Randar RA-813: 1x18650 XML T6 Flood to Throw - to buy or not to buy?

I would love someone volunteers to try one.

I'm a bit concerned tho since i own one like that but with a "standard" emitter:

- The regular flashlights in that body are often very badly made

- Very poor heasinking for even the standard XR-E emitters

- Threads are a joke!

- Poor machining and mine looks painted not anodized.

- Very high gaps so the lens on mine rattle a bit.

- Orings that are unworhy of being called so

I have my doubts the flashlight would sustain a well driven XM-L on full brightness without burning the user hand in a minute or two. It is probably driven conservatively around 1A which would make sense in such a light.

My concerns too.

If this was a 15$ deal I wouldn't hesitate for a moment. But for 35$-40$... dunno.

They do address the heat issue: "Solid aluminum with brass connecting ring circuit positions, greatly improving the LED and circuit heat dissipation. (Note: XML MCE large single-core and quad-core is self-heating and power is still far greater than the small single-core CREE led, and the heat was taken out to the outer shell of.)", and also the anodization: "With an ordinary oxidation is the use of different hard anodizing, which is the nanometer, to military grade hardness, resistance to a more robust grinding."

But I really don't know how to take that...

I pulled the trigger and as Haggai suggested followed an agents route to order one. It took $26.5 for the first step, purchase and delivery to the agent. I don't know how much the shipping's going to be but I guess $5-7 should be enough. I know I shouldn't do this (I had a similarly looking FL, led and driver) but I guess I'm a bit bored at the work and need something to suprise me.

Thanks again Haggai.

To Haggai:

Engrish is suitable. I'm not stopping you but for the price i rather make my own from a romisen RC-C8 probably alot cheaper and more fun. Quick math... the romisen about 15usd driver hmmm 4usd emitter 9,5 or so usd... under 30usd providing you don't count the usual greases thermal glue and such...

On second tought.... i might do that in the non distant future! The only thing that would be tricky is the lens part. Also i would get the 9xAMC driver from KD and then decide to disable one or two amc's from it. 2.8 is very optimistic for such a light to me.

I have similar looking torch from UltraOK and it must be somewhat better quality than Budgeteer's one. Threads has a bit more than 3 turns. Wide beam is smooth. I've mod it with AK47 driver to eliminate strobe. I'm using it on a mountainbike as primary for uphill and as secondary for downhill. It's not that bright as MXDL SA-28, but has wider beam.

Now I would really like to see it with XM-L emmiter. As XM-L is more efficient I would guesstimate it can be driven at 1.4A to gain same heat as Q5. And theoreticaly you can gain 400 lumens in compare to 230 with XR-E Q5. This should be noticeably more bright.

What do you think? Yes, XM-L will be only half used, but anyway...... it might be fun to mod

No problem, Kokopelli, I'm glad I did one good deed today :)

Tell us how the whole procedure is going, and don't forget a thorough review with lots of beamshots and temperature readings ;)

Anyway, I decided this is too pricy for me, after my recent purchases... (including three china dinner plates I broke at my girlfriend's parents' house, and had to pay an outrageously expensive shipment cost of 47$ from the only place on the internet that had the exact same plates... how do you US guys manage to live with such an expensive mail system? )

So I'll wait to see if it is a worthy flashlight. I've read some posts at forocoches (Google translate is strong today :) ), and people there discussed this light (and another similar, more expensive one: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=8989647145 ) (discussion starts about here: http://www.forocoches.com/foro/showthread.php?t=1806361&page=58 ) but it was not a very productive discussion, and I think the conclusion was to make product requests at DX. Well, good luck for them with that.

Maybe lightake / manafont will be willing to act as agents? Think I should ask them?

Let's wait the ordered one before bothering our dealers of choice with it. If it turns out a bad flashlight which i sincerely do not want it to be, is nice to not let them have to get stock that's hard to sell with possibly a ton of RMA. They might not want to listen to our suggestions in future.

You're right.

Kokopelli, you have many people hopes on your shoulders ;)

It's always nice to be the Guinea Pig in a community. You either become a hero, or a fool :) Both makes you an example.

Thanks for taking one for the team Kokopelli. Smile

I hope I've chosen the right agent. choobuy.com's English site just went off. Maybe they went out for a brunch with my payment :)

I think he went out to a very fancy and expensive lunch....thanks to your payment. Surprised

I'm just joking.:bigsmile:

Site came back in the morning. My flashlight is seen in Ordered status. I guess a zooming torches comparison review is incoming.

I also have mentioned that I were looking for a TIR Zoom (like Led Lenser) and thinking of Pop Lite or a real Led Lenser. The cheaper Led Lenser's on EBay were appealing but their prices were shouting "fake" so I were skipping them. I thought I should solve this cheaper and ordered a Romisen RC-39 from DX last night. But again last night, I bidded on a T7 Led Lenser (from HK) just for fun and guess what, I had a T7 for $30 in the morning. I wanted a 4xAAA flashlight that would be easier to sell and it still sounded a good buy even if it could be fake. Led Lenser itself has a factory in China, and I don't know how bad it can be for half the money, but still retail at $40. Led Lenser's sold in Amazon.co.uk would cost me £50 = ~$80 inc shipping anyway.

Taobao is the most active transactional website in China. Unfortunately the shipping to overseas are outrageous, 99.9% of vendors do not speak english, and you need to have alipay(their own paypal) + a china/hk bank account.

My brother-in-law in HK does a bulk order from diff vendors and have it shipped to Guangzhou and the re-ship it to HK, which is by far the cheapest method. And he's yet to post the torches he's ordered for me.

Looks almost like smuggling. :)

Avast!

My package arrived to choobuy's adress. The shipping with China Post is $7 full insurance included (7 huan for insurance). So total cost is 26.5+7 = $33.5 for now.

Lucky you, seems like you got the last such flashlight!

It now says "This baby has the shelf" with the options "1. Contact Seller Advisory" and "2. You can enter the store dispensers" (you've got to love google translate :) ) which I guess means it's not available anymore... :/

I started the discussion in forocoches as I discovered in taobao such flashlight. The real problem was that, even the seller spoke some english, he was not up to sending products abroad. The shipping costs were so high that I finally gave up. What we proposed (as you stated in your post) is to ask dealextreme to commercialize such kind of flashlights as we're really interested in finding a powerful XM-L zooming flashlight. This strategy worked sometimes and dealextreme guys found interesting selling one product that has been asked for several potential customers.

On the other hand, answering one comment posted here, taobao sellers can be contacted directly and some of them accept paypal as payment method. I bought several things there and my experience is positive. Not all of them speak english and accept paypal but since there are many sellers offering the same products, you can try.

Hope this helps...

I started the discussion in forocoches as I discovered in taobao such flashlight. The real problem was that, even the seller spoke some english, he was not up to sending products abroad. The shipping costs were so high that I finally gave up. What we proposed (as you stated in your post) is to ask dealextreme to commercialize such kind of flashlights as we're really interested in finding a powerful XM-L zooming flashlight. This strategy worked sometimes and dealextreme guys found interesting selling one product that has been asked for several potential customers.

On the other hand, answering one comment posted here, taobao sellers can be contacted directly and some of them accept paypal as payment method. I bought several things there and my experience is positive. Not all of them speak english and accept paypal but since there are many sellers offering the same products, you can try.

Hope this helps...

I used Paypal with Choobuy.com. I checked my account again and my package is seen as shipped and the tracking number is working.