Hey JohnnyMac,
Thanks for the positive comment, I glad I’m helping out.
I would rather think I’m helping those who already have the light rather than encouraging others to buy it. My feeling is that so much was overlooked with the design that I am not comfortable causing additional sales of this beast.
As I mention in several places, I completely expect better options to show up on the market soon that will have magnetic switching like the XTAR D35 or the X-BEAM U2X3 both of which have magnetic switching. Price drops on these are inevitable as more designs and clone start hitting the market.
If you look at other CREE T6 dive lights like the truly wonderful YEZL Q2 which is the exact same product as the KEYGOS S3; they all are beginning to drop fast in price as more designs and their own clones invade the marketplace. Three years ago if I saw a KEYGOS S3 performing on a dive, I would have expected to pay $200+ for it easily. They can now be had with batteries and a charger for under 50 bucks. That’s friggen ridiculous! Sure I had to replace all the o-rings on my S3 but that was cheap and it’s now easily a 200FSW dive light with what truly feels like about a 1000 lumen output.
It’s true that I bought a second TR-DF003 since I’m comfortable with my mods and I was able to get a second one with big 26650’s and a decent 26650 charger at my door for $60. Part of the reason I did that was because I was already invested in one of them PLUS I knew there would be no other way in the future to get spare parts other than to cannibalize one so I could one day service the other if parts begin failing. I was just lucky some poor bloke was dumping a new one as a complete kit with batteries and charger probably because he saw the writing on the wall with these things.
But for now, mine are both modified and working fine and if readers want to take a chance buying these and following my improvements rather than waiting for better options, I think they will likely have the brightest hand-held dive light on the block . . for a while.
But as I mention in my post and as others have confirmed, the claimed output on this model is way off. I see 3800 and 4500 all the time in ads when we all know 1700 lumens is probably about it with the three CREE T6’s in parallel even with 26650 batteries. And if you rewire it for higher output, it gets too hot on land and it will have too short of a run-time to be a good dive light since you can’t add a third battery.
So once again, I personally encourage those who haven’t bought one yet to consider waiting for a better design to become affordable if you can. If not, mod away and you might be happy with the TR-DF003 aka “TuRD”.
I love your forum and thanks again for the comment!