Came well packaged in a box with enough bubble wrap to probably survive a drop from 5 stories. It arrived to Canada in 16 days!
I did contact seller once and he emailed me back within 5 minutes.
These lights are smaller than I imagined. Some of the pictures of these lights make them look huge.
Light had a few minor nicks probably from manufacturing, but not from shipping.
Threads were all very nice, anodized and greased in middle but not outer threads.
Tailcap may be just slightly different anodizing, reflector has a couple millimetre sized imperfections, Light seems to have perfect machining otherwise,
3 of the emitters (yes they are xml-2) are not centered, 4 are, but it does not seem to affect the beam pattern. The beam pattern does have “flower petals” at the very outer edge of beam.
It has low medium and high with a satisfying click of the button. 2 disco modes only if you hold the button for a few seconds.
Pictures inside light in case you want to see if this is a good light to modify.
Honestly I think this light is pretty amazing as it is. I used it in a dark basement in a house under construction and will light up a room fairly comparable to a big 120 volt halogen work floodlight (not sure how many watts this one was) although the beam patterns are not comparable.
If pointed at a white ceiling it looks brighter than a 100 watt incandescent bulb on high, medium is about like a 50 watt bulb and low is about 25 watt bulb.
Compared to my other flashlights which reviewers have stated the lumens (Tangsfire C8, Convoy S2), I would estimate 2000 lumens on high, 1000 on medium and 500 on low. (at least one blf member would like to see a lower low on most flashlights — well this low to me is not very low at all.
The main part of beam is very wide and gradually merges with the spill.
The light seems to me very similar to convoy s2, only everything is bigger and brighter. The main beam, the spill, the brightness and the flashlight itself of course.
I am very impressed with this light.
“Can” rating 5/5
Soldering a piece of wire across that resistor bridge R200 will boost the power, these types of drivers are prime candidates for the daughter addon board to put the ATtiny type modes
Also changing out those skinny wires from the driver to the emitters helps boost overall current flow, with that many emitters, might be a good idea to put the solder braid on the springs on the tail cap
Man…that’s and awesome SRK! Does it have the large 1/2” thick heatsink under the emitters that screws in?
See those two screws in your second to last picture on the underside of the heatsink?
Unscrew them and the reflector should fall right out (I usually leave the lens and bezel on while doing this so there no chance I accidentally gum up the extremely frail coating on the reflector wells with my fingers).
The emitters are actually controlled by the negative side, the black wire comes from the FET where the amount of current is controlled to give you levels, the FET is what limits the current for modes (tho it works differently that 7135 chips), not the resistors.
On high the FET is commended to go full on but in stock form the current is still being limited on the other side (the + side) by those resistors. If you delete (jumper) the resistor then only the FET is controlling the output so it is only limited by its slight loss due to inefficiency. Low modes will still work just fine.
BTW if you ever get more into it and want to add a piggybacked Qlite to give you whatever levels you could want you got the good driver for that mod. That JB driver is IMO the best one to start with when modding an SRK.
Thank you for the detailed review, looking forward to receiving mine. I am quite sure the XM-L2’s alone are worth the price at $5 a pop for 7x I think it is really good deal. Although I do expect it to be floody as hell but it really doesnot matter it can still produce tons of lumes with a little modding.