed what you mentioned, the brightness in Medium varies depending on if it’s from Low-to-Medium or High-to-Medium, for both units I checked.
(Medium is higher brightness when it was switched from High mode).

I wonder what could be the cause of this? A bug?

I’m not sure, it’s very odd behavior, never encountered any like it before. You can’t really notice the difference by eye but it shouldn’t be happening.

I’ll make a video and send it to Sofirn

Look on the bright side. So it’s now a 4-mode light, not 3-mode. :laughing:

I personally like the older SD03 — no temperature shutdown — though I haven’t pulled the LED yet to see whether there’s a solid shelf behind it (nor checked whether they’ve glued it in place to frustrate modders. I’d like a higher- color-rendering emitter. Suggestions welcome.

It’s not glued. It’s also a solid shelf.

I hate the 3 minute step-down too, Sofirn don’t think these things through for an underwater light

As an authorized distributor for Sofirn I get the SD03 at $5.50 usd so it’s a super deal. I sell them at $16 and they sell really well.

Sidney Stratton wrote: I initially ordered a SD03 (XML2 – 900lm) as didn’t have this timed throttling. Sofirn informed me this was no longer produced.


I just now ordered the SD03 from Fasttech. Shipping date 20/5.
$28AUD with ins and tracking. L-M-H simple.

When you look at it. The 05, is basically a 1000? lum. Maybe.
As it steps down after a coupla minutes.
I have a couple of divers already that do that and more.
and a lovely little red XANES 1600 lum. Divers. $22.60 AUD
Mates had it down to over 25mtrs outside the islands here when I first bought
Was very impressed for it’s size. Close work only, Basically.
But his prime light is a pro 4500? lum.
Just HMP grease the threads first. It gives a better seal.

I’ll Maybe order an ’05 next month for my Birthday. If reports on here improve.

It’s nice to get a fresh interest in Quality Budget torches. I was losing the acquisition glow.
What next?.

I’m tending to go for divers in small/mid range.
Better built. better sealed. can bounce them around a bit more
and similar prices to others.
PLUS. They seem to be getting away from that ugly water pipe look too.
A few curves in there.

All my good torches now have, in 18650.
Samsung 30Q. or Panasonic NCR 18650B’s
Protected and UN protected.
Other sizes, vary.

To add to the confusion of this timed step down and the difference (lumens) in up / down switching to medium, Sofirn has a newer version without the timed step-down. And is advertised as 3000 lumens.

I presume they changed to the XHP50.2 - 3 volt variant and are using their SP33v3 driver adapted to the magnetic switch.

I asked to have the 5000ºK emitter. Read somewhere they can cater to special requests. Waiting for an answer…

edit (18:03): Sofirn Web Store

Thanks for your input, I’ll have to ask Sofirn on my next order

Decided to investigate this further, I have an earlier batch Sofirn SD05, I notice its brightest level is a bit less bright than the later version, however the early version SD05 has NoPWM on all modes (Low-Med-High), whereas the later batch Sofirn SD05 has fast PWM (detected by shining the light through a small portable fan blades).

Which seems to indicate that the early SD05 appears to use a similar boost driver as the early SP33v2 “2500” lumens version.
(also checked that the early SD05 “Medium” mode stays the same whether it was switched from Low-to-Medium or from High-to-Medium)

The later SD05 which has the different “Medium” mode (“Low-to-Medium” or Off-to-Medium is the regular Medium) [Off -to-Medium means the control ring set to Medium when battery inserted), has fast PWM on all levels. And the High mode is brighter (consumes more power).

The old SD05 (which likely uses XHP50.2 6-volt LED) seems to consume up to around 6 Amps max by measuring tailcap current.
whereas the new SD05 (likely uses XHP50.2 3-volt LED) consumes around 8-9 Amps max tailcap current.

Lan Lee gave me this link SD05 5000ºK w/out timed stepdown.

You did confirm what I suspected. The newer model is DD w/fet and has its downsides. But not having this timed throttling is a net gain.

I ordered last night - it’ll take some 8 to 12 weeks to get here. I have orders backed up since March.

One another note, Hank4U2 hank posted a discounted SD03 on AE link. $12 US.

Funtastic is looking into some 50 units, but I saw 60 down to 52 w/in a couple of hours.

Yeah I might not be able to get that many as Sofirn is offline. I’ll grab whatever is left.

@ Funtastic:

Should be more considerate. The idea is that if many people are interested in a 5000ºK version, they would make readily available.

Deobfuscation: I’m not Hank4U2 and I’m not Hank Wang and I’m not the other hank-plus-a-number.
I did post the pointer to the sale on the SD03. Hope y’all got a chance before the reseller sucked them all away.

@ hank:

So sorry. My bad! Corrected the OP.

Disclaimer: I’m not a prolific diver, I did about 200 dives, almost all in warm water (Caribbean like), few NJ shore and some quarry in PA.

I think considering a price this is a best recreational (take on the trip to warm place and dive) diving light available right now.
Timer sucks but it is not a show stopper, medium is enough for night dive, you don’t need to blind everyone and fish (on recreational dives you are in group 3-7 people - guide/dive master and 1 - 3 pairs), if you want to take a picture you still need flood light and here high CRI is nice.
High is nice for day dive when you look into holes checking if somebody hides there but then 3min timer is not an issue.

Another thing, for some time I was wondering about this thing fluoro diving, when you look for stuff that illuminates under blue/UV light. Blue is better, UV harms marine life and blue is causing better response, negative is that you see blue and you want yellow filter to get it out.
Anyway, I have Ferei W150 that I modded and put Royal Blue Cree XT-E in it. It is blue but it is not very strong.

I got 3 SD05s and I thought, lets put a blue LED in one.
Right, easy to say…
It is 6V LED, where do I get 6V blue LED, then….

it was like “wait a minute it already has a blue LED in it, it just has a phosphor on it”
So, I took some small pliers and removed dome from the LED, it wasnt gentle :slight_smile: and it already removed most of the phosphor from LED, I scraped a rest carefully using wooden splinter and now it is a blue light!!
It seems little less blue then Royal Blue but I think this is actually good.

LED Before

LED after

Close on low

Back in light with reflector

Next to Ferei W150 (guess which one is it :slight_smile: )

In real there are no violet rings visible just blue, smooth transition from spot to spill.

That’s some resourceful thinking there, arek98! :beer:

Hey, talk about modding a light!

Unfortunately arek98, your links to pics come up 404.

Should be fixed now
Also I hopefully will try it underwater in September. With current situation no way to go on the trip right now. Can’t wait, hope to see something nice :slight_smile: