[Review] NOCTIGON K9.3 by Hank Wang

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

I really love the IF25 but one thing I’d incorporate in a tint ramping light is a Supercharger™ mode that uses all the lights, maybe a triple tap from Turbo etc.

regards
Andreas

Thanks for those beam shots

Yes, the K9.3 is really missing a way to turn on all LEDs at the same time. I guess that’s a hardware limitation though.

Thank you for the pics, yet,
Zebra has turbo?

I had wondered about that too ^

I had emailed Hank asking for some interesting emitter combinations and he obliged, I just haven’t ordered a k9 yet. But as I requested my emitter wants, I thought how it’d be nice if both drivers could be turned on at the same time. Also, I would contemplate getting 12 emitters exactly the same, and use both drivers at once exclusively.

SC700d maxes out at around 3000lm, most of those lights have several times higher max output… for a short time.

Ok so I was out walking with my 9.3 and also my Acebeam W10 LEP and thought “how sweet would it be to have an LEP CH2 option?”

Probably difficult / impossible from a technical standpoint but a beautiful beam with zero spill combined with “ XP-L HI V2 5D 4.000K” on CH1 would be mesmerizing

From a technical standpoint, it’s probably not too difficult. Could have a small LEP (W10 size) surrounded by a ring of LEDs behind TIRs. Just need a manufacturer to build it, and it would probably be really expensive.

The market for such a light would be small until LEP prices come down. I suspect we’ll see something like this in the future.

Wow thanks for the info. I’d pay mad money for a Hank LEP creation

My W30 shines a much tighter, more powerful beam. I’m holding off on buying another one until there is some sort of giant leap in power. Maybe in a year or two they’ll have 100,000 lumen LEPs or something even better!

Great hobby

:-D :-D :-D

100,000lm is maybe a bit too optimistic. Acebeam just released their W50 LEP with up to 1,400lm output. It costs a leg and an arm and is available to government authorities only, at least over here in Germany. :-(

Ha yeah I saw that too. They have a lot of nerve thinking I’m going to beg them for the privilege of give them a few thousand $ for a light with capabilities that will be available in one for a few hundred dollars in a year or two

an LEP in the middle of like 9 xpl-hi 4000k leds, on two channels. That would be so amazing! Who needs 100,000 lumens. I’d take that 7,000 lumen light. Hell, I’d rake a combo of a Hank 4000 lumen light with an LEP on channel #2. Just the LEP needs to KICK, like > 1.5km :smiley:

That sounds amazing!

I got a UI question about the 9.3
After factory reset the aux rainbow mode switches colors nice and slow(around every 2 seconds).
after 7h and going to a random other aux color, and then returning back to rainbow aux with again 7h. Now the changing aux colors change way faster, like every 0,25 seconds. Can I change this rainbow aux speed or do I need to do factory reset to get the slow rainbow aux again.

I hope my little aux story makes sense lol…