Hey there BLF peeps. I just created an account because I happened upon this thread while researching the light you all are talking about. I ordered the UltraFire 15T6 (along with 4 other beasts) from lightmalls 2 days ago. I wanted to let you all know that I’ll post a review when I receive it.
By the way, clearly I love torches (well I’m here, ha), but frankly I’ve never modded a light or soldered an LED. I’m just learning & plan on upgrading some lights & playing around with the ones on the way.
Welcome to the forum and congratulations on getting what we all hope to be a great 15x XM-L light. I’m sure we all can’t wait to hear your impressions of this big beast. Please keep us posted.
I bet the “North Texas” will be a no-fly zone untill after you have finished your tests. :bigsmile: And if you want to just keep some of them and discard the others, there will be people considering those treasures. :heart_eyes:
This seems cool, but not too useful for reasons some of you already pointed out.
Another reason is that the human eyes perception of light is logarithmic analog. It is not linear, in other words. So you double the lumens, diminish batts life, but get only a slight brightness increase in perception.
To date, I think the 7 LED flashlight is the most useful, striking a good balance of perceived lumen and battery life.
Even if you are right (did not check), you are comparing the light at the same distance and area. If you get more throw and wider flood with the extra light then it is good for something. If you do not need see that farther, use the med or low mode to get more battery time. My 2 cents.
Well, what I notice between my J18 and 12xT6 on hikes is a perception that the “entire forest” around me is lit up, wider flood + brighter. Yeah, it cant keep it up too long, but its significant. 15xT6 should be even more significant! Sometimes I do like going with just a J18 though, because of the longer runtime and more level output over time. I’m tending towards running the lights on lower settings, but interestingly enough, the 12Tx6 is still preferrable, just by the fact of the bigger flood zone. I switch all the time between J18/12xT6 and on short hikes I alternate in SRK/Kung/C8 along with the big ones, all my lights are fun, depends on the mood, distance, other people with me and location
The J18 is insane though with the IOS driver, and KK cells - 5,500 lumens I measured... DayLighter has it now, but I got a J18 and the IOS driver, waiting...
I had mod a J18 with a new 7x board from Kaidomain, 3 MNKE 26650 ($15 each). It is definitely brighter than a stock 9xT6 ak47. Since the ak47 yields probably near 3,400lm, I’d say 5,500lm is about right for the mod’d J18.
I bought 10 of 9xT6 to distribute among people I know. I did mod one of them with a 9x board from Kai. Ran tested it with a 7.5amp 12v Power supply and with the MNKE 26650. It runs very hot quickly, but yield brightness just a tad brighter, if any, to the mod J18. So considering its larger size, power drain, cost, yielded perceived brightness, the J18 is the more worthwhile flashlight to modify.
Also, 2 of 10 ak47 did not work. I traced it to the center LED of the 9x set, on both. That’s a bit of strange coincidence, I thought. And the interesting part was that in this 9xT6, the LED star was labeled “XML U2” ! On the J18 7xT6, they were labeled just “XML”. So if the U2 is marketed as 17% brighter than T6, your eyes can barely tell.
Anyway, the stock 12x or stock 15x on just the same 3 batts 26650 would just drain it faster but shouldn’t noticeably brighter than a modified (and smaller to carry) J18.
We spent a weekend at the beach in FL, the J18 is so impressive as did the ak47. They’d sweep the low tide beach from easily 100yrds away, revealed fishermen in the dark. That was illegal for them to run net on shallow water so they did it at night. While impressed with the flashlights, They requested me not to attract cops attention to the area. LOL
You’d be happy with any of these lights, I believe. I just pointed out trade-offs of efficiency, price, size and resulted light perception.
BarrelMount - real good info there... With TF 26650's, I measured 5,000 lumens at 30 secs, and that is plenty enough, and yes, it heats up pretty quick.
