Neal just informed me there was a mistake in the assembly line that put orange peel reflectors in the GT94 by mistake.
They will be sending out Smooth reflectors that you can switch yourself if you desire. The hardest part of swapping them is opening the head, it requires a strap wrench to get it open.
After that it is a matter of being really careful to not drop the reflector on the LED’s (holding the light upsidedown and pushing the reflector up carefully while watching is the best option).
My best guess is that due to covid, most factories are understaffed AND having to hire/train all new staff. Most of them do not know or care about what they are working on, they are simply told take part A and do X with it.
This leads to most of the people on the assembly line not having a clue about quality control or what the finished product should be, allowing things like this to slip by unnoticed. Lets face it, outside of enthusiast like us, no one would even notice or care about the type of reflector in a light.
Not an excuse by any means, they should have someone that knows what he is doing at the end of the line doing a final QC that would catch this but should hopefully give a bit of understanding about how the issue could make it that far.
I agree, it should of been caught before it left the factory for sure.
Checking the lights before they leave his shop could be real value that Neal could add to his business, that will make people prefer buying from him over Banggood. After all he is a flashlight enthousiast so for him it should be doable.
That is provided that his goods actually go via his own store.
Pretty sure that they have all been shipped directly from lunimtop recently due to changes since covid in the shipping system in China. For awhile they could not even get items shipped at all. So he has not even had the chance to see them before they go.
Mine has arrived in Phoenix, so I should be getting it by Monday. This is a very, very important stand-out flashlight. This could be my chance to see for myself what the difference in smooth or orange peel reflector looks like in beam width and throw. My guess is the difference to the naked eye is fairly negligible.
This post was made five minutes late, because a family dog killed a four-month old infant in Hawaii, and it took me five minutes to post my comment on that new story.
I also noticed that the GT94 I received doesn't appear to be cool white. It has a slight yellow tint. I tested against a while wall in the daytime. The GT4 was definitely cool white, but not the GT94. It this expected?
Nealsgadgets says...
"Description
...
Specifications
Emitter: 4x Luminus SBT90.2 LED cool white, mounted on copper DTP MCPCB
I am guessing you are testing at low output levels?
The SBT90.2 does have tint shift depending on the power lever. In the lower power levels it will tend to have a bit of a yellow/green hue. This goes away at higher power levels though.
The SBT90.2 is only available in a CW tint, so it must be CW.
Ok, another thing to keep in mind is that it is around ~5700k vs most other CW lights that are 6500k, so it will naturally look warmer then those if that is what you are comparing it to.