I bought this 3W 3AA lantern a couple of months back just because it was cheap ($7) and that people over at CPF said it was quite nice. When it arrived I was surprised of how sturdy it felt, yet lightweight which would make it perfect for camping. Such a shame that the tint was the usual cool white with to much blue in it which makes it awful outside. Time to address that problem with an warm white T3 XM-L emitter.
The light itself next to an UltraFire 18650 and my XM-L modded Ring Cyba-Lite 300 lumen lantern which I will compare this 3AA lantern to.
First some beamshots to compare the lights. In this case I prefer to use automatic colour balance since the difference between cool and warm white is so big that it makes it hard to compare brightness. If you want to see the light with the colour balance set to daylight put the cursor on the image.
Both lights are hanging upside down outside of the picture since it makes for the best comparable beamshots.
Ring Cyba-Lite
Original 3AA lantern
And comparing both the lights, colour balance set to automatic
Time to gut the light
The original led, some cheap OEM stuff
Glad to get rid of that one. But this is a problem, a lot of air and not much aluminium. This might pose a problem since heatsinking might be an issue. So how do we solve this?
By not caring. To much work for me to make a plate to fit the hole, instead I just mounted the emitter with some Fujik and cross my fingers. I would have preferd to use an emitter on 16mm base since the hole is about 17mm but this emitter was just sitting in my drawer, unused since a previous attempt to modify a light that didn’t turn out so well. If you look at the dome you can see some bruising from the solder iron.
And I know, the soldering sucks.
So, how does it look with its new emitter?
Much brighter! And if you do a mouse over you can see the WARM white tint.
Comparison between original and moded.
Cyba-Lite and moded 3AA
I’m really satisfied with the outcome. The lantern is much brighter now and the tint is a lovely warm white incandescent type which I really prefer in a lantern. From the beamshots it also looks brighter than the large Cyba-Lite lantern which is a surprise to me since that one also have been modded with an XM-L emitter. But current reading might explain why.
3AA 3W
Voltage under load: 3,43V
Current draw: 0,72A
Cyba-Lite
Voltage under load: 3,8V
Current draw: 0,46A
So if your thinking about buying a lantern I really can recommend this version. Small, lightweight, bright enough, good runtime and well built for the price makes this one a safe buy.