China is a wonderful and mysterious country to me.
Yesterday I got a second unit of the Supfire A6 in the mail, same seller, ordered a few weeks apart. Apparently this one is from a new batch, left is the old one, right the new one, spot the 10 differences :
Ok, they changed the name a bit, the silly 'usa-tech' has disappeared, the 'T6' is gone as well (to have the U3 option?), Supfire is not a trademark anymore, the ano is also shinier (bit less nice IMO, matter of taste really), there is 'Supfire' on the lanyard now, but that's all, right?
No, ok, you could not have known that: new colour o-rings as well, but now were done!
.........................................
No, no, no, that is not all! Look well! EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT! Everything measures just a tiny bit different, even the overall length of the flashlight, even the clip! What is going on in that factory? As if Fred made a nice new flashlight and made a batch of them, it sold well so the boss asks Fred to make a bunch more and Fred answers "well, ok, did not expect that to happen, how did I do that again...., I did write the numbers down somewhere....., ok, seems I have lost the #@* piece of paper but no worries, I'll work something out".
The output is also a tiny bit less: high 545 (was 568), med 306 (was 318), low 68 (was 72). Well, that is within expected variance, right? No again, there's more going on, even the driver is (a tiny bit is the theme here) different, left old, right new:
Different FETS, different current limiting resistors (0.14 Ohm instead of 0.12 Ohm)!
Makes me really want to see how such a factory works. There were a few video's of the Tank007 factory a few years ago, but it all still remains a mystery to me.