If I understand correctly, the new driver is a FET+1 and I think it uses the fw3a-219 firmware. At least, that’s what I’ve heard from people who got one recently.
What that means is:
- No more regulated power between 0.35 A and 2.8 A.
- Ramp levels 66 to 130 are DD FET, not regulated.
- More heat, less efficiency.
- Ramp levels 131 to 150 are pointless, since they’re all full-power. It tries to ramp the third channel there, but that channel doesn’t exist.
- Thermal regulation won’t begin to reduce power until the light is significantly hotter, since the first 20 steps of reduction (150 to 130) do nothing.
I’m guessing the driver was changed to reduce costs again (cha bu duo), but someone noticed turbo didn’t work without the third channel. Normally, channels 1 and 2 (regulated) are turned off at the turbo level, because a DD FET (channel 3) is brighter by itself. But after moving the FET to channel 2, no more turbo. So they switched to the 219 firmware instead, since it keeps channels 1 and 2 on at turbo. Perhaps they don’t expect anyone to notice if there’s no difference between the ramp ceiling (130) and turbo (150).
The original project got delayed for like a year because Lumintop couldn’t meet the specified quality standards… but then it went to production anyway, and there were frequent quality issues. Vendors reported a really high rate of returned items, and Illumn had to manually adjust and test each light before shipping. So it didn’t get carried for long.
Over time though, parts kept getting changed, usually to cheaper versions. Like, for a while, the Carclo optic and lens got replaced by a one-piece plastic imitation which was a huge downgrade. There was a lot of backlash from that though, so the lens was brought back and the optic was redesigned to be a bit closer to the original.
Another frequent issue was that the driver cavity frequently wasn’t big enough for the driver, so a bunch of lights were made with the driver sitting on top of where it was meant to go, instead of inside its compartment. This made the connection flaky, and made batteries not fit right, and was one of several sources of unreliability.
The springs got downgraded at some point, using a type which had some sort of coating which flaked off easily, and got flecks of metal all over the inside of the light. This caused a bunch of electrical shorts, and more unreliability.
The button got downgraded from its original ~800g pressure to only ~300g, and sometimes even less. This made it hard not to activate by accident, and people had to carry the light in lockout mode.
The entire tail end got redesigned several times, and I don’t know if it was ever fixed to be reliable. It’s famously finicky.
A bunch of spinoffs were made, and some were embarrassingly lazy. Like, the 21700 version seemed like it was simply scaled up without adjusting proportions… so the battery compartment ended up so long that it didn’t fit the cell it was meant to use. Because 18650 scaled up to 21mm width… is 21x76mm, not 21x70mm. So a common 21700 cell needed a 6mm spacer in order to make contact. The clip wasn’t adjusted either, so it was too short. The optic was simply reused, instead of scaling it up for better throw… and it had a bunch of empty space around it. Etc.
And now half the driver hardware is missing. I guess it’s more of a “FW2A” now.