Review: Durable Baseball Stick Style CREE Q4 WC 180LM 3-Mode LED Flashlight (1 x 18650/3 x AAA)

Durable Baseball Stick Style CREE Q4 WC 180LM 3-Mode LED Flashlight (1 x 18650/3 x AAA)

Reviewer's Overall Rating: ★★★★

Summary:

Battery: 18650 (or 3 x AAA)
Switch: Reverse Clicky
Modes: High - Low - Strobe
LED Type: Cree Q4 WC (modded to XR-E R2 WG)
Lens: Glass
Tailstands: No
Price Payed: $32.90
From: DealExtreme
Date Ordered: July 2011

Pros:

  • Throws quite well
  • Durable design
  • Big & heavy
  • Can be used to whack an intruder

Cons:

  • Threads were rough

Features / Value: ★★★★

Ok emitter, though I instantly modded it with a better one.

Three modes: High, low, strobe.

Can use either 1 x 18650 or 3 x AAA. (18650 is brighter)

Design / Build Quality: ★★★

Build quality is ok. The body itself is very good (heavy and durable), but the threads were not smooth and the light rattles a bit when shaken.

Flashlight parts:

Design is nice. Light is much bigger and heavier than I originally thought. Good for self defense.. ;)

Size:


Lots of mass for heat transfer & cooling. Should be good also for longer runtimes.

Size comparison: As big as FandyFire STL-V2, KD C8 & DQG II together. :)

Battery Life: ★★★★★

Didn't have time for real runtime tests yet, but must be good with tailcap currents of:
High: 1.35A, Low: 0.30A -> theoretically over 1.5h runtime on high.

Light Output: ★★★

Pretty good.

With original emitter I got a lux reading of about 9k Lux@1m. After modding with XR-E R2, which I happened to have lying on shelf, I got about 13k Lux@1m

Flood is ok, but the beam is a bit ringy.

Summary: ★★★★

Good "special purpose" light, easy to mod with any led with 21mm star.

The end: (pun intended)

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed the review. :)

Great :D

This looked so special the first day I saw it, that I´ve been waiting for a review since that.

Not that I was waiting anything mindblowingly special

It did seem much smaller when I first saw it from fran's post.

Interestingly interested...

He did mention that..... He said it could be used to hit an intruder, although I have to admit that he wasn't as precise as you about where to hit them.

.................or an intruder.

Wow, what a crazy design. :) Thanks for the review and nice pictures. Frontpage'd and Sticky'd.

Interesting concept .. Thanks for the review ....

Well there's no disguising the primary intent for that one. Its so little people can enjoy basebell! Maybe next they'll make a flashlight built into the head of a large axe for splitting wood after dark.

Great review and it does look well constructed and sturdy.

Now you can play baseball in the dark!!11

Oh no, spam upgraded techniques

I wonder what makes people, besides BLF'ers buy such flashlights, whats the use of one if not for flashlights collection?

How durable is the bat? If you smack something will the bat have a huge dent in it?

No it won't. Near the head the wall thickness is whopping 9mm.

The weak part is near the handle, where the walls are only 2mm thick, but that's not the part with which you should smack something.. ;)

> near the handle, where the walls are only 2mm thick

That's where you'd expect it to break, when you hit something with it, right?

DX should send one to Craig at LEDmuseum.org, he does destructive testing better than anybody.

Big design flaw with this one, it should be a right-angle-head light.

So you could see what you're hitting. Duh.

It needs one of those slip-on 90 degree mirror/prism attachments.

baseball periscope?

I'm would get the Solarforce Gladiator instead. The Solarforce Gladiator is thick from bottom to tip and does not have problems with the threads. Solarforce Gladiator is more like an eskrima stick.

If I bought that I would have it for all of about an hour before it would look like this

Yeah, adding big radiator cooling fins always helps.

People knew they were needed even before Edison -- you can see them on one of the earliest flashlights, the Morning Star:

http://www.mostinterestingfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/3.Morning-star.jpg

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Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week ...

Drill a hole and put a C8 , you get a cheap and big stick

Welcome to the madness, maomaobear!