[Review] ASTROLUX WP2 LEP - 2.3km spotlight - vs W4/K75

Wish I had as many as Chiinature! Shining his lights in a well lit indoor car park!

Not hating, but your vids are a bit odd in places. Could probably do with some narration (not a computer voice), but obviously they are your vids and your choice.

It won’t happen, so I suggest try a different channel. Plenty about.

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LOL, that actually worked !! :+1:
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Great job on your video ’ The_Flashaholic ‘. :+1:
Very valuable info for us ’Thrower Lovers’ !! :sunglasses:
I try to keep these pics for reference, Thank You !!
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450m
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1.8km / 1.14mi
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Your vids are terrific, and present good information, understandable by relative newbs such as myself. And despite what criticism I’ve read about your beam shots not being reflecive of “the real world”, they sure as heck exemplify much the world I’m out and about in after the sun sets. Your WP1 vid was very informative as well. Keep up the great work

Thank you!

eh? :question:

I tried narration on my older channel and the Yanks couldn’t tell what I was saying because of my Barnsley accent, they were even asking me what my nationality was!

Don’t worry about what others say, you’ve done a great job the information is direct and concise with visual to convey the point.

I find many reviewers not all but many that “Narrate” tend to ramble for no reason as they generally don’t have a script written or planned for what they want to convey about the product and just ramble on with “Um” and “Uh” etc OR they record out doors and the mic just picks up excessive background noise from wind, cars etc.

Just ignore them. You are my go to channel for flashlight reviews, they are always unique and have fantastic beam shots with some epic music!
Keep up your good work!

Thanks Captain!

Resurrecting this old thread to ask Matt (flashaholic) if you prefer the WP2 over the W4? I have owned a W4 for about 6 months, but find the tint very green/purple in areas of the hotspot and corona. It seems like your video implies that the WP2, while being a little less lumens, might have better over beam tint?

I prefer the W4 just for outright throw, but the WP2 does have a nicer tint.

I just can’t yet see enough practical purpose for an LEP light….the laser is just such a tiny area, and diffused it is too dim. They are getting better, but still have a way to go. I just prefer LED thrower for throw, and LED flood for flood. The only practical legal purpose I can see is as a signal light if lost in the wilderness. Now this is based on others showing beamshots only, and might would change my tune if I actually tried using one, because I love throwers with some spill, and the LEP does have amazing throw, even if the tiny area it throws on distant objects is not big enough to see the object well. Perhaps if I had someone I just hated I could really annoy them by shining it in their window from a mile away every night. Is there a practical use for these lights I am ignorant of?

They are professional use for long range signalling, I suspect they’d be good for mountain rescue where you don’t need spill eating into turbo and battery life. They may have long range hunting benefits as spill lights disturb birds which will scare game off.

The practical side is that you can brightly illuminate something far away, which clearly has its purpose. A laser is useless for that because, apart from the monochrome colour, the illuminated area is too small to discern anything, but a LEP has a narrow but still decent field of view. Being completely spill-less it does not give you overview of an area but you can clearly highlight details, which is simply useful sometimes.

(I used to do nightly sail races 20 years ago, if I had my 1Mcd brandless LEP flashlight then it would be sooo much more useful for finding buoys than the big 50W lead-accu halogen spotlights we had back then that worked for 5 minutes and then needed charging for 2 hours. We had a table full of those spotlights charging continuously and still the spotlights were reserved for spotting for seconds and then off again, also because the spill destroyed the night vision of the person steering. While the LEP thrower and 3 spare 26650’s would have lasted all night continuously, with (at least I suspect) a brighter spot.)

Matt, thanks for the quick reply. When the WP2 arrives, I was thinking of letting one go (the W4 or the WP2). Knowing that I have a stable of dedicated LED throwers (including MF05), which LEP do you think I’ll hang on to? Just curious to see if your opinion matches up to mine when I arrives. So if you could only have one, and you had mega throwers as well, which would you choose?

I sold the WP2, I’m not really fussed with tint on throwers, though warmer colours do penetrate the atmosphere better, even though the WP2 is probably the better light I went with outright throw.

Thanks for that reply, when I receive my WP2, I’ll post which one I choose to keep.

Matt, as promised, my follow up post now that I own both the Weltool W4 and the Astrolux WP2.

Pros for W4:

- brighter

- more candela

- heavier construction

  • practically zero spill

Cons for W4:

- uneven hotspot; brighter in the middle

- poor tint, green in the middle, purple on the outside

  • low power mode isn’t “low enough”

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Pros for WP2

- tint is really good for LEP

- hotspot very even in brightness

- hotspot larger than W4, which I’m counting as a win

- switched back / ring UI is nice

- lighter, less front heavy

- guarded back switch

  • two low mods that are significantly more useful than the W4’s low

Cons for WP2

- fairly significant spill (significantly less than traditional LEDs)

- less lumens than the W4

  • less throw than W4

So what it boils down to, is if you want the LEP that is more of a monster, the W4. But since I’m a tint snob, and I like the UI and feel in hand much more for the WP2, I’m actually selling the W4.

Hope this helps someone else decide.