Help me pick out a Solarforce

In May I bought my first Solarforce from ITC's website and never got it. I'm working on getting my money back now. So now I am looking all over again. ITC was out of the L2 in black, so I wound up ordering a L2 in gunmetal gray. That was okay because I'm not crazy about the shiny black finish of the L2.

Now it looks like I will buy from Lighthound and they have good prices for both the L2 ($12.99) and HAIII L2P ($19.99). I could still get gunmetal gray if I want, but the black seems better if I want to lego with other size bodies like the L2M, L2R, etc., which all come in shiny black.

If I'm going black anyway, I could get the L2P which looks pretty nice. At Lighthound the lights come with a body-colored crenelated bezel, so I was thinking about getting a flat stainless bezel and maybe a clip.

Any recommendations or regrets from people who have a Solarforce already? Lighthound is out of stock on the sand-colored L2's which might have been a good alternative since they are matte finish. The other thing about gunmetal is it is fairly similar to the Ultrafire 504B in silver that I already have. But the black is kind of similar to the 501B and 502B I have.

Also considered the great deal that lightake has on Solarforce bodies, but I am pretty doubtful those are genuine Solarforce bodies at those prices ($9.30 for a L2, $10.82 for a 2x18650 version; not that I have any higher voltage drop-ins). They advertise their one light as silver, but true Solarforces are Sand, Gunmetal, or Black.

I guess I'm leaning towards the black L2 or springing for the L2P.

Nice! That's a timeless, tasteful design that never goes out of style. And practical too. You can clip or tie a lanyard onto the clip and it becomes twice as useful. I am partial toward gunmetal, but I also like black, especially black matte finish.

I too have doubts that the L2 on LT are genuine primarily because of the price, but don’t really care because the price with the extension tube is cheap enough :stuck_out_tongue: However I may have misunderstood your post but they do have black and silver and I asked Daniel if they could get sand too (they have sand L2R). I don’t know if I’d go by the description of the colour. I’ve seen people referring to what I think are genuine ones call it gunmetal (I think this is the proper name), grey (ITCshop call it grey) and silver. However if you compare http://www.lightake.com/detail.do/sku.SolarForce_L2_Flashlight_Body_Tube_Silver_-29783 and http://www.lightake.com/detail.do/sku.SolarForce_L2_Cree_7090_XR_E_R2_5_Mode_240_Lumen_LED_Flashlight_Gun_Metal_-27802 the colour does look quite different, the 27802 picture at least may be genuine. On the other hand looking at itcshop http://cgi.ebay.com/Solarforce-GREY-L2-DIY18650-CR123-THead-Flashlight-Body-/270490374962 the colour looks different again so I guess it depends a lot on the lighting and stuff too so the LT body only one may be closer in colour then the picture shows.

Hi Brterd,

Nice to meet you here ,and i have saw your post ,all the solarforce body are ture ,we sold it at such cheap price have two reasons ,first we want to be a real flashlight dealer ,and want more people know us ,you may see there are plenty of flashlight in our website ,and the new arrival flashlight were update everyday;second ,the solorforce body are very popular for the flashlight fan ,and now we have some sales volumn everyday ,and we can get a cheaper price from the manufactuer,so you needn't doubt,it is genuine.

Thanks!

Solarforce flashlight: http://www.lightake.com/products.do/category.186

Solarforce body : http://www.lightake.com/products.do/category.214

Danie

Personally, I'm not convinced that the HA3 is worth the extra money. I can't now find the comment, but Old4570 on Jayki seems to agree. The L2M lets you Lego stuff. I do not like the default spiky bezel that Solarforces come with, and think that the plain bezel rings are grossly overpriced. The forward clicky I got is horrible and I'm not keen on the sticking out "tacticool" switches that come as stock though they work just fine as switches, but the ones from the 504B/Uniquefire L2 work just fine.

This article might be of interest.

http://www.jayki.com/9936

Okay. I ordered a black Solarforce from Daniel with the extension tube. I don't know that I will be able to tell a real one from a fake one, but I guess it doesn't really matter. It would probably have been easier to tell a fake if I had ordered silver, because if it really was silver and not gunmetal, then that would indicate a fake. I may still order a L2P from Lighthound with the clip and flat bezel.

Good, please keep us up to date on the order experience and the Solarforce product itself.

I read Old4570's review. He seemed to think the L2P was better, but not worth twice the price. However $19.99 vs $12.99 is only 54% more. But I wonder if he got some kind of special edition, because I don't think all of the L2P's come with the gold coating on the inside.

Solarforce is a great choice! I just got black l2i and l2r (grey/gun metal) from eBay. Very high quality and great machining. Both have excellent clicky and feel expensive. L2i + low voltage pill is amazing, it will work with: 3*AAA, AA, 14500, 16850, cr123/16340(spacer required). It also has thicker tube than l2 and feels better if you have big hands. I also think it will have better heat-sinking since it's bigger than l2. I will mod my l2i with p7 drop-in @ 2.5A and a ton of aluminum foil and see how it works.

Thanks brted ,I think you will not regret it when you received the gadgets!

So far, so good! Signing up was pretty easy, I got a confirmation e-mail on my order, and this morning I was notified that the item had shipped.

I hope Daniel can set the record straight on the Solarforce bodies he sells. There seems to be a lot of indications that they are fake:

http://budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/426

In this tread I linked to a Ebaydealer: http://www.budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/405. I got it and i am

convinced its the genuine one.

Ebay ones (from international trading company) are original Solarfolce. I just got l2i and l2r. Both very well made, high quality. You should get them while they are 9$ because for that price it's a steal!

Daniel if I may offer a suggestion. I generally like the way you’ve responded to feedback, questions and product requests on this forum and to me personally, however if these aren’t genuine Solarforce bodies, people are going to realise. I personally don’t mind they aren’t others may or may not but one thing is for sure is that people opinions will be negatively affected if you claim they are genuine and they aren’t.
I suggest you check with your supplier and make sure or if you don’t know if you can trust your supplier say so. Note that genuine means coming from the official factory and sold either directly or indirectly by Solarforce (Fulidat appear to be the company who sells them), being designed to be almost the same doesn’t count. If these come from the same factory but are not made on behalf of Solarforce or if there is something else strange about the ones you sell (for example if they are Solarforce rejects) you should mention this also. Or if the bodies are genuine but you get your dropins from somewhere else.

Thanks very much ,brted!

I went ahead and ordered another host from ITC's eBay shop after being presented with some pretty good evidence that the Lightake host is a fake. I had trouble ordering directly from ITC's website (never received the item), so I am hoping for a better result this time. I would have ordered from Lighthound and had my shopping cart ready to check out, but they must have just gone up on shipping. The cheapest shipping they had was USPS Priority for over $6. I am pretty sure the shipping was less than $3 last time I tried buying the same stuff. ITC's bezels and clips are more expensive than LIghthound's, so I just got a L2 host in gunmetal gray.

ITC ships very fast. They also have very good consumer support and respod mails frequently. Got l2r and l2i from them and I'm very happy.

Yeah I recently ordered the new Solarforce L2-S6 tailcap from ITC and it came fast. To my knowledge, they are THE authorized ebay dealer for Solarforce...although there are many other ebay dealers that sell Solarforce as well. In my opinion, probably the best place to buy Solarforce considering sites like DX or KD sell them for noticeably higher prices.