$1 Budget Beamer Beaters

Ya need to head over to the new Cheapest Budget Light Forum (CBLF) over at CPF. They THRIVE on this kinda stuff. :open_mouth:

PS. Ya do realize these are intended mainly for distribution to muggies, right?

Watt ya want us to doo give ’em Surefires and Nitecores? :laughing:

PSS. We’re not elitists here. We just pretend to be. :+1:

The beauty of a really cheap light is people who don't mod ..(because they feel like they have very little talent) OR ( hate to screw up a decent light) get the opportunity to take a chance and might realize that they made the light better . , A cheap light gives all of us a chance to try something new without any real risk.

Nobody is forcing you to read or post in this thread in the AAA flashlights forum, but you obviously can’t stay away—and it’s because you aren’t sure that this isn’t the best new $1 AAA- batteries-included flashlight out there, right? Or are you just slummin’ down here with the cheap suits.

i understand the hesitancy, but if you don’t like the beav, walmar will take it back and give you a refund, no questions asked.

Heck you can open the tail and remove the plastic separator while in the store and give it a try there—don’t even have to buy it if you don’t like it.

But if you try one there is a huge variation, none of your cheap beamers will even come close.

Budget means Value, not price. Good Value for your money is good for the Budget.

That it sells for a low price is just a bonus.

Grabbed a few of these today that look like post #5 with OT.50L printed on the tube. They’re extremely cool white and on the throwy side. For comparison, left to right:

Convoy S2+ 219C 4000K
Wurkkos FC11 LH351D 5000K
Emisar D4V2 XP-L HI 6500K
Walmart OT.50L ???K

There’s noticeable tint difference among the four I bought, with two slightly rosy and two slightly green. In my super-scientific bathroom ceiling bounce test, my luxmeter app read about 50% higher than the FC11’s “50LM” setting (using Eneloops) so the OT.50L’s 50 lumen claim is probably accurate, possibly conservative.

Butt knot for watt yer thinkin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Heller

I don't know much of anything about western snakes...enough to know that there's a damn lot of them and most of them mean business. Snake latin and species/subspecies/varieties are weird, though, lots more going on than with most other areas of biology. Pretty common for someone to tack on their name upon confirmation of a new species, etc...like astronomers getting to name their stars.

And why not? All those western Cossacks had were poisonous snakes and cactus plants.

Anyone do any run time test on these?

Will they run on eneloops without overheating/dimming the LED?

i suspect they would be fine on eneloops.
on a 18650 at full charge i get 230 ma.
after it runs a while i can dump out the cell and reach a finger to the board.
i can hold it there no problem.
several full cycles with a 2200mah cell show no degradation.

Thanks!

How long did it run on the 2200 mAh cell?

JagerLion said……

“There’s noticeable tint difference among the four I bought, with two slightly rosy and two slightly green. In my super-scientific bathroom ceiling bounce test, my luxmeter app read about 50% higher than the FC11’s “50LM” setting (using Eneloops) so the OT.50L’s 50 lumen claim is probably accurate, possibly conservative.”

So lemme get this straight, of the four OT.50Ls that ya bought all of them were ‘cool white’, yet with varying tints, green to rosy, correct?

PS. Would ya consider doing a TCR on all four? I’m curious if YOU see any variation in true color rendition between the two tints mentioned. I realize this is subjective to your eyes only.

(TCR definition is in my signature. This can be segregated per individual colors. For instance one emitter may have browns stand out as truer, while another yellows, etc. Just trying to determine how consistent the emitters in the 50.L’s are. Butt I doubt there’s little if any TCR individual/overall color shift on these. Slight tint variations from one 50.L to the next notwithstanding. Kennybobby has pretty much confirmed this and I trust his judgement.)

How appropriately coincidental. One hell of a reptile.

PS. Speakin’ of coincidences, I had a butt knot this morning. Cramp. I know, TMI. :laughing: :open_mouth:

I ran my four samples 7 hours on Eneloops. 4 hours full or near-full brightness. Visible dimming around 5-6 hours. A few lumens or less at 7 hours. Immediately tested the batteries after pulling at the 7 hour mark and got voltages from 0.82V to 1.02V.

Correct. Tint difference isn’t dramatic enough for my phone to capture well, and not enough to be annoying (to me anyway). The left two appear slightly green, right two slightly rosy.

To me the TCR/CRI appears quite poor. Take that with a large grain of salt because of my dislike for super cool temps, and I’m bad at estimating CRI anyway.

A couple other pics. Disassembly is easy enough. A firm counterclock twist and the glued-on top comes off:

And the emitter. The dome isn’t scratched up like it appears, I think those are reflections:

Anyway, obviously not for serious use but definitely worth a dollar just to mess around with.

Nice breakdown, thanks for taking the time. And thanks to OP (and Snakebite) for sharing the find. Snagged 5 today while in the store on unrelated business. Glove box and junk drawer stuffers for a totally painless price. I did throw a Sofirn 18650 in one just out of curiosity. Worked fine, but obviously a little loose around the belt line. 21700 was too long, but fit diameter wise.

Yup, Much thanks for the info!

4 + hrs on eneloops sounds pretty good.

Really not sure what the big deal is.
LOWES has a three pack of all metal lights for $10 they are quite decent and all metal construction. Same 3 x AAA.

You mean the ones with the off center emitter and yellow tinted beams that cost 3x as much? Oh hell yeah, stock up! :star: :laughing: :beer:

i get a good 10 hours from a laptop salvage cell

Heh. There's a liniment for that...

Now, a too-common friend of ours locally...Crotalus horridus...did get his name for a reason. I wish snakes fluoresced like scorpions do so you could see them at night with a good UV. Then again, that would probably be even more unsettling than the scorps...it's incredible just how many scorpions can be scuttling around after the sun sets.

At the full up big box WM, not the little neighborhood, they had a huge assortment of lights from several brands, types, etc.

There was the 10-pack of aluminimun tubes AAA, but they are shorter and have a square emitter and reflector, $9.82 with batteries, but i think they will have a yellow stained beamer.

There was a 3 tubes+2 headlights pack with 15 AAA of a much longer and fatter diameter Al tube AAA light with a really long front spring, it might even hold a 20700 cell. i tested one and it has the square emitter and an annoying yellow blob on the edge of the central beam, same price as the 10-pack. Maybe useful as a host for 18650 or bigger, but the beam sux.

A USB rechargeable lithium, 750 lemons with hi and lo modes, $29. Did not test it.

Lots of bling-bling, a feast for your iballs if you don’t mind going offline shopping… :laughing:

Gawd, Apple’s taking over everything