Gotta say just received this IF22A and it is a Beast!
Already have the Manker BLF MC13 and was not sure if this Sofirn would be more of the same or better as the head size and TIR appear to be the same.
However with the Sofirn you are getting the new SFT40 and it casts a way bigger badder beam as well as the flashlight shedding heat very well.
With the increased battery size runtimes will be better as well.
Anyway, really like the very compact size, it just glides into side pocket with nothing sharp edged.
Can’t wait to show it off to some friends that I’ll be visiting out of town on Monday night, she’s a keeper and a winner.
on a 40T1 (old rev, better) at 4.18V: 9.0 amps w/tailcap removed
lumens: 1730 at start, 1740 at 10s, 1680 at 30s
throw: 113 kcd (772 meters)
The initial rise in amps is interesting. I've only seen this with higher resistance springs, but I seen the rise with a jumper on the batt- to tube, so eliminating the one spring in the tail. There must be something else in the circuit that reduces resistance as it heats up initially, and confirmed a bypass on the tail spring will boost amps, boosting lumens and kcd.
The lens appears to be uncoated, so it may be possible to get a 5% or so bump by replacing it with a double coated AR. I say "may be" because it's hard to judge the quality of the glass used.
Depending on the type of TIR, a glass lens can really ding the overall efficiency of the optics.
I wonder if the rise in current is from the emitter heating up and Vf dropping. That’s usually not accompanied by rising output, but i suppose the change is subtle enough to be explained that way
Well, I got a FF E01 w/SST-40 (not an EA01), but the TIR optic is different - you can see the LED, but the other differences like the smaller width optic in the E01, and SST-40 vs. SFT-40 has big differences in throw.
I thought I remembered you having an ea01 or the mateminco equivalent… my bad.
I’ve been wondering how the FF might do with the SFT… how close to 100kcd it could hit. My assumption is 220% throw vs an old bin sst40. It oughta be much more pocketable than the if22a.
Could it be possible that as the battery heated up, that the battery's internal resistance decreased allowing a slightly higher voltage to deliver a little more current and increase the brightness before the voltage sag eventually caused the brightness to decrease?
Ohh - tried the MT01 TIR optic in the IF22A and got 124 kcd, though the beam looks different, most would probably say worse - larger hotspot but a bright spot in the center of the hot spot. The optics appear to be designed differently in the center. The IF22A has a larger diffused spot in the optic.
MT01 w/IF22A optic: 73 kcd - beam looks softer, hot spot not as well defined.
(same 5 sec delay, at 5 meters, same cells as-is, not re-charged)
Thanks Tom. I was interested in the differences between the two larger optics… basically the question if they are identical or not… and what the throw ratio was stepping down to the E01. It’s a rare light and not many reviews or posts talk about it, so I wanted a head to head comparison. So thank you!
What this suggests, thanks to your extra testing with swapping the optics around, is that we can expect mid-high 70s kcd for the E01 with an SFT40. I think this is a sweet spot of sorts for maximum throw while staying quite pocketable. Above 34mm head really isn’t comfortable, at least for me as a slender person who wears Levi 511’s. YMMV