Lumintop Ant Man (14500 LEP flashlight)

How easy is it to swap the driver for something higher powered?

The driver seems glued: it is not retained by anything visible, and some light prying does not make it move.

Such a great form factor ruined by a shitty driver. Thanks for the review!

Is the bezel removable?

If there are exposed driver wires under the bezel, perhaps you can tap the driver out from the front. For LED flashlights I typically use a narrow metal pick or a round wooden toothpick. Press it through a wire hole to the top of the driver, feel around to try to make sure the tip isn’t touching anything important, then lightly hammer the back of the pick with the side of a pliers. That’s usually enough to break any glue.

My biggest concern with replacing the driver is not getting the stock driver out. Rather it’s avoiding burning up the laser with a new driver. I don’t know enough about lasers to know what they can and cannot take.

I have a feeling this light has a thread in pill assembly.

I have a few images in my review in case you're interested: https://1lumen.com/review/lumintop-ant-man/

Thanks Marco. It does kind of look like the copper pill as seen in the astrolux lights, no? Maybe smaller?

I’m not so sure. The driver in the bottom of the head is not in a pill. It appears to be press-fit or glued in place.

There is what could be a small copper pill visible inside the top of the light. It could be a small pill holding the laser module, but not the driver. Or it might just a retaining ring holding an internal lens over the phosphor.

Great review! Let’s hope lumintop reaches out and addresses the problems you found!

The LEP module is a cilinder that looks like threaded in place from the battery side. There is probably two wires coming out of the module that are soldered onto the driver, and the driver is then glued in place. To access the module you need to remove the driver. There is no holes from the front that can get you the option to poke with something. There are two small holes in the driver though, you may use that for prying but with the risk to ruin something on the driver.

So i can confirm that when Ant goes off, battery is at 3.2V (that is when i noticed it’s off) and pulling 23mA.

Recharching battery now and i’ll try again what are Amps when fully loaded

Thanks.. that's still lower than my 100+mA when it turns off, although still quite high for parasitic drain.

Curious how deep it will discharge if you let it sit ;)

wonder if a protected battery could prevent overdischarge

until a better driver is found

Hi Jonathan,

I think it was designed to be used with their protected 14500 in mind. I think it should work well with it.

good to know,
all the test reports were unprotected high drain flat tops, I think

still concerned that the parasitic drain is excessive… and hope for an improved driver

atm it seems to me that the GT Nano w 10440 tube, might be the better thrower option… better beam, more reach, less money

or GT Micro or GTA?

while the Ant Man may be disappointing, it seems to be the best 14500 thrower for it’s size. All other 14500 throwers which outperform it have a bigger head. Hopefully Lumintop sells enough of the Ant Man to entice other manufacturers to produce more affordable LEPs.

You can find more hardware details here.

LEP module is small enought to fit into AAA sized flashlight.

https://imgur.com/gallery/SI6Q4W1

Pretty lame design, imo.

No design at all, they just made an empty flashlight body and i guess they bought that LEP module somewhere else.

But they were the first to do a really small LEP flashlight, and it works (although some better than others), and it turned out a better throwing flashlight than anything before in this size. Lumintop gets my credits for that.

And now a better one must be made.