Review of unknown brand flashlight model YM-3030 - Pic heavy




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The light was provided for review by tinydeal.com, the link to the light is here

This is an interesting light at first glance, it has a soft switch on the handle instead of a tail cap switch which makes it easier to use, it has a tight hotspot, and takes two 18650 batteries in parallel for longer battery life. It also has a larger reflector then a C8, so it should have further throw. It is foybezelled which adds a nice touch and a few less lumens lost OTF. However it has a plastic lens which will scratch easier and is not AR coated, but hopefully its a common size lens so you can replace the lens with AR coated glass.

This light has no mode memory, it always starts on high, with the modes being High, Low, Strobe, Off.

I had to use aluminum foil to get contact on the positive terminals so you may need button top cells, my cells have indented tops from being used in 105C lights so perhaps new batteries would work fine (i’m on the fence there, i think you may need to use foil/solder/add springs to make it work). I didn’t test if it has polarity protection (don’t want to ruin a battery) but the holder will only go in one way so i can confirm it has a kind of polarity protection as long as you put the battery in the holder correctly you can’t put the holder in the light in reverse. This light does not have a low voltage warning.

It should be able to take much larger cells if you can fabricate some adapters, you should have no problems adapting it to 26650, 4AA or even 32650. It is about 42mm wide and i was able to fit 7AA batteries in the tube (making a holder for those would be an interesting challenge)


The anodizing is not bad but not great, its not thin per se but not as thick as some of my better lights. Also the handle on top feels kind of flimsy, the metal part is fine, but the plastic is not screwed on tight and has some play, i easily stripped one of the screws removing it. The light came with dry threads which happens on about 50% of lights that i get, some lubricant took care of that.

DO NOT USE THE BUILT IN CHARGER. I tried it and it charged my battery to 4.42V in 1 hour, the adapter that came with the light says 5V and 1A output and i assume its directly connecting itself to the battery. I suppose one could use a charger and solder some wires, but then your batteries would be unbalanced and its a lot more headache then removing the batteries and using your own proven charger.

I measured a parasitic draw of 0.001mA according to the 2mA setting on my multimeter, and after several days the level of charge on the batteries has not dropped at all.

The pill is screwed in but with all the wiring going into the handle you can’t unscrew it. The heatsinking is not great but its metal to metal so it should be adequate, i left the light running for 40 minutes and the body did not get noticeably warm, but the drive current is only 1A so thats not surprising. That suggests about 250 OTF not the 800 claimed.

My impression is that this light is not very water resistant, it may do alright in the rain but i don’t think you could submerge it, the handle and head would let water in. The handle might still let rainwater in unfortunately.

The star had thermal grease under a visible corner but nowhere else, clearly meant to make it look like it was fully greased. Also the black ring holding the LED will eat some lumens, but i think you could replace it and the LED with an XM-L if you really wanted to but if you want throw you should use XP-G compatible chips (i think XM-L would have to be ringless if you decide to go that route)

Drive currents - batteries charged to 4.11V

1 battery - my 1 battery test was on an older battery so may have high internal resistance, sanyo laptop pull purple ring
0.8A high
0.21A med
0.4A strobe (probably an average, its a fast strobe and i’m using a multimeter not an oscilloscope)

2 batteries - under 50 cycle UR18650FM
1.02A high
0.41A med
0.51A strobe

Final thoughts:
I think the only redeeming feature of this light is its ability to be modified for any battery use if you can create suitable holders, it has a very tight hotspot (though i wish i had a C8 XP-G to compare with), however the heat sinking is only adequate (comparing to the EA4/EA8 reviews) but not great and the lens is plastic and not coated, which is not a big deal but if this size of lens is available and not expensive it would be a cheap upgrade.

Technical pictures












indented positive terminals as noted above



The lens is plastic and does not have AR coating


Subtract 3mm form both sides (6mm total) to get reflactor diameter


Subtract 1.5mm (lens) to get depth, noting that the bottom has a flat spot next to the LED (see next photo)





The driver is huge!




The star fits perfectly in its “groove”, it must be custom made for this light or the pill custom made to hold it, but i don’t see why you can’t replace it with a noctigon/sinkpad, the reflector/ring will hold it in place


On the left it looks like the anodizing is worn away or never stuck, the mark on the right is an area of flatter anodizing (no texture) that i didn’t notice until i saw it in this picture


Machine marks that are anodized over


Cyclone C88 XM-L U2 3.55A - 15 feet distance


YM-3030 XP-G 1.02A - 15 feet distance

Oops, so they sent a 5 Volts adaptor in stead of a Li-ion charger with it…?

And, the lens, are you sure it’s plastic…?? :~

i am sure its plastic, i suppose you could buy one of those charging circuits and wire it in for charging, what would happen on two cells in parallel though?

will take twice as long :slight_smile:

You’ll need this:

Very handy.

I just won this Ultrafire in an auction and it looks identical;

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Large-Portable-Handheld-600LM-Lumens-CREE-Q5-LED-Waterproof-Torch-Flashlight-/261480609924?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEWNX%3AIT&\_trksid=p2047675.l2557&nma=true&si=a1NmRB3WR4%252FOn3UUoqQ0l%252FEE0MA%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

Best part is $9.51
Light looks pretty good in your review, excellent pictures and detail.
Mine will not arrive for a while but it is great to see the breakdown ahead of time.
Thanks!
Keith

Thanks Bort. It looks like a nice light but underdone.

Thanks for the review.

Me and a fair amount of others BLF members picked up this light some time back when it was around 12$ from Wallbuys. There is a thread on the light somewhere with lots of details and pictures too.

Ill share my thoughts on the light.

It screams cheaply made. I would not pay 15$+ for it... I personally wouldn't pick up another for 10$. But that's me.

Is it suitable as a mod host? yes. But, it would require a fair amount of work. I would much rather start with a bit better built light if I were to put 10-20$++ into it and hours of work to make a decent pill, fitting a proper driver and improving the battery carrier and contact paths. At the end of of the day after a mod, it would still feel cheaply made.

Is it a lot of light for the money at 10-15$? Yeah it kinda is. But its not a lot of well made light.

29$ for this light at tinydeal is a rip off IMO. Its usually around or below 20$.

underdone?

I think he is referring to the badly designed pill. Or the mediocre threads? Or the badly designed and cheaply made battery carrier? (which also could have fitted three 18650)Or the halfway plastic fantastic handle? (personally I don't mind that too much and think handle is decent in real life use) Or the cheap plastic lens? Or the outdated and under driven XP-G? Or the mediocre UI? Or the badly designed contact board to it. Or the imperfections on the body.. or the mediocre built tailcap.. or...

Hard to tell which part he thinks is underdone. It might be the overall combination..

Wow…and XP-G on 25mm aluminum sinkpad, runtime on those parallel batteries should be a VERY long time. And charger port directly connected to batteries…someone is going to burn their house down w/o knowing that they have to use a proper Li Ion charger

It does have a “semi-solid” shelf for the star (direct heat path to the heatsink fins vs a pill) which is a bonus

It needs ALOT of work for it to be anything barn burner…as it stands it’s really not worth it unless you can get one for sub $10-$15

either do the “stinkpad” method of drilling out the thermal path under the emitter and pressing in a copper wire and flattening it, or using a 20mm noctigon/sinkpad and trying to get it centered might be way to go to increase heat conduction efficiency

as others have said…will take ALOT to make this thing be of any great use, as it stands is a sub par lightweight cheap clone, more or less a novelty, as RaceR86 said…underdone

I think of underdone meaning steak, you can’t put a light back on the BBQ and get a better light coming out afterwards :bigsmile:

do you have this? If you do, do you know what chip it uses?

Whatever you do treat the carrier with kid gloves. I knocked mine off about a 2 foot night stand and one of the plastic ends popped off breaking one of the tabs. I have super glued it and it will not stay together. I finally ended up giving the light away. With a better carrier it would have been worth the $18 I paid for it. I hope that yours turns out better.

Yep. All of that.

I have a light very similar to this but branded Yupard 3405. I modified it by direct wiring its sense resistors, adding copper braids and changing its emitter with dedomed XP-G2 R5 1A on 20mm copper SinkPads. It now reads 2520 mA at the tail cap and gets me to 161 KCD.

Sure it still feels cheaply made but its now my third strongest thrower surpassing my modified Small Sun ZY-T08. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the review, very well done!

I also got one of these lights. I put a driver in it and an XP-G2 I was able to get just over 100kcd out of it. But I know I wouldn’t buy another one not even for $10. There is next to zero room to put a driver, there is almost no good way to heatsink it either. Not really worth the time but at least it was cheap.

Nice review on this light Bort. :slight_smile: i have 2 of these lights, ( has one of them since last summer when they came available) and have already modded the gun-metal grey one with a 4C XM-L2 emitter, and thinking of modding the other black anodized one with a MT-G2. The one i have with the XM-L2 ( originally it came with a XP-G) has a really nice, smooth beam profile.

That handle is going to go on My Supfire M6 if it’s not too long.
I got it with the thinking of, hey nice big reflector, couple cheap mods and an upgraded emitter on a sinkpad and Jed’s a Millionaire!