Which lights do you NOT use, and why? What were your worst buys?

17 people line up with stamps in their hands.

High postal rates are

TerraLux Lightstar 100. Beam’s too narrow, and the tint was terrible. Gave it away to a co-worker…

My apologies if it appears I’ve hijicked this thread (it wasn’t my intention).

Four BLF’ers have pm’ed me asking about postage rates but 18sixfifty is the first one.
So I’ll let him have first crack at it. I will also respond to the others who pm’ed me.
Cheers :slight_smile:

I have the TK-703. There’s two things you need to do to fix the flickering issue. First is ensure the pill contacts the bottom of the main body. I do this with a twisted circular piece of bare copper wire. It basically makes a sort of “crush” washer between the pill ground and flashlight ground.

The next part is a little harder. You have to pop the switch out and take it completely apart. Clean all the metal parts really well and also clean the plastic parts with alcohol. Then reassemble them and this ought to get the flickering out.

Me personally I went a step further I soldered the spring into the metal contact cup and soldered that to the battery negative contact strap so that the only non-soldered point of contact was the switch cup to the flashlight body contact.

Mine hasn’t flickered for years and has actually been my favorite ultra portable light.

If you’re not up to it you can PM me and I have several modded switches I made specifically to fix some friends lights that flickered. I can always send you one of them.

Supposedly it is possible to emitter swap the SC600. The original SC600 (not the Mark II version), uses a rectangular-shaped star. If you can managed to desolder the star you can pull it out and emitter swap or even swap a new star in. The star is screwed in, and there may be solder on one of the screws in addition to the solder on the leadwires.

The problem: The SC600 has fantastic heatsinking. Supposedly, the SC600 is quite hard to do an emitter swap because the heatsinking sucks the life out of most soldering irons making it impossible to desolder the leadwires and screw. You’re probably going to need a VERY powerful and expensive soldering iron or a soldering gun to have any chance at emitter swapping the SC600.

The SC600 Mark II is probably MUCH harder to emitter swap. To make the light shorter than the previous version, my guess is they switched to an integrated board with both the driver and LED on the same board like they did with the SC52. So there’s probably no conventional star. Cooking the board to remove the LED runs the risk that the other components will fall off destroying the driver.

Fenix PD20
I was a good light for it’s time, fenix quality but with fenix price.
I think that back then I wanted a compact light that was powerful and CR123A battery would help me. But I was wrong, I couldn’t find quality rechargable CR123A.
If it was a cheap light, I wouldn’t care but it’s a fenix.

some series are easier to swap, but be carefull not to apply too much heat or the switch will melt...

How did you get your switch out? Mine has two tiny screws on the inside, but I’m afraid of stripping threads. A small square foil spacer at tailcap end used to work with eneloops.

I think the light that was my worst buy is my Lenslight Mini.

The Lenslight Mini is an expensive 1xCR123 zoomlight. It uses an XPG R5 neutral tint. The light has 2 brightness settings on CR123 (200 lumen high, 20 lumen low). When run on higher voltage li-ion, the low setting disappears and it effectively becomes one mode.

Why I regret buying it:

  1. It’s huge - The light is as big and heavy as an SC600, but far less bright. It’s well built… there’s a lot of aluminum in it. But it doesn’t seem very practical and is far too big for EDC pocket carry.
  2. It doesn’t tailstand.
  3. The protruding button can easily accidentally come on in the pocket and doesn’t lockout.
  4. For an expensive zoomlight it doesn’t throw as far as the much smaller and cheaper Sipik 68, and cycling the zoom is a 2-handed operation.
  5. The pocket clip is the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s made of Delrin plastic, has sharp edges and protrudes enormously, making the flashlight much bigger. Also because of the way the clip is shaped, unclipping the light from anything is a 2-handed operation.
  6. The light came with too much lube in the zoom mechanism. Every time the light is cycled into spot mode it deposits a layer of grease into the revealed portion of the body … which is unfortunately right where you hand naturally goes so you get it on your hand. Wiping it off the light doesn’t help, because the next time the light is cycled a fresh layer of grease is deposited.
  7. It doesn’t focus very well. Unlike my Sipik 68s, my Lenslight does not produce a sharp image of the die.
  8. It was ridiculously expensive… over $160.

Other lights I regret buying (but none as much as the Lenslight):

(a) no-name generic 1xAA/14500 zoomies(I have a few lights like this): In flood position, the lens sits much too far above the LED. This means that flood mode is barely wider than spot mode. … so if you’re looking at something up close its like shining a light through a toilet paper tube and is basically useless. NOTE: in most cases, this problem can be alleviated by grinding away the outside of the body below the bezel to allow the bezel to retract further into the body. This results in a much wider flood mode.

(b) 1xAA inova spotlight: This is an old LED light I have. Not sure when I got it, but might be 10 or even 15 years old. It looks well built with AR coating on the lens. I haven’t opened it up, but I suspect there’s just a 5mm LED in there behind a fancy lens. It projects a perfect circle in the distance. The circle itself is a dim white with purple edges. There’s no spill at all. It’s too dim to function as a distance spotlight and the complete lack of spill makes it usless for up close.

(c ) Dorcy 1xAAA zoomie: Chrome colored screw in zoomie. The old LED used is very dim making the light rather useless. Flood mode is ok, but when cycling into zoom mode there are major problems. The zoom is cycled by simply unscrewing the head. Due to the chrome color inside the bezel, each screw thread manifests as a ring around the spot. By the time you cycle fully into spot mode there are probably 20 rings, making this tiny light a competitor for ringiest beam ever. Second, there aren’t enough threads and there’s no stop preventing the bezel from coming all the way off. If you want to cycle until you see an image of the die, you have to unscrew the bezel completely and basically hold it loose in your hand in front of the rest of the light.

(d) Sunwayman V11a XPG: Expensive $90 magnetic ring AA light with cool white XPG. Dropped the head from 3’ onto a wooden floor while changing the battery. It landed bezel down. No external damage to the head… not even a scratch. But a surface mount device on the driver popped off and it never worked again.

(e) Jetbeam BK135a: Cool-looking 1xAA light with camo body, with a nice programmable driver. Driver overheated and died after just 5 minutes of use. Sent it away for warranty repair. Received it back 2 months later, but instead of the nice limited edition programmable driver, Jetbeam replaced the driver with a crappy non-programmable one from their production version of the light. Lame!

The original CMG Infinity.

I got this around 2000 or so. Despite its namesake and manufacturer claims that it would last forever, it worked for about a day and then refused to turn on no matter what I did. Some part of the electronics inside apparently died and, despite the “lifetime” warranty, no repair or replacement was ever offered when I contacted the company about it.

When it worked, though, it was basically a 5mm LED mule which put out about a lumen of ~10000k blueish light in a 120-degree beam with no hotspot. It could do this for about 40 hours per AA cell, though I suspect that time was measured until its output fell below 1%. It was a one-mode twisty battery crusher, off or on. Physically built like a tank, but apparently the internals weren’t so robust. Also, no tail-standing and the clip simply wrapped around the smooth round body so it was never very secure.

The modern equivalent, the popular 1xAA tube light, is a popular and useful class of products. But this one was never very good, even when it was new. For reference, it could produce up to 5 lux at 1 meter, or about 0.6 lumens, which means that, on a fresh battery, it would look slightly brighter than a ZL SC52’s 0.34lm moon mode. (calculated based on selfbuilt’s lumen/lux measurements and “dansdata”’s measurements)

Update: After looking into it a bit, I found that this was apparently a very common problem (despite the manufacturer’s claim that they had never heard of anything like it), and Dan from dansdata (the most famous light reviewer back in ~2000) published a workaround for it way back in 2002:

I just tried this, and it’s now working again for the first time in like 13 or 14 years. Maybe if I sanded off the massive lanyard ring, it could at least make an okay candle. It sure is a blue beam though… it makes my cheap ~7500K lights look warm.

It’s too bad I didn’t know about this easy fix 13 years ago when a portable blue lumen would have actually been useful.

Ouch, that sounds pretty terrible. A $160 downgrade from a SK-68?

Also ouch. I’m glad my RRT01 didn’t react like that when it ran into concrete. It was clipped to the outside of my purse when the purse fell off a table onto concrete. The RRT01 hit first, with the weight of the entire purse behind it. The result is a bit of body damage visible from a few meters away:

The RRT01 was not a bad buy though. It’s one of my nicest lights, even if it’s a bit wide or stubby for my taste and has short-ish runtimes. :slight_smile:

NiTech TriColor, allegedly made for the British army (also came with a NATO item number; if such a thing does even exist).

Nice and sturdy ABS construction, intersting internal colour filter selector, and came with the most primitive, yet ingenous switch ever. The only problem, besides the anaemic Mini-M@glite incan bulb, is that it’s not working at all due to a broken ground strap. Promised myself to mod it one day, wedge in a slug of solid copper, an XP-G2 powered at three-plus amps, and find out when ABS will actually melt.

While the NiTech 2AA torch does actually score some points after all (the body is very well made, and oi! - it’s a combat torch for Her Majesty’s Armed Forces… allegedly, at least), I absolutely disliked the TrueUtility TRUELITE 0.5W keyring light. I’ve got two of those; one still in its original packaging; but it would be far too embarrassing to give it away. I’d rather donate a box of matches; not only they’d be brighter, but more reliable as well. The other one I keep amonst my collection as a reminder that sometimes, a nice design will come with absolutely horrible craftsmanship. It’s best use would be to take up space in a dustbin, and it even manages to fail this simple task… that tiny, miserable waste of aluminium!

Easily, this light is my contender for "Worst Buy"; not even sure why I ordered the thing:

http://dx.com/p/flood-to-throw-white-light-led-flashlight-with-carabiner-clip-1-aaa-33326

Horribly dim, and much too large for a AAA light. Might have been okay if it wasn't ~99% big enough to take a AA but with a plastic spacer for the AAA.

Second (and here comes the hate) is my SK-68! It's an awesome light but is not convenient. The narrow body with the larger steps at the tail and head make it less convenient as an EDC. Mine never gets used, even after a driver upgrade to boost the brightness to DD-level!

@ Chloe... I really like my TK-703! I love such a tiny light with the crazy throw that little SMO reflector gives! Yeah, three big issues... First, lack of a spring on the tailcap. I fixed that one. Second, too short for protected cells. Oh well. I'll just use my blue Ultrafires until they blow up. Third, the glued-on head. I ended up scuffing the body on mine trying to get it apart. Then fried the driver trying to turn it into a tiny aspheric thrower.

I bought one of those that stopped working. When sticking a meter on it to check tail cap current it wasn't emitting any light but was pulling 8 amps from an Ultrafire 18650.

Guess what?

It got binned.

Bought one of those too. Fed it a 10440 to finish it off...

I actually like those :)

I have several as they eventually wear out and the heads fall off.

My worst buy was one of the first, a generic one of those floating pill 18650/3xAAA zoomies with the green ring. It is impressive looking but the workmanship inside is poor, as well as the design. (I do have a Smiling Shark SS-8027 with floating pill that I like. It has nice fins on the pill, is well made and is very unusual.)
I have one $3 SK68 that I cannibalize for o-rings because it didn’t have enough tail threads to get it not to cross thread, and one $10 UltraFire XM-L zoomy that I took the pill out of to use in cooling tests and the lens as a magnifying glass. The latter convinced me that if UltraFire is anything but a label, it has no consistent quality control.
I don’t use any of my older lights much. I keep my Tekna Monolith in my day hiking pack and have used it when I was still out by dark. I have an incan. 2D zoomy in the trunk of one car. I used the Maglight Solitaire to read a thermometer without spoiling my eyes’ adjustment to the dark. The multi 5 mm led lights and converted incandescents will be useful when there is a long power outage.
I don’t really use my TangsFire C8 for anything, except to gaze at the build and feel the weight, as I have not gone camping and the spill would blind on-comers in the city.

Sunwayman V11R with AA extension…the only light I sold a few months after buying it. It wasn’t a bad light, but I didn’t like the beam, the efficiency was a bit disappointing, and the magnetic ring had a high tendency to stay stucked on min or max. Too bad because it was very well built, and I liked the magnetic ring concept !

I’ve also been disappointed by the Olight S10 titanium (horrible green tint due to lens and emitter)…but my girlfriend liked it (it looks like she doesn’t care about the tint)!

I have some lights that i NEVER use:

sk98

sk68

Police 1 mode

http://www.miniinthebox.com/police-1-led-flashlight-with-hand-strap-and-retail-box-1xaa-3w_p353713.html

+ some other small or zoomable lights. Thought in the beginning that 5 modes and zoom would be cool, but nowadays i prefer simple and efficient 1-3 mode lights. I also have some larger lights that I don`t use much but I don`t want to name them because they never dissapoint me when I use them.


My first message here, yippee!

TrustFire Z8. Heavy, crap tint & PWM.