minute 25
4sevens never* supported Li-ons in the Minis, not just the MiniX.
RCRs make no sense anyway. Go with AA lights and use 14500s. They have a lot more capacity, and you're not locking yourself into an expensive primary.
*Before they were released we were told that Li-on was fine. They later changed there tune. Just one of a long line of 4sevens blunders.
Not CEO, right? David, who runs (not sure about ownership anymore) 4Sevens, is Chairman of the Board at Olight. Other than saying they have a "strategic alliance" or something like that which will create synergy, they've never said what it actually entails. I imagine either Olight bought part of 4Sevens or vice versa. At a minumum I think Olight will be building more of 4Sevens' products than in the past and can buy bigger orders from Cree (Olight, iTP and 4Sevens were the only ones with S2 and S3 XP-G LED's). The thing that makes me think there is still some pretty significant separation is that David lives in the US (in the Atlanta area like me), even though he is of Chinese descent.
Not sure I'm crazy about the longer i3, though I don't doubt the clip is sturdier now. I took the clip off of my A3 and it lives on my keychain.
O-light and 4Sevens have a technology sharing agreement. What one develops the other can piggyback on.
As for the executive stuff, the CEOs of each company sit on the executive board of the other company. For clarification:
CEO - Responsible for day to day running of the company along with the other company officers (Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, etc) as well as long-term strategic planning.
Executive Board - Responsible for hiring, firing and evaluation of the company officers in the interests of shareholders.
Interesting to see ITP getting the hatchet - it's odd that O-light would absorb their own secondary brand as it could dilute the value of the O-light name. Normally it's the other way around.
Apparently ITP wasn't profitable enough to justify the brand segmention. Now people will get a "genuine" Olight at a lower entry level price and the former ITP products will probably gradually shift up in price as well.
i wonder if this is the beginning of a trend. maybe the market can't support this many brands.
uniquefire, sacredfire, fandyfire... :bigsmile:
I think it's probably more about the products than the brands. Brands are an artificial construct (with additional costs involved of course). Didn't they say the SA line was being eliminated? The A3 itself seems to still be popular.
I'm sure the market for lights priced higher than the commodity level is limited and those commodity lights are now getting better as well thus closing the gap.
It's probably a smart move. The EOS series is the only popular part of the iTP lineup, so they are saving that and calling it Olight. That gives people a cheap way to get into Olight lights and then later move up to more expensive stuff. Like giving away crack.
The clip on the ITP A3 can be reversed to wear the light on the bill of a cap .
Just sayin' .
i meant the mid-price brands of course. i don't think we can ever have too many ****fire brands. ever!
How I fish the jetti at night. :)
Does that include Trusrfire and Suterfire? :)
brted: Good point. The A3 was the only thing I ever heard about ITP initially.
As the owner of the iTP A1 I've always been irritated by its inability to tail stand. Which Olight have now fixed by removing the tailcap lug.
The addition of a screwed-on clip is retrograde though. If its gonna live on your keychain (as its marketed now with a "keychain hole") then you're gonna — like me — remove the clip as soon as it's out of its box. Now I'd end up with two empty, grunge-gathering, and useless holes in the tailcap flange.
Interestingly, their blurb also says its output has been "increased". But... it's now marketed at 180 lumens. When I bought my A1 it was being marketed at 190 lumens. Is this advertising flim-flam or what?
As a grumpy old man, I hate change-for-changes'-sake in all endeavours.
And what's happened to the A6 Polestar? Which I also own.
I just use a Panthereyes cap for general illumination when night fishing but when I need more the A3 is there .
What's likely happened is that O-light is now measuring output using the ANSI specification, rather than OTF or theoretical. ANSI specifications are much more stringent, and have a measurement technique that tends to decrease rated output. For example, ANSI has the second output measurement at 30 seconds instead of 5 seconds, so output decreases due to thermal issues are magnified.
the old A1 could do 190 on an RCR, but output with a 123 primary was closer to 130. since they don't recommend RCR use anymore, 180 probably is rated on 123 primary. so, for that at least, it is an increase.
for the "increased" specs on the i2 and i3, i echo jekostas comment about ANSI standards. the i2 and i3 are probably brighter than the A2 and A3 respectively if measured on the same standard.
I've just got a ITP EOS A3 Upgraded to XP-G R5, rated at 96 lumens on max.
Using it with a alkaline at max, all I can say : it's far from 96 lumens. It's probably the same thing with a NiMH AAA.
I don't know about 96 lumens, but with alkaline it's way weaker than NiMH or lithium primary in my experience, and with 10440 the A3 is said to be extremely bright (but gets hot very quickly).
that with a 10440