My Nichia219 Trustfire Z8

I’m still rather a noob when it comes to flashlight modding, but I wanted a stab at making a Nichia219 torch.

My Trustfire Z8 with it’s ice cool XM-L seemed a prime candidate. Thanks to Nightcrawl for supplying the LED’s.

The swap was very basic, I’ve retained the stock Z8 driver for now and simply desoldered the XM-L and replaced it with the Nichia219 that was already pre-mounted thanks to Nightcrawl.

It’s not quite 100% central, but must be 98-99% central. Not bad considering I did it by eye.

Cons with the stock XM-L Z8 were, very cool tint, the most cool in my collection pretty much. And it got hot, I mean really hot and very quickly too.

Some before and after shots, sadly all taken with my iPhone 5 not my SLR.




In person the tint and CRI difference is many times greater than the pictures show. If you don’t have a Nichia219 I highly recommend you get one. It’s lovely :smiley:

I would say the Nichia219 isn’t as bright and has lost lumens vs the XM-L Z8. With the stock driver I was getting 1.82A with the XM-L. Sadly I fried my MM so I haven’t been able to check and see what the same driver is now making with the 219.

One very pleasant plus is the thermal management. The XM-L would get silly hot within a couple of mins on high, but for some reason the Nichia doesn’t get as hot or anywhere near as quickly. It will still get hot, but instead of only a couple of mins you are talking more like 10+ before it starts to feel a bit too hot.

To sum up with the Nichia219:

-doesn’t get as hot or as quickly as the XM-L did
-very good tint and CRI, perfect for reading or close up work
-still usable and brighter than a stock AA sk68, but not quite as bright as an sk68 on a 14500
-round LED image when zoomed in

Very nice!

Congrats on a successful high-CRI mod !

Well done! The beam looks better after the swap actually. I guess the Z8 was not made for XML..

Congratulations. Got to love those Nichias.