review: Maxtoch Xsword L2K LEP flashlight (2021 edition) reaching over 3km

My video review is almost finished, should be up by tomorrow night of the L3K. It’s taken me many, many hours to pull this one off.

If it does not let you see in the dark, it’s not a flashlight. It may be something else, but not a flashlight. The LEP is a direct contradiction of light in general. It really has more characteristics of a laser than a flashlight. I think the image presented makes that very clear.

Yesterday evening i was playing a bit with the L2K and WT90.
The L2K throws way farther, but the beam of the WT90 is fantastic! It might not reach 2,5km but the beam is a lot bigger and way more useful as it lights up a lot more with very limited spill

Absolutely, I would never buy an LEP, I just grabbed one for a review and getting a reviewer’s discount it was a great opportunity to try an LEP.

Immediately regretted it after seeing just how difficult it was to capture the beam on camera. Flashaholics channel on youtube only uses reflective buildings, but on a farm it’s so much more difficult.

Since there’s zero light pollution the camera can’t use auto focus, so I need to do everything manually.

I find building footage quite deceiving for the viewer as it’s an entirely different story with real world use

I find beam angles below 3° to be rapidly declining in usefulness, especially for distances <1/2 their max range. Even then, often times a light with less peak intensity but wider spot provides better visibility. I’ve never tried an LEP, but I do have 1mm² Osram aspheric and fresnel throwers that are quite useful for urban environments or areas with light/reflective objects in the foreground. My thinking on this LEP tech is that it’s best suited to short focal length optics <40mm Ø. Cd/lm is just too high otherwise. Maybe they’d be great through binoculars?

Review is uploading, should be finished in 4 hours….slow rural broadband

Youtube corrupted my file on completion. I’ve had to start again, damn it.

Review is now live :slight_smile: finally after 8 hours lol

Now I need to sell this LEP, I’ll never use it again. I’ll list it in New Zealand’s hunting forum, I’m sure someone will grab it

Anyone up on where I can find the cheapest price for xsword lep?

You can try asking Maxtoch on AliExpress for a discount.

There's a discount coupon on my site for the L2K.

https://1lumen.com/review/maxtoch-xsword-l2k/

Thanks, I read the review but missed the coupon. I’m thinking I might go with L2Kvn, though I wish that one was also 2S.

I wouldn’t. As far as I know, Vinh mods it with a linear driver which means the light will decrease in brightness as the battery drains which makes it much worse than stock.

Laser diodes have a Vf of around 4v which a single lithium ion cannot maintain.

Good point. I’ve emailed him some questions. I’m not sure linear would matter much for how I’ll use it, but I definitely don’t want it to cycle through modes when I run the light for less than 5 seconds.

I will use it in 2s to 30s bursts, probably 30s to 120s in between. Total run time might be 5 minutes, and I’ll have backup batteries on hand.

CLEAR LENS WORKAROUND

This may not work for everyone; but you can easily sand or polish off the green tint (it’s only colored on one side). I don’t hunt, and I never used the green lens. This worked well, and took maybe 3 minutes; Can’t even tell it wasn’t always clear either.

Thanks for the idea!

Personally, I would rather pay $2-$3 for a clear glass lens

Impressive light!

I have never used a LEP but always wondered if the amp draw was so low why most of these lights struggle to maintain turbo? Is it because the laser module is more sensitive to heat? driver output voltage?

Specially the jetbeam which hard drops to about 50% of the output

Because the L2K uses 2 cells where most LEP lights use single cell design.
Single cell lights draw 2 times as much.

As I understand the blue lasers in these lights run optimally at around 4V.