As long as I’m rambling about Nebo products… I stopped by Batteries Plus today for the first time in a year or so. There’s one next to my favorite burrito place.
While the selection at B+ has definitely improved over the past year, I still didn’t see anything there which seemed worth buying. There were a bunch of new Nebo-brand lights which use LEDs I couldn’t identify, claiming about 60 or 90 lumens. They were either 1-mode or 2-mode (high, strobe), and the build quality was a bit lower than I’d expect even from a $2 clone-of-a-clone light from China. One model was a “CSI” (crime scene investigation) something or another, with a rather tall and sharp attack bezel. Sharp enough that they had to put up a sign telling people to be careful because the store can’t be held liable for people cutting themselves. Try carrying that light in your pocket.
Hmm, a quick web search tells me that this isn’t their first model in that line. One of the first reviews I see explains that this extra-sharp bezel is an upgrade from the previous model: “REMOVABLE strike bezel— I’ve taken mine past TSA six times” … I’m really not sure what to say, when that is one of the main selling points.
They still had the same old Nebo Redline, for the same old $35 price, which is basically a larger, harder-to-use, 3xAAA, shorter-lived equivalent of a SK-68. But this time they also had a Redline “Select”. I couldn’t see what was different about it, except that it claimed to do 310 lumens and costs $50. It’s worth noting that the XR-E emitter inside isn’t rated to go up to 310 lumens though, and zoomies are notorious for having a significant drop from emitter lumens to OTF lumens. But maybe they fixed the issues which caused the older models to burn out so fast.
They had a bunch of lights from TerraLux too, which I hadn’t heard of before today. Some of them looked genuinely kind of okay, though overpriced. Like, they have a 1xAA headlamp and a 2xCR123 headlamp which both seemed like they could be pretty decent (though a bit low on features). And a 2xAAA penlight claiming “high CRI” (80 CRI) with 80 lumens (or was it 60?). However, even their brightest and most expensive light ($150ish, ~680 lumens, tactical surefire clone) seemed nowhere near what we can get for a tenth the price with a Convoy C8.
Overall, it was nice that their selection has improved, but it was still disappointing. Not one torch in the entire store gave any data on color temperature (not even claiming “cool white” or “neutral white”, and very few gave anything like ANSI specs. I don’t think they had ever heard of sub-lumen moon/firefly modes, and most of the “low” modes were at least 20 lumens. It also seemed that nothing there was recent enough to use current-controlled output instead of PWM. They still don’t sell eneloops. But at least they’ve mostly moved on from the days of cramming as many 5mm LEDs as possible into a torch.
I guess this only fits into “worst buys” because my dad bought a Redline. As far as I’m aware, it basically burnt itself out in a few months, and he now uses the 3-mode SK-68 I gave him as a replacement.