Review: BTU Shocker (3* XM-L U2 CW, 3* 18650) - comprehensive (picture heavy).

Awesome, thanks. Does look tempting. Always wanted something that’s over the 2k+ lumen mark and has the best of both worlds of throw and flood.

Only problem is, I’m off on my holiday this Saturday and if I were to order this light, I won’t get a chance to play with it, in say, until December 2013 or January 2014. :stuck_out_tongue:

You lose those 1k lumens because the Turbo mode steps down after 3 minutes. You can turn it back on if you want though. Also, the difference between 3k and 2k is not very big (visually), at least indoors.

Both your review and the’s seem to indicate that, even if you were to turn on Turbo again, the light is so well heatsinked, that it handles the heat quite well. If that’s the case, why only limit it to 3 minutes worth of Turbo? Well, if I have to answer my own question, it’d be more likely be for safety reasons than anything else (unless I were to read again that long’ish BTU pre-order thread, the answer might be there :laughing:.

Slewfish. Its dark outside now. What should you be doing?

I usually take my shots past midnight, because I might accidentally shine it on the road where cars pass by.

Bugger. I sleep that time of night. Tomorrow.

This is more like it. I’d agree with your figures, plus the Crelant and 85W HID Ebay (still a bit low but ok ba as it varies quite a lot)….

Just press it again for Turbo. 3 mins is plenty, I mean i play with lasers. :slight_smile: (try that with some lasers and nasty things might happen at the 5th minute mark, some less).

It has a timer so that people do not accidentally burn it up while tailstanding.

BTW, it doesn’t really lose 1k lumens after the 3rd minute. Just press again for that close to 3k lumens output.

BTW Slewflash, your lumens are OTF/Out The Front correct? :slight_smile:

Wonder if i should get one. I am keen on the Solarstorm L3.

Yes they are OTF.

Thanks very much for the review! Frontpage’d and Sticky’d.

Great review!! Thank you!!

That’s why they call it the Shocker :wink:

Another awesome review! I’m just shocked by how little the BTU heats up when on Turbo because of all that mass it has. On a side note, can one of those who own this light tell me where to place the probes to get the current reading so I can measure what the driver is putting out? I haven’t taken electronics since grade 10 or about 20 years so I’m kinda at a lost here.

Hi!

Great forum! I just had to register! And to comment on this light and your review!

New to the world of flashlights, I jumped on the pre-order on this light, hoping it would be as good/better than a TK70.
It seems that it is, and I hope we will se a comparison with the TK70 soon.

Can`t wait to get it (right now it is howering over Paris with Fedex).

Thanks everyone for the kind words, and welcome to BLF Macnus!
As for the direct comparison with a TK70, we’ll have to wait until some other members get theirs, since I don’t own one :bigsmile:

I don’t think BTU can out throw TK70 based on what I have seen so far as below:
1.Temperature is not rising high enough on heatsink in Turbo mode, this shows that heat is trapped inside.
2.Based on pictures, I find that its reflector is not as shining as TK70.
3.BTU doesn’t have AR lens, this will cut the light a few percentage.
4.I saw a picture with TN31 in another review, to me, it clearly shows that TN31 out throw BTU. It is never so clear for TN31 vs TK70.

This is nice light but I personally think it should have done below:
1.Selling at about USD100 to USD120, more expensive than Trustfire X6 is still fine since it is new product.
2.Use 4 18650 instead of 3 as in Turbo mode, it will be drawing 3.8A. It pushes many batteries to their limit.

Perhaps you’d like to check out the measurements first, both OTF lumens + lux (candelas)

Lights with quite a bit of mass esp around the head area just do not heat up that fast. Unless if we are talking about a TF X100 7 x XM-L with that crazy KD driver (esp if you heatsinked the driver so it sustains the crazy output longer) or something. Even the DRY does not heatup that much in the first 45 seconds in a tropical country @ 30 deg C.

1. The Shocker weighs 1,200 grams without batteries, the TK70 weights just 769 without batteries - Perhaps if I ran the test for longer we would see a more significant heating up.
2. The reflector does appear to hang slight rings, although it’s not a big problem.
3. Yes, the lens may cut a few % off the OTF lumens, however it also has more lumens (3000 vs 2200), so shouldn’t be considered while comparing the two.
4. There is also a thread on a German forum where the Shocker out-throws a TN31. Who’s to say one is definitely correct?

1. It’s more worth it than the TrustFire X6 in almost every way.
2. I agree that 4* 18650s could have been used. I do not know their reasoning, but if you want to run this at maximum output, don’t cheap out on the batteries (you never should anyway, they are the ‘life’ of your flashlights)!

Ok. I could be wrong about it since both of you are so confident about BTU. If most of the weight is in the head, the only thing that makes BTU so much heavier will be the aluminum reflector as TK70 is using plastic reflector. Unless the reflector really share a lot of the heat and cause the heatsink temperature to be so low. Also I forgot it kick down after 3 minutes, so it is not really on Turbo for 10 minutes.
Can you share the German website? I would like to see how is the comparison is done between TN31 and BTU.
One more thing is that Fenix official intensity spec is 130.5kcd. So it is very close to what is measured here for BTU.