Well, probably would have been better off getting the FF one from FastTech for under $30, or TMART's. Unless you got a discount, $36 listed at WillBuying is one of the higher prices around.
WillBuying has just been lying continuously about it and after I published the test results, no reaction - still listing them as U3's.... ugh.
Yeah you’re probably right, I was happy paying a bit more for the Ultrafire branding and an XML2 emitter but if the seller is dishonest about other items then that’s not very encouraging.
I hate my Fandyfire HD2010 that I bought a year ago from Lightscastle but it seems past experience counts for very little when buying these lights. The FastTech one is probably completely different again.
It’s a shame really, I find it a hard light to recommend because of all this uncertainty and $30 sounds like less of a good deal when you have to buy 2 or 3 to get one good one
+1... I have a friend here who bought the Triple and it burned the driver out pretty quickly. It has no path for the heat to transfer into the body of the light. Even when it was working, it wasn't exceptionally bright. Looking for a cheap triple, get a TR-3T6 or a G36 if you can live with the toilet plunger design...
I got 2 gray and 2 black, and really prefer the look in black. All are or were good East 092 drivers. One is my original mod'ed HD2010 with 3 copper rounds in the pill, with a press fit brass ring and 4.5A Nanjg - XM-L2 U2/copper star with dome, AR lens -- outstanding. The latest one I bought from TMART in black has the VOB copper pill, de-domed at 4.9A and measures 5.0A on a Powerizer 26650, AR lens - outstanding throw w/de-domed XM-L2 U2 1A/Noctigon. Got a 5th one in black on the way from TMART, Int'l warehouse this time... The last two I paid $23 and change for one (coupon and pts), then $25 and change with the $6 off coupon.
I've modded several HD2010's for BLF'ers and recommended them to others and haven't heard of any problems, but most of them were from TMART. I get 190-210 kcd in throw out of them, de-domed, but my 5A version does this:
Using a Powerizer cell, measured 4.92A at the tail:
1,431 lumens @start, 1,397 at 30 secs, throw: 233kcd when measured at 5 meters
For the AR lens, used to buy the flashlightlens.com UCL/p's but now am using the ones from FFL/CNQ (RIC) - seem pretty good.
Here's results from doing a timed run test with a fairly fresh Powerizer with the 5A copper pill:
- @2 mins, it feels gently warm, nice....
- @3 mins, maybe slightly warmer - wowww (I'm afraid I'll burn a hole thru the ceiling... It is so freak'n bright in here)
- @5 mins, not much warmer ??
- @6 mins, still just a comfy amount of warmth, and putting it directly into the light box without turning it off, it reads 1,238 lumens (this is after all the lumens/throw testing as well, same cell). Cell reads between 4.0 and 4.1v measured with the built-in battery check mode from my custom programmed driver
- after 8 min cool down, cell measures 3.97v, tailcap: 4.41A, lumens: 1,299 - 1,268
Bought a gray unbranded one from Tmart for $24.99 during their July promo. Tail cap readings were 1.3A, 0.6A and 0.17A using my cheap DMM. Not sure if the low readings were due to cheap leads of my unit is just under driven. Compared with my stock UF F13, it definitely is much brighter both spot and spill.