[Review] NOCTIGON K9.3 by Hank Wang

I understand why it couldn’t be/wasn’t done for the K9.3, but I’d still love to see a tint ramping light from Hank.

Oh yeah me too. Great idea

2000K/2200K + 6500K E21A tint ramping light would be an instant buy for me.

Hank does tint mixing… I have a D18 with an even mix of 2700 and 4000’s. Beautiful soft yellow beam like an old maglight

Mixes are one thing, I mean a light like the Sofirn IF25 or LT1 that can smoothly and gradually transition between each extreme. Having the top and bottom end of most white lighting - and everything in between! - from a single light is super appealing to me.

That’s wild… I didn’t even know there were single LEDs that can vary the tint of the light they emit. I figured it was done by having multiple LEDs of different tints and adjusting the intensity of each of them to get the different tints

I think the 4 LED's are wired on 2 different output channels, therefore the firmware can control the levels of each pair independently. So if you have a pair of WW tint and a pair of CW tint, by mixing percentages, you can have a resulting beam of NW and every tint between WW and CW.

I tried to get Hank to make a D4 or KR4 with tint ramping… but he didn’t like the idea.

The downsides are:

  • It would be even harder to wire together… and the D4v2 is already quite a pain to assemble.
  • Less total light output, especially at extreme CCTs.
  • Less-smooth beam, especially at the extreme CCTs.
  • Would need to design and manufacture a new MCPCB.
  • Would need to either reduce to one power channel per LED group, or design a new driver with 4 power channels instead of 2.

The upsides are:

  • Ramp from warm white to cool white or anything between.
  • Rosy tint on middle CCTs.
  • Hank could reduce the number of models he carries… instead of 4 tints for each of 3 LED types, he could carry a single model for each LED type.

It would be cool to have, but it’s also a lot of work to make it happen… and he’s pretty busy.

I have better idea

A 9.3 with 9 throwy and three floody optics would sell really well I presume.

Edit: Before anyone posts this Star Wars video - yes, yes, then this is not the light we’re looking for.

Oh yes, outside wide optics and inside narrow . Zoom with no moving parts hehe

Did you have a chance to show him this D4V2 mod?

https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/64468

I think something like this would sell very well, too. But even w/o UV light it would probably mean a lot of work as it requires serial connection to each single LED.

It’s cool, but no. That mod takes everything he was concerned about… and turns it up to eleven.

The latter is exactly what is done. By smoothly shifting the power up and down for both channels (each wired to the LED (s) of a single color temp) you can smoothly ramp through the whole range of color temp they provide, with the actual temps of those LEDs obviously being the min and max settings.

Is there anyway to flash this light to the first version of Anduril?
My light s buggy as F*CK.
It keeps switching from the simple to advanced UI, secondaries don`t do what they`re supposed to do or sometimes don`t set with the 7 clicks or holds, etc., etc.
I`m really trying to like this light but it ain`t makin` it easy lol

You should probably contact Hank, I think that’s more likely to be a faulty switch or driver.

You know, the funny thing about that is I received mine later than expected because there was a problem with the first run of boards lol

Would it be completely ridiculous for Hank to offer a pocket sized HID light? I don’t even know if that’s possible but I love the Firefoxes FF5

I don't think that'll happen. It also depends on what you call pocket sized.

My FF4 is somewhat jacket pocket sized (and I love it, too) but I have never seen or heard of a truly pocketable HID, like a single cell format.

Also, ballasts, to my knowledge, are a lot more complex and bigger than LED drivers. You'll never get a ballast driving a, say, 30-40W HID anywhere as small as a simple FET driver.

Also, why? The thing HID's had going for them up until recently was intensity at a reasonable efficiency. Now you can more or less get the same performance out of an SBT90. Furthermore, HID's are great search lights but not well suited for EDC or other casual uses. They don't like being turned on and off repeatedly and need time to warm up to reach full potential.

Last but not least it's just not what Hank does, it's a different design process using parts he has (I assume) far less experience working with.

Very interesting… I didn’t know any of that

I have to say though, I like my FF5 far more than my K1 SBT90.2. That gorgeous yellow 20 foot wide beam seems to go on forever. I also like that I can keep it on for a long time until the batteries are drained without the heat issues from my LEDs