[Review] Sofirn HS10 LH351D 5000K

Hello everyone!

I just finished my video review of small sofirn headlamp with high CRI LH351D LED.
Hope you will enjoy watching. As always suggestions and questions are welcome Smile




**Runtimes**


Color temperature measurements and PWM using OPPLE Light Master Pro (measurements are taken at beam center):

Thank you.

Can’t believe I missed this review. Thanks for the graphs!

I agree with what you said. The battery time is not great, but expected for a small cell. And regulation would be awfully nice. Have 2 of these (5000K and 2700K) and I like these little headlamps. The Hs10 is not perfect, but tiny, lightweight and a good deal when on sale (got mine for around 200 SEK). I use them mainly for short periods of time, e.g. to have good light when emitter swapping. The 2700K one I want to test for reading at night, but haven’t gotten around to actually use it that way.

Had big winds here ; no power for 3 days ; only thing to do was reading, so i tested both 5000 and 2700 HS10 . Once you try the 2700, the 5000 isn’t in the game . On low it’s perfect, but you get the red button pretty soon .

Oooof, 3 days without power. I can imagine that causes a few more problems than no (wired) light. Our power outages stopped the day they buried the power cables in the ground. Kind of miss it, life got more boring now :wink:

Concerning the red button light, imho it goes on way too early. It’s not really a problem, but I tend to ignore it until it starts blinking.

My freezer is full of probably wasted food . Cleaning, tasting, throwing away, buying new stuff . Ya, boring is nice.

That’s indeed the downside. That’s one thing I don’t miss. Or be on vacation and come back only to discover your fridge has become a biohazard :confused:

Hi guys, could you please advice me what is the best color temperature for this lamp? Iam gonna use it for camping/trekking.
Thank you

stegi, welcome to BLF. Sorry nobody answered you right away. Color temperature is mostly personal preference and it’s only been somewhat recently that we have so many choices (which is great!). Sometimes the color (and/or the tint…which is a little different) will vary from emitter type to emitter type, or between batches of emitters that the manufacturers buy for their lights. The Samsung emitters in this model are pretty decent all around. Most of the cheap flashlights use pretty cold temperature emitters that are 6000K or higher and they usually lean towards having a little or a lot of blue in the beam, sometimes purple too. Around that 6000 level is where that starts to be typical and the “white” may not be so white anymore but that can depend on the emitter and how it is paired with a reflector/optic. Better lights like this Sofirn and many others will have nicer beams, much more useful and pleasing to the eye.

The 5000K in this is a nice clean white, still pretty “bright” and colors will look good. At lower modes it will not look quite the same (maybe a tad warmer, probably with some tint change that will be a little greenish). It’s a good all around color temperature.

If you like a little warmer color, the 4000K is a noticeable change but it’s still nice and crisp in high modes. At lower modes it will look like there is less of a change in color/tint. Warmer is a little easier on the eyes if you might be cooking or dining with some white or brightly colored objects, or if you read a (paper) book. It’s also better if you need to shine the light in mist, light fog, or really dusty air where the particulates reflect the light back to your eyes and can be blinding. The warmer temp makes that more bearable but even better is if you hold the light down way low along your leg/thigh (doesn’t help as much in heavy rain…). I think it’s still ok for snow, too, although some people like the whiter higher temp colors for snow covered ground.

If they still have the 2700K available, that is Very Warm and gets pretty yellow. I don’t like that much myself but I think it’s nice for area lighting and close tasks. It makes it harder to see some color details and contrast in nature but that just depends.

Lots of words but hopefully that helps you decide if you can’t see the differences in person before buying.

Thank you very much for detailed explanation. I made my own research lately with the same outcome and ordered 5000k a week ago. Cant wait to get it and test it :slight_smile:

I have hs10 in 2700K and 5000K.The first one is to warm for me and te second one to cool…If I must buy one again, I’ll go with the 4000k

Hi all,

How does the UI work on this light? Mode sequence, mode memory, ramping, etc.?

Does the advertised 37g weight include headband, or only the light?

Thanks in advance.

Got mine the other day. I guess I just don’t like those LH351Ds. The 4000k is too green for me and this 2700k is just… off. Maybe the DUV is positive. It doesn’t look green per se but just unnatural.

I first swapped it out with a 519a 2700k which looked much better to me. I then tried dedoming it since this is my first time with 519a. It made it a strange pink-orange tint. Some people like that but not for me. Now I have a domed 519a 3500k and it’s perfect (maybe I’ll dedome for slightly more warmth).

I created my own bezel removal tool with a few brad nails in a piece of wood. Thankfully it wasn’t glued.

The optic is pretty neat - one of those very shallow ones that we’re seeing more of. It does create a ring around the edge of the beam but that’s fixed with some mildly-adhesive diffusion film from Boaz.

I may try to remove the button and somehow dim the battery indicator light. It’s much too bright at night. I really wish it didn’t come on with “moonlight” mode (which is also too bright). Overall this is a fantastic light for the price.

I got the 5000k version and it had a serious problem: fully charged, it wouldn’t hold high at all, just ramped down immediately in about 10s. After (too much) stalling, Sofirn sent me a replacement (w/o cell). Using same Sofirn cell as first one, new one actually works properly, giving about the same runtime graph as above review (it would seem, didn’t fully test). Except for this: my High (at about 3min) drops lower than reviewer’s sample - “leveling off” to just slightly above Med. level. Whereas review above levels off at almost 2x medium.

Anyway all this is telling me that although amazing value, you’re paying for it in quality control and large variation. :frowning:

Btw, if it wasn’t for this review, I’d have just thought the original defective ramp-down sample was as expected, and just standard manufacturer deception. (Which is still the case, since they state 500-Lm High mode lasts 1h13min hoping that people will think it will last, I dunno, 1h13min at 500 Lm; which it doesn’t. It’s an intentional lie.) So thx for review.

I recently moded several HS10, I like them a lot…
I have not used them for long periods, and when I do, they are below medium output, so the runtime limitations have not affected me

Im also interested in learning more about lights with Regulated output. Found this chart for the SC21 Mini on zeroair and added the comment about 80 lumens for almost 4 hours
https://i.imgur.com/5Nng3jy.png

I then edited this chart with my guesstimation that the HS10 might sustain about 100 lumens for 1 hour
https://i.imgur.com/P2qnq6x.jpg

it definitely seems the regulated output of the SC21 Mini has a significant runtime advantage. And that review says the SC21 Mini has a Ramping UI feature…

I think Im going shopping… lol

I love this kind of review that included the battery level and runtime!