1) EagleTac TX25C2 with XM-L2 U2
2) Convoy M1 Cree XM-L U2-1B
3) UltraFire UF-T50 XM-L T6
4) Zebralight SC600 Mk II
FYI the latest version of the UF-T50 has a larger battery compartment and a clip.
These aren’t throwers but I still wanted to see what you could expect in throw over time if you turned these on as high as they would go and let them run. Battery was the Sanyo 2600mAh protected 18650 from Fasttech. Data was recorded at 2 second intervals for each light, then dumped into a spreadsheet to calculate and graph throw. For uniformity I included data only until each light’s throw dropped below 100 meters.
I wonder if a fan would make any difference particularly for the M1. It’d be interesting to see how heat sag contributed to the gradual sloping of the first 30 minutes.
These lights are all supposed to be in the 800 to 900+ lumens range. I have several fairly accurate lightboxes but am building a large IS and will not post similar graphs of lumens until it’s done because I want those graphs to be as accurate as these.
So there’s a 15 minutes runtime difference between the Convoy M1 and EagleTac TX25C2… pretty significant, given the efficient cool U2 1B tint of the M1. I wonder when Convoy will release XM-L2 emitters for the M1.
To take four popular compact 18650 lights that are in the same ballpark lumens-wise and show throw over time instead of just one number. So if someone needs a very bright but compact light for different applications they can make a more informed choice.
Sanyo 2600mAh protected 18650s are inexpensive but they’re not “cheap.”
Will you be adding additional flashlights, and do you have any kind of lumen readings to add a this?
I'm especially curious/surprised about the lack of performance in throw, from the Zebralight, and whether all that output is used up in providing more flood lighting up close.
Thanks for the data luvlites! (Not relavant infomation follows —> ) I read a great review of the Convoy M1 here and went ahead and bought one. One of the first things I did was remove the andoizing barrier between the pill and head and fit a double layer of aluminum foil in the remaining space. Idealy, I should have removed the anodizing between the head and the body too but, haven’t gotten around to that. In my opinion, the Convoy C8 has a better design since it doesn’t have anodizing between the pill and head or between the head and body and uses an aluminum pill.