Hey all, some site comments

This site ain’t broke; don’t fix it. :disguised_face:

This is a very nice analogy. I like it!

i would not do that, destroy a review light.

my review will be about what i can tell without doing that, which i think is enough.

most people cannot tell what is good or bad inside a light anyway.

even if you showed them and explained.

That’s what i was thinking too, very poetic of CNCman, didn’t know he was so talented…And good to hear from ya CNC, hope you didn’t have bad damage from the storm.

I find the system we have is great, i am impressed so many people are willing to put their time and energy into testing and measuring budget lights.

If someone wants to put together and find funding for a parallel review system than thats great too. But i find what we already have more than adequate, though i would love to see reviews from engineers who can tear lights down to the components on the PCB and can analyze drivers and run tests to see if they would pass CE, UL and other certifications.

But this would be major bucks.

BTW automakers and their suppliers do such things, i once worked for one for a short time.

Some of TomE’s teardowns found some interesting things. Lack of thermal grease or poor quality grease. Shelfs that were not thick or flat. These can give us an idea of the QC or lack there of. Also can help the non modder get started showing how to get into their lights. He also searched for the sources of parasitic drain, things like that. Fluff reviews can be nice also just for UI descriptions and stepdown reports. Things of that nature.

long time lurker, IMO a “dark mode” would be a great addition to the website.

This should be first priority imo.

Concerning reviews and teardowns…

I do some reviews, some from lights sent by mfrs, others bought myself. Some I dismantle, others I don’t, specially the ones I am not sure if will be able to put back together without damage.

I don’t like having a pile of junk or unused lights around.
Reviews take a lot of time to do, either doing runtime/Amp draw/ whatever or not.

In the end, either with or without tests or teardowns, either being bought or offered for review, either it is mainstream or underground flashlight, you can ear the sound of crickets…

So the effort put on teardowns and reassemble (to take beamshots later on) sometimes is not worth it in terms of ackowledgement.
Being a hobby, I do what I can and want my lights and I can try to do some stuff when asked about,but that normally implies time and sometimes it is not recognized, appreciated or needed.

I’ve always enjoyed your reviews. Hope I remembered to thank you, if not, thanks.

Unfortunately this does not work with my browser on Android.

tks for the link. I do use dark reader. built-in support would be more stable though. 3rd party extensions sometimes break with browser updates.

[quote=Unheard]

Unquestionably, the reviews on the manufacturer-supplied lights take an enormous amount of work, but is it really that beneficial, especially when multiple reviews of the same light end up repeating the same work?

What do I expect from a teardown? Some idea of how the light works, how well it is built, its modification potential, what kind of parts it uses, etc. For example, I saw a photo of a certain Zebralight driver board, and was able to read the part number from the microprocessor (a particular PIC model). By looking up the specs of that MCU, I could see it had enough memory etc. to be able to run Anduril. So that tells me there is some hope of being able to reflash the Zebralight and turn it into an Anduril light. THAT is information that I find interesting.

Also, look at the driver pics on lygte-info. You can see from how some of them are put together (multiple boards at right angles etc) that it would be amazing for a light with that driver to survive a few drops or vibration. If a light is made like that, the photo is valuable user info.

As for how the light is doing in reality, I think it is enough to say “I got this light, I liked it for X features, and ran into Y issues. Here (url) is the manufacturer’s page about it where you can find many nice pictures, so I won’t bother taking more marketing-style photos of it. Some comparable lights are Z and W and here are a few comparison notes.” And if it’s a technical type of review with a runtime graph, a vibration test would also be great, but I haven’t seen anyone doing these. (Vibration test = put the light on a paint shaker and run it for a while, at freezing and hot temperatures if you really want to be hardcore). Any light calling itself “rugged” or “tactical” should be tested like that by the manufacturer, but I doubt that many budget lights actually are. This is one area where Surefire used to be pretty good.

I’ve been told porting Anduril to a PIC would be a major pita due to the MCU dependant tricks used.

But ok, you have a point.

I totally agree

Seriously though, I try to make all reviews a tear down - can't really tell what's goin on til you open it up and look, if possible. Always seem to find something. Just wish I know more about the electronics, but I'll try taking high qual pics of all the electronics. Guess if a light is so tightly glued, it can always be cut open, and if I knew a light was free and can be destroyed, then there would be no hesitation.

Sometimes I do feel guilty though nit-picking at details on a donated light. One light I was given to review I felt so bad about ripping it, so below rated specs, that I never did end up posting the review on it. I feel though that was a mistake and won't repeat it - should have posted it, many do, and sort of gloss over the fact the manufacturer heavily over-rated it, but I won't do that anymore (sorry freeme!).

I do feel giving manufacturers benefit of the doubt. I'm ok with spec'd lumens up to ~15% over what I test, there's just too many variables, and the maukka lumens standards had been ~12% under what I've seen spec'd from top name brand manufacturers (ThruNite, NiteCore, etc.) in the past.

I should though do and publish runtime tests, because I totally agree - it's rarely spec'd by the manufacturers. The standards clearly state the 30 sec rule, so after 30 secs, it seems ok if anything happens. Also beamshots, least on a white wall, will tell you quite a bit about the beam, though personally, I'm not too fussy about the patterns - what we have today with LED technology is so much better than the black center hole of lights from the past. But still, I can appreciate the demand and interest of overall beam quality.

There's so many other things of interest:

  • parasitic drain, across modes if relevant
  • battery size compatibility
  • weight and dims
  • accurate amp draw (various modes, cells, etc.)
  • driver design details
  • charging circuitry (amps, compatibility, etc.)
  • quality of anodizing - not sure even how to do this, but if you can damage the light, then you could come up with a standard test of maybe sand paper, file, or some other means that can be consistently applied and compared
  • the optics - usually not directly rated/reviewed but the resulting output, beam pattern, and throw are all results

Sure there's more.... For any review, always better to keep it short, well organized, and able to use as a reference on specs.

I buy all the lights I have reviewed.
If someone sends me a free light, it would get the same review.
I have had two manufacturers contact me about doing reviews. I told them I would report on the good and the bad.
No free lights so far. Perhaps my lack of a paypal account had something to do with it.

Pulling some lights apart is easy-peezy.
Some take divine intervention. And way more than just a screwdriver.
Since I’m buying lights for my own use, I don’t want to take the chance of bricking one just to see the guts.
Though I do like seeing teardowns - particularly if it’s something I own.

I think the majority of reviews here are done for interest. And yes there are a few that do look “sponsored”.
Spending days to make runtime graphs, do a write up, and take good photos is certainly not something to do unless you are in it for the joy of contributing.
And then - sometimes - crickets.
All the Best,
Jeff

The runtime graphs particularly seem time consuming if done manually. I’ve done a few informal ones without even any graphs, and it was a pain. I think HKJ has a fairly automated setup and that must help a lot. I don’t know how other people do it. It would be nice to have a standardized, simple setup for this, e.g. ESP32 board in a box with light and temperature sensors and some logging software. You’d put the light in the box, start the program, and later download the measurements.

I find the studio-quality photos nice to look at, and if the reviewers make those to enjoy exercising their photography skills, that’s great. But they do look like marketing. I’m happy with a few phone camera snapshots of bits that I can’t easily see in the manufacturer’s pictures, with the rest as text. I reviewed a number of lights on CPF, and the reviews were just writeups of my impressions. I don’t remember ever including pictures, and if I did, they were unquestionably crappy pictures intended to just convey some kind of information.

Also, maybe it’s just me, but while I do care about beam quality, I find I don’t look at beam shots very much. It’s enough to have a text description: smooth floody beam with pleasing warm color, that sort of thing.

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No damage to home but work is without power for another 1 to 3 weeks. The wind blew hard here, but no trees down. We were on the east side of Ida and its surprising how 30 miles can change the landscape.
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The reason so many trees and electrical lines are down is because we had a record rain fall this year, and it rained for weeks daily soaking the ground making it soft and muddy until the day Ida hit.
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I’m glad to hear you are ok, and to see that you have internet. I hope the area recovers quickly.