Thanks for all the work you are putting in to these reviews BB.
For some reason this light has gotten me interested although it is certainly outside my budget.
But I think that it is the fact that it is small for a 6*18650 battery light + it has great output although your numbers seem somewhat lower than what I see others report. And it looks great. Its like a floody light with great throw.
Does cost, but for duration performance and mix of flood/throw, about the best on offer out there at the moment. Weigh it up against other quality multi emitters out there and it still comes out competitive.
Short of the whitewall/outdoor shots (and potentially some add'l runtime testing), this review is now wrapped up. Tons of new material added along with full Charging graph and details (search multiple instances of 8/18). If you can't be bothered to go back to OP, my opinion on the charger is that it's quite good, exhibiting a very good CC/CV charge curve.
Speaking of the Olight SR series, rdrfronty sent me his SR90 for testing so I decided to take a size comparo shot to give an idea of how the SP6 stacks up:
L to R: L3 Illumination K40 | ThruNite TN31 | XTAR S1 | SPARK SP6 | Olight SR90 Intimidator
I do also have the SR90 shots in Pt2 (check sig) so you can compare vs. SP6. The SR90 is a much stronger thrower to be certain but total output is a bit less. I hope to get outdoors soon now that Sandy has passed so I can do another comparo shots/video.
IMHO as long as the necessary cautions are taken; use quality matched cells (which are included), check on said cells individually every so often and manually balance as required, etc; then the charging set up should be reasonably safe. This is as with anything in life that requires a certain level of attention as it pertains to safety...
Would I recommend the SP6 to someone who isn't willing to take such cautions? No...
Agreed and it shouldn't be too difficult to design a carrier that had the appropriate balance leads built-in. As I had mentioned in my review, I'd love to see a revision to the carrier and charging system to allow balanced charging.