Review: "BLF" Mini 01 Out-of-the-Bubble-Wrap Preview . . . going green

Just wanted to comment on this little beauty that arrived the other day . . .

The light was inside a bubble sleeve, inside a box, inside a wad of bubble-wrap.

It's a handsome devil, for sure. Despite its weight and whatever else people hate about it, Foy is a sucker for stainless steel and I don't mind the GITD o-ring. Goes well with the tint.

I don't want to piss in anybody's karn flakes but daym, talk about green . . .

On the left in both pictures is an Xtar WK26. (XP-E/R3) The BLF Mini is on the right with its pea-green soup XM-L/T6.

In all other respects, this is a nice piece. The head-twisty, ascending 3-mode UI is fuss-free, the polished finish is dazzling and it's got a satisfying heft.

The enitter is dead center inside an OP reflector with a large opening at the base . . . no doubt, the length of the light was a factor.

It's gorgeous from every angle, looking thick and pricey . . .

Speaking of which, if you go to Aliexpress (where I think this came from) you'll see this light pictured a few dozen times with about a half dozen different prices. Some in a blister pack, others with a battery and/or charger, 300 lumens, 900 lumens, with several different names etched thereon . . . I clicked the little "tint" button or whatever it is and the price changed to $70 on one particular light. All of them looked just like this guy except some had deeper cut designs. There is something unsettling about seeing the same light listed repeatedly on a site with each price a few dollars different.

Anyway, works great with primaries and a little better with a 16340 . . .

Threads feel a little gritty but as you can see, Foy's light came with genuine Chinadirt. The threads are sqaure so, there's that.

Not a thin flashlight . . .

It came with a swivel chain and ring. I left it outside. I'll get it tomorrow.

Well made light. Like the logo, the shine and the UI. Don't want to be a tint snob but honestly, this thing is easily the most green light in my collection. The tint is so bad, as a practical matter, it will never be used.

A nice build like this deserves better.

greenpieceFoy

At this stage I will be happy just to get mine! Anyone else waiting?

Wow, that is pretty green in the pics. Is it that green in real life?

My BLF Mini is slightly green but nowhere near as bad as the pics.

This is my first NW light (everything else I have is CW). Does this problem affect a lot of NW LEDs?

Foy:
Just curious, does removing that green O-ring make tint better?

I was going to ask that too.

My tint is not bad. Of course my output is on par with my CW Mini as well. There must be a lot of variation in these. My tint seems “tan” to me. I’ll have to get my 3C tint out and compare, but it’s my first really “neutral” light.

The space between the head and body is larger on my BLF version, and the etching near the tail and head isn’t as deep. The low is great though! I’ve had my Mini on my keychain, so I’ve used it quite a bit. Now when I turn the new one on I think something is wrong because there’s no blast of light :slight_smile: Oh yeah, I get no preflash turning the light on to low, but when I cycle through and get to low a second time there is a preflash… but since I just switched mode from high it doesn’t really matter.

Rather yellowish to me :expressionless: Nice light anyway (for that price).
Great pictorial, Foy. Thanks :beer:

There must be a lot of variation as my CW Mini is a lot brighter than my BLF Mini. Hard to gauge with the different tints but if I had to guess, maybe 20% brighter?

Thanks for the pics and info Foy. I remember when I got my first neutral… it looked really weird to me. I know you already have a warm xm-l drop-in from reading your P60 round-up thread, but I don’t remember if you have other neutrals to compare to? Almost all of my neutrals have a different tint. Depending on which ones I compare side-by-side, the apparent tint can seem very different. i.e. light A looks insert_color1 when compared to light B, but when light A is compared to light C, it looks insert_color2. Is this some kind of optical phenomenon where the eye auto adjusts white balance? Also, could the time of day that you were taking shots make a difference? It looks just before dusk to me. All this to say, I wonder if it would look less green compared to a different light or in different circumstances. But… maybe I’m just being hopeful that when I get mine that they aren’t too green. Or… maybe it’s just that I’ve grown accustomed to the tint on my TK35.

Am I the only one who thinks that it doesn’t look THAT green? The rocks actually look pretty natural to me.

Edit: I guess I’m not the only one. Thanks SashiX for making me feel not so colorblind/crazy…

I missed out one these. Kinda makes me wonder if it might have been a good thing though.

Certainly seeing the greeness of the tint and hearing other peoples comments it wouldn’t inspire me to jump onto another BLF custom light using a NW emitter (z8….)

Well my TF Mini-01 is confirmed brighter than the BLF Mini, but not by much. Probably driven the same, just the tint difference is the reason for the lost lumens. BLF version popped 571 lumens and the 01 blasted out 664 lumens on the same just off the charger TF Flame 16340. It drops quickly, these are just first 10 seconds figures that I give out, not the 30 second ansi crap everyone else does :wink: I mean…. I’m not going to show the light to someone and cover the light for 30 seconds before I show them how bright it is!

Mini-01
High 664
Low 68

BLF Mini
High 571
Med 187
Low 11

If that tint is green, compared to the WK26 I'd take that tint any day! Just look at how much better and natural the rocks look under the Mini's light compared to the washed out horrible light of the WK26.

From the photo of the rocks the tint looks yellowish to me too. But the picture can only tell so much.

Could you maybe take a few night time photos? Perhaps we could judge better.

+1

True, the Mini gave such nice natural color. I really don't see much green.

I wish I’d picked one up during the group buy. Shame about the apparent tint lottery because it sounds like it’d be a nice pocket light. At the very least it’s a perfect candidate for an emitter swap (doesfoyhaveanynichiasyet).

Received both today, wohoo!

Rants:

- pre-flash occurs, not too bad but clearly visible

- PWM present, would prefer 2KHz etc. but I can deal with this.

  • Twisty is always just a twisty: SS-threads may grind, occasional contact errors occur…

Cheers:

- UNBELIEVABLE price / quality -ratio!

- Tint 3C, spot on. Low amount of tint shift from spot to flood and around it.

- Power! Tested draw with basic 14500, still getting 2.25Amps.

- No effort paid trying to make almost a keychain light to throw. Nice big spot and wide flood, just as EDC should be!

- Battery as a bonus!

- Really low-low, around 0.02A. Runs ages.

  • No strobes.

Its a good thing to have.

It does everything that my last EDC CR123, iTP A1 SS could not do.
I mean beam and tint-wise, power also…

I’ve got to admit, looking at the colour rendering on both the wall shot and the ground shot, the mini does look pretty natural to me. I’d find that quite useful compared to the cool white of the xtar, that just whites everything out.

Perhaps foy is a reverse tint snob? :bigsmile:

Was yours part of the BLF custom run ?

Yes it was. I may be wrong but I recall previous iTP having around 2KHz PWM and this 1KHz?