A few days ago I bought the Imalent R60C from nealsgadgets.com. The light arrived safely wrapped in a cardboard box without any visible damage. While unboxing I discovered a very visible nick in the anodized bezel, leaving a slightly bitter taste in my mouth concerning Imalent being a premium brand. In order to check if everything works I firstly checked the battery voltages (all 4.02V), which was imho way too high for long term storage. After using the R60C for a brief moment I then noticed a sour, acrid stench inside the battery tube (a bit similar to cat pee). The negative poles of the Imalent batteries had burn marks, possibly from some residue that was burned by the high current. Besides that I did not notice anything unusual in the flashlight at this point of time.
In a next step I used alcohol and cleaned any excess grease from the electrical contact areas (brass ring, face side of the battery tube, springs, terminals of the batteries) to prevent any additional resistance / voltage sagging during operation.
Unfortunately, this flashlight shows a very odd behavior on turbo mode that I was unable to locate and fix so far.
Altough all batteries were fully charged, the light frequently and randomly turns off after triggering turbo mode while sometimes it surprisingly works. I assumed it would have something to do with the temperature sensor but this does not seem to be the case as you can see on the following videos. The tube was always screwed tightly against the head. I also noticed the battery indicator turning red on turbo or blinking red and green even with (almost) fully charged batteries. Obviously, there is some voltage sagging in the electric path. Of course, I did repetitive cleaning of all the electric contact areas but with no success. I know the Imalent MS03 had very similar problems in the first batch (see reviews from The_Flashoholic)... https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/62301
A friend of mine bought another two R60C from Neal and they perform well down to voltages of 3.7V (#1) and 3.5V (#2), without any shutting off from turbo at all.
Please excuse my miserable skills in taking these videos.
Video #1:
Video #2, taken a few minutes after cooling down the light:
Video #3, taken again after another cooling break:
A few initial thoughts on the root causes:
- defective NTC sensor on the driver, causing wrong thermal sensing
- defective PCBs on the Imalent batteries? (I cannot validate that as I do not have any fitting spare batteries)
- conducting issues on the bottom PCB in the tailcap
Any ideas what I could have overlooked to check/test? Has anyone else successfully solved the above mentioned error pattern?
I sent Neal an e-mail to see what he can do but I doubt he will respond at all. I am torn between raising a PayPal dispute if he fails to respond or requesting support from Imalent's 60 month warranty. The latter case could mean more hassle as Imalent maybe requires me to pay for return shipping to China which is about the price of the light, rendering this option to nonsense.
Thanks for your comments. I will keep you updated about any progress.