A few new and uncommon super-budget 1xAA lights on eBay

I have one of the MXDL T-51 on order from 'go_market' (e-bay). You can go to their store & find this light in red or in a 2 pack containing 1 black & 1 red. If you look around on their site you can find the most advantageous price. If it turns out to work as good as it looks I might order a few more. If these lights are as good as a Romisen I'll be happy.Cool

Mike

I certainly wish i had your collection.....maybe in a couple of years.Cool Hell of a nice collection man.

The MDXL one just arrived - I think the C3 alike is in the PO waiting for me - if i read the card correctly there are 9 packages that wouldn't fit through my letter box.

First impressions:

It is heavier than it looks 67g with an Eneloop whereas the Powerlight is 56 with an Eneloop.

Visually, it appears to be very long for a single AA light - roughly 12mm 1/2" longer than a Powerlight.

It has a wide (for a single AA light), but rather shallow reflector.

It appears slightly dimmer and rather bluer than the Powerlight. Throw 228 lux at 1 metre - Powerlight 350

The lightbox numbers are much closer - 81 for the MDXL versus 83 for the Powerlight. These are well within the bounds of experimental error.

These numbers came from freshly charged Eneloops - both will likely be brighter with alkalines but I only have part-used or dead ones lying around. This light will possibly run for longer than the Powerlight - will look at current draw once I've lubed the threads. The Powerlight may, or may not have come unlubed but it certainly is now and feels very much nicer than the MDXL. The threads had a lot of filthy stuff in them. They no longer graunch, but the Powerlight feels far nicer.

This one isn't going to tailstand. Even with the lanyard removed and the switch is like the BLF DeLight one - you aren't modifying that one...

The head unscrews as a unit. It was clear from the positive contact that accountants sere involved in designing it. "No you can't have hardened stainless steel in there, it's too expensive. Use case-hardened butter instead."

But for the price which is less than a bus fare from where I live into the centre of town (maybe 3 miles) should I complain...

Well I did anyway. The extra 70 cents for the Powerlight is worth it IMO.

Pics to follow.

The light. As you can see, it is long for an AA light.

Compared with other AA lights. It is longer than the humungous Trustfire F22 - but a lot lighter. The lights are:

BLF Cheapskates' DeLight

Trustfire F22

MDXL T51

Powerlight

Ultrafire C3 stainless steel.

It is surprisingly heavy - the tube walls ought to be strong.

The bencounters' delight positive contact. Nasty!

The non-moddable tailcap - same as the BLF DeLight but it is 1/3 of the price. The hard plastic goop in there is actually white - the exposure and colour balance are a bit messed up.

I thought it looked oddly like the BLF DeLight tailcap. It does - as it is interchangeable with them... Tested with 3 different DeLight tailcaps and all of them worked properly with this light. Odder and odder.

The business end. The LED looks almost like a 5mm type - but they don't have 6 bond wires into them like this one. No idea what sort of LED it is, but I suspect it'd be epoxy vapour if you put 3 watts into it.

Do I like the light?

Not much

Do I want to kill it with a 14500 - nah, it isn't that bad. Guess some kid's getting a flashlight on the next gift giving occasion.

It even works with the tailcap that won't work on any of the DeLights so I now have 8 working DeLights. Actually 7 as I gave one to a patient of mine, along with a cup of coffee using up the last of the office coffee - I did warn him that if I forgot to get more coffee for Monday, I'd have to kill him. Fortunately for him, I remembered and gave him a DeLight instead.

Great, thanks for the review Don! It looks rather nice for the price in my opinion, but if I were to review it using my criteria, I'd probably give it 4/5 stars for Features / Value, and obviously 5/5 to the DeLight. Yes, it's a bit too long, and I don't know why they don't make more tailstandable lights.

I think the tailcaps came out of the same factory - even if the lights didn't. I can imagine a factory in China churning out cheap switch and tailcap units to be used by whoever wants them. It is the threading that makes me think this. There is no reason for them to be the same otherwise.

Current Draw:

All done using the same Eneloop for consitency

MDXL 205mA

BLF DeLight 406mA

Powerlight 155mA

Just checked and the DeLight/MDXL tailcaps also fit and work with the Powerlight. The Powerlight tailcap does not work with the MDXL though as the spring on it isn't long enough to reach the battery.

Should have pretty good runtime, then. I guess that's the secret to the Powerlight's great runtime-- low amperage. For me the Powerlight's output is often more enough. Did you ever compare the Powerlight's beam quality to, say, the AA-S1 or the R5-A3? My two Powerlights have absolutely stellar beam quality. Obviously brightness is incomparable, though.

I thought the LED looked the same as the one in the Powerlight. So I fiddled around withe the camera to get a picture of the bond wires. This took about 3000 lumens shining into the reflectors (and back into my eyes) while I tried to get focus on the LEDs. The Powerlight is on the left, the MDXL on the right

The arrangement of the wires in the LEDs does look different so I imagine they were made in a different place, though they look very similar to the naked eye. I had to mess around a lot with contrast and so on to make the wires inside the LEDs visible at all.

Will try that once it is a bit darker - though it's been a dim, grey and overcast day with plenty of rain all day. Official sunset is 8.5 hours away - currently 3:30pm here

Just on a white wall mainly the Powerlight has a very pretty beam.

So, do I understand right? A $1,5 light is better than a $3,5 light even not taking the price into account?

Crazy...

Depending on where you stand in runtime/brightness, the $4 Powerlight may be better than both.

For me, the DeLight has better brightness, worse runtime, an uglier beam, and poorer quality. The Powerlight has a much nicer beam, less brightness, much better runtime, and slightly better quality. So basically you get what you pay for, and I like them both for the price.

Thanks for the to-the-point description. Brightness/runtime? Give me a lightsaber for 30 seconds :D

So it seems choosing MXDL over the focusing one was a blunder, which I now have to fix ASAP :)

My MXDL arrived yesterday. My take on this light is pretty much the same as Don's. The E-Bay seller (go_market) was really responsive. Ordered the light on June 1, it shipped on June 2, I received it in New Mexico on June 7. I don't have to have a light that burns holes in things @ 10 feet but this one could be a little brighter.

Bottom line is a 5 for looks & a 3 for brightness.

Mike

I dug out some AA lights and got the close up beams. Here are the lights:

MX Power ML-310, Powerlight, Ultrafire C3 stainless steel, Trustfire F22, MDXL, BLF DeLight, Tank007 E07.

Here are the beams at 2" from the beige wall - actually it's the side off a just retired server. 11 years it ran till the 4th PSU and a hard drive died. Best uptime was 3 years! Would have been more but for a power cut. Kept it on a UPS while we moved it whenI put in ethernet cabling a few years ago to keep the uptime.

The more powerful lights are stepped down to their lowest mode sothey didn't drown out the less powerful ones. All of them were fed freshly charged Eneloops for the purpose.

There is actually a huge hole in the centre of the beam from the MX Power at this range but it is too overexposed to show up. Notice how enormously wide the spill of the MDXL light is (3rd from right). The only thing even close is the Tank007 on the right. The Powerlight - second from left - has a nice beam though my personal favourite is the Trustfire F22 but then it cost about 5x as much. It has a lovely vanilla colour that doesn't show up here - the bluer lights here have shifted the colour balance.

Now at about 100mm (4") to lose the hole in the MX Power beam.

The Tank007 beam is almost washing out the DeLight so I took out the brighter ones and left the Powerlight, the MDXL and the DeLight.

The Powerlight has the tightest, and nicest beam of the three, the MDXL far and away the widest beam of anything I've got apart from a pure flood Zebralight headlamp.

Done in a hurry as it was raining.

MDXL

BLF cheapskates' DeLight

Control

I'd have to wait 3 months for better quality darkness. I am north of Labrador in Canada and it is what passes for summer around here - the rain gets a little bit warmer. It reached a whole 11 degrees today (50F)

I would love to have weather like that all year long.

Recieved today. A quick test about the same drightness as my powerlight but draws less current in single cell mode at least.

printed on body Smallsun 5W.