The Convoy database is complete! (but could still use your help)

Convoy has been on my radar for as long as I’ve been working on the flashlight database. It wasn’t possible back then to even consider adding them though. Simon simply didn’t publish hard information about his lights. No information published means no information to go into a database. And that meant no database.

Simon has gradually been improving his product descriptions and now almost half of them might mention LED lumens or candela. But they still have a disorganized mess of Aliexpress listings instead of an actual website. They make it hard for anyone to provide accurate specs and even Simon has complained about it:

↑↑↑Pls ignore above parameters,it’s written by the aliexpress system↑↑↑

color of tailcap is black

color of tailcap is black

Additionally people like myself who want to look at everything in a store are quickly locked out of Aliexpress for acting like a bot. It isn’t a good time for anyone.

Periodically I would check up on Convoy to get an idea of how difficult it would be to clean up the mess. In the most extreme case it was 100% impossible because Simon deleted every page from Aliexpress for 1 month. But things have been improving. There are “only” 167 Aliexpress URLs for his flashlights. Many of these are color variations. For example 33 pages are just for different versions of the S2+. Each of those pages might have 8-16 different combinations of LED selection and driver configuration. It is safe to say that Simon probably sells at least 1000 different flashlights. And those are just the official versions. He’ll put together nearly any custom request too. That probably increases it to 5000 different lights.

I guess it would be possible to make a database of only Convoy products. But that would be quite an undertaking and splitting lights across multiple databases doesn’t help people that much. It would be nearly useless anyway since the vast majority of LED options are never tested for lumens/runtime/candela.

What about looking at it from the other direction? What is the fewest number of lights that Convoy makes? In all there are only 34 different models of flashlight. That is a perfectly reasonable number of products. Maybe people will be okay with the lack of specifications. Or that 150 different combinations are packed into 1 database entry. It would bother me but if you guys are okay with it…. maybe something could be done.

However the entire process would still suck. I enjoy organizing information. Not sleuthing it out. I’ve tried typing up a few to see how bad it is. Its pretty bad. But this is where you guys come in. I’m more than willing to slog through miles of crap when someone has a serious interest in seeing it happen. Sign up for the Patreon and tell me you want to see Convoy happen.

Ultimately it will probably be somewhere in between. Certainly not 1000s but probably more than 34 listings. I do have a habit of giving high CRI lights their own entry and would likely extend that courtesy to Convoy’s high CRI offers.

Mostly this will help people be aware of the variety of models and LED options Simon has. There are a lot of lesser known gems buried in the store. It feels like people only ever talk about 3 or 4 models out of the 34 Convoy makes. For example how many people have heard of the BD03? It has integrated charging for normal 18650s. Costs just $25. And has been around since 2015. This should have been a go-to for gifting to non-flashaholics who didn’t want to bother with charging batteries.

What do you think? Anyone interested?

I think this is very interesting. All products should have a standardized technical sheet like this.

I’m with you on this. Not a person who always needs spoon-fed information - I quite like researching myself. However, with the Convoy range, I sometimes find it hard to find the diameters of the drivers and led stars of the particular models, with modding in mind. Also as somewhat of a noob, it can be hard to fathom which driver is suitable for each led emitter.

Convoy at FastTech

They give a wealth of information

I came across your battery database, i really liked it.
Having a database of products is incredibly awesome.
I wish i could help beyond just saying its an excellent idea.

I wholeheartedly support this endeavor.

Look a little closer. It is exactly the same as the information that Simon puts on Aliexpress. It is nice that it is cleaner and better organized. But still lacking. There are no OTF lumens or runtimes or candela for the Convoy lights.

I do appreciate that Fasttech keeps the old pages up forever. (That BD01 is nowhere on Convoy’s store.) And Fasttech will provide the date that it was added to their site. That is annoying to find otherwise. But that date is the only real piece of information they add.

You forgot the driver type search…

linear is Garbage

Unfortunately there are very few reviewers who do volts/amps/lumens tests in their reviews. No point in doing a driver search until that is more common.

But I understand you. I used to feel exactly the same way. Here is what changed my mind: try to design a multimode driver on a 17mm disc. It is possible but high powers are pretty hard to do a good job at. It is surprisingly easy to make something that has worse efficiency than a linear driver.


I have learned another thing about Convoy. Simon rarely says if an LED is high CRI or not. (Except for the very recent FC-40.) Warm white high CRI XM-L2 exists. High CRI 219C exist. High CRI SST-20 exist. High CRI LH351D exist. Simon uses these LEDs but doesn’t say.

There are some comments that he’s made here at BLF that suggest 2 of the 4 LH351D bins he’s using are high CRI? But he doesn’t actually name the bins at Aliexpress so how can anyone know.

After the Jetbeam RRT01 219C fiasco I won’t give companies the benefit of the doubt for using a traditionally high CRI LED.

I think getting Convoy on the list will be fanrastic. Even the most basic information will be helpful. :white_check_mark:

Here it is: Parametrek Flashlights

That was just as grueling as was expected.

I had to make a lot of compromises along the way. I’m not sure Convoy will ever be “complete” to my satisfaction. But this was as close as I could humanly get it.

However maybe you could get it better! Did I miss any really good and informative reviews? Could I have grouped together similar models differently?

In particular I’d really appreciate throw numbers. I’ve used what I could find from reviews but there are plenty of people who have posted numbers in various comments and those are much harder to dig up.

Please give it a look-over and see if you can fill any gaps.

Excellent work! Wow. This endevor I'm sure took a ton of your time and effort to compile.

So, i hesitate to point out flaws but there are a couple of niggles i see at first glance - just looking at the S2+ where's the SST40 LED? And the link provided to Aliexpress goes to only the KR CSLNM1.23 (red light) LED. The primary version and biggest seller is with the SST40 and it's putting out up to 1800 lumens at max of 5 amps.

There are similar discrepancies with other models but wanted to start with that one.

You weren’t looking at the S2. You were looking at the S2 (monochromatic). Hit the [±] button to expand the full details for any particular model. Scroll down a little further and you’ll see other versions of the S2+.

I have doubts about the SST-40 version being the most popular. There are no serious reviews of that model. I’ve found an XP-L HI review and a several XM-L2 reviews.

I had no intention to insult and was only trying to be helpful. I am a big fan of the brand and have more Convoy's in my collection than any other brand. I also appreciate you doing this work in trying to make sense of what the brand has to offer.

You are correct, it was the monochromatic, the "regular" S2+ is listed further down. If the list was in alphabetical order, and all versions of the S2+ were listed one after the other, I would probably not have made this mistake and overlooked the fourth listing of the S2+.

To determine best sellers of any particular model of Convoy you do a search of the store contents, in this case the S2+, then do a sort by "Orders" and the S2+ grey SST40 has the most orders:

https://convoy.aliexpress.com/store/group/S-series/330416_519075860.html?spm=a2g0o.store_pc_groupList.8148362.6.17a814f2wAvq95&SearchText=s2&origin=n&SortType=orders_desc&g=yhttps://convoy.aliexpress.com/store/group/S-series/330416_519075860.html?spm=a2g0o.store_pc_groupList.8148362.6.17a814f2wAvq95&SearchText=s2&origin=n&SortType=orders_desc&g=y

The link for this model of S2+ is:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33009862476.html?spm=a2g0o.store_pc_groupList.8148356.2.546814f2LqtHSDhttps://www.aliexpress.com/item/33009862476.html?spm=a2g0o.store_pc_groupList.8148356.2.546814f2LqtHSD

The link in the database listing under this fourth S2+ series takes you to here:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32820745681.htmlhttps://www.aliexpress.com/item/32820745681.html

Again, I'm trying to be helpful. For me, it would be nice to have the listing in alphabetical order. That way the different variants are listed one after the other, and mistakes like the one I just made about missing the fourth variation of the S2+ would not happen so easily. The brand with all it's varieties is confusing enough and hence you making this nice database.

Max I am completely befuddled by your reply. Why are you walking on eggshells? Why are you so worried about “insulting” me? What on earth did I say to elicit this response?


I wouldn’t place too much faith in those “order” numbers. Aliexpress does weird things with them. (Same with the number of reviews.) For example adding up every XM-L2 light on that page gives a sum of 671 total. In all of the 7 or 8 years that Simon has been offering the XM-L2 S2+ I find it unbelievable that he’s only sold 671 of them.

What other issues did you find?

I have this XM-L Convoy S2 from 2013, not reflected on your site. You mention XM-L2.
https://www.fasttech.com/products/1653/10002364/1195010

Thanks for all of your hard work! I'll have to browse around your site again, it's been awhile since I last did but I was very impressed (and appreciative) the first time I discovered it.

Two things:

1) The T2 should probably have two entries to reflect the first edition that only took AA 1.5v cells and is still available for sale at Simon's store and elsewhere. The dual AA/14500 is a little newer. I think currently there are four product pages for the newer one (with and without included cells) and one page for the older model.

2) If you're not tired of hunting data unicorns just yet, one of the things that I would LOVE to see in such an awesome database as this would be the sizes of driver boards and tail cap boards. Just like the electrical measurements, many (most) reviews don't include these extremely helpful little details but it sure helps to know them if you may be buying a host or light with plans to modify. With our usual long shipping waits it would be convenient to be able to confidently order parts separately from said hosts and avoid additional wait times.

As an aside, how many hours do you suppose you have put into this database over the years? If only you got frequent flyer miles for those...

I just checked uv versions, s2 also have LG and Seoul brand led versions