Archon D10U 18650 aspheric diving flashlight, a non-diver review

Thanks lionheart for your view on this light, perhaps this is why there is little information about it on the internet.

Still looking for someone who wants to check it out at some depth underwater :-)

We really do appreciate your reviews though mate, great job.

I totaly disagree actually, i think it is a good idea to focus lights for underwater use, if you want to i could test it down to 70mt or somethingā€¦. But already before i have tested it i can mention some flawsā€¦. it is to big to be a backuplight and to small to be a primary i thinkā€¦ (primary lights should have a long burn time) the design is also not that recognisable for diversā€¦ it needs a goodmanhandle of some sort (if it should be a primary). And i suspect it to be quite heavy in the front with the glass lensā€¦. I would have solved it with a fresnell insteadā€¦

Hi esmi83, I'm happy to send the flashlight to you for testing underwater. You can keep it afterwards so if it is destroyed in the process that's fine. I do like a report of the test in this review-thread, with perhaps if you have the opportunity some underwaterpictures (video? :bigsmile: ) of the light in action/ the light failing . If you PM me your address I will send the light :-)

Iā€™m not getting how the zoom works. What is stopping the zoomies from being pushed in at higher depths? I have some tight sk68 and theyā€™re very hard to zoom in/out just by air pressure difference, at sea level.

Now this thing will go to 60m - so thatā€™s 7bar vs 1bar air inside = 6bar difference. Again, Iā€™m not seeing how the zoom withstand this pressure difference and not being forcefully pushed in by invisible Hulk.

P.S: Thereā€™s a report at CPF that this light failed and leaked at first dive. Look forward to see how this one performs. If possible, videos :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Iā€™m with Pulsar13. Being a diver there is significant pressure buildup underwater. Since the inside HAS to be air, and the outside water there is going to be some serious pressure there.
I can offer to take it diving but shipping to the US is likely prohibitive.

Tight beam vs. spill - is very much dependent on local conditions and what the diver wants to do with the light. For murky water and signaling you want a powerful tight beam. For clear tropical waters, video, and night diving in those conditions a light with more spill is often what is desired. I find it interesting that some of my NW dive colleagues take their halogen lumen monsters on tropical vacations. I think this is like bringing a car headlight indoors to find something in a closet.

Forgot about this lightā€¦if you havenā€™t found someone to test this light I can, but it will only be to 35-40m (ex-HMAS Adelaide off Terrigal, NSW) and it wonā€™t be until the water warms back up a bit (itā€™s currently 16 degrees, eek!!!)
Anyway, no great hurry, I wonā€™t be diving before October.

Wuss - :slight_smile:
Here itā€™s 10*C and the peak of summer warmth. :party:
In a few months itā€™ll be 7*C.
Drysuits (almost) mandatory. If you donā€™t, you likely quit.

Nice review djozz, i really like the photo of the beam on the tree. Trying to take good photos of my thrower i know is very difficult to take a clean shot of a thrower, at least i am failing. What camera do you use ?
Thinking about the light i think they have make the life too much difficult trying to make an aspheric that have moving parts an underwater solution. If this light do not take water inside @60m than Archon must be a very high quality line of lights.

Drysuit? So you donā€™t feel the water temp at all?

Wuss :wink:

Right now, not much. In Feb - March, it can get a bit chilly. :open_mouth:
You might consider it. A thin dry suit with minimal undergarment would vastly extend your dive season. One of the best parts is getting out and NOT being wet. Around here the late fall and early spring are the most interesting, and coldest, times to dive. Visibility can be highly variable in the summer plankton blooms or the winter rain+river flooding. Drysuit diving probably is around 90% of the active dive population. Wetsuit divers get drysuits or give up.

A newer club diver showed up a couple weeks ago in his old wetsuit. He thought it was warm enough to use it and was still not completely used to using a drysuit. He thought it would be relaxing to go back.
His opinion at the end of the dive - ā€œIā€™ll never do that again!ā€

I have been looking at dry suits, I had my heart set on a D1 Hybrid (Waterproof) but then found out you need like 30lbs of weight with it. Still looking for a decent dry suit, Scubapro make some decent ones, so do DIY apparantly. I just invested in a Waterproof H1 7mm so that along with my W1 should vastly extend my dive seasons.

A 7mm wetsuit has a lot of floatation, most of it VERY compressible at depth. Buoyancy is highly variable due to compression. Same thing with a drysuit.
For your purposes a shell with appropriate undergarment would likely work better.
I use a high quality compressed neoprene here but that gets you into the $2500-3K level.
Weighting is a function of the insulation you are using. I actually dropped 6# and increased my bottom time 10ā€ when I got that suit.

Got a steel tank?

Yeah, I use a 12.2 Faber and 18lbs of weight with a 5mm W1, itā€™s JUST enough, hardly need to add a thing to my BCD for neutral buoyancy.
What type of drysuit would you recommend for someone that wants to dive with as little weight as possible?

Totally forgot to report here in this thread. esmi83 did indeed succesfully dive with this flashlight and it survived, he even made some pictures but he did not post it or send them to me. So I just quote his PM he wrote in october to me here (I do not normally quote PM's btw, but I think in this case there's no harm in it):

Off topic:
Sorry for the delayed response. Which suit is very difficult to tell since people are so different in their cold tolerance and you are in a completely different country so may have entirely different suits available. It also depends on water temps. Try talking to some locals that use them and factor out the BS (bullshit) factor common among men that think whatever they are using is the best there is. In addition if you are only going to use it a few months a year you may not want to throw as much money as one you use year around like here.

For example, here DUI is a very common and generally well respected suit. IMO it wasā€¦.once. Now itā€™s overly expensive and not up to the standards it use to be, probably a victim of itā€™s own success. DUI-[dry until immersed] is often said a lot of the suit. The cross shoulder zipper is highly favored, OFTEN goes bad due to location and stress, and is expensive to replace as people find out after awhile.

Shit Totaly forgot aboute the whole thing! yeah I indeed brought it sucsessfully to 71m the pictures are not that good and i do not know how i should upload them hereā€¦. If there are some interest i could try to take some new ones but not before the water get a little warmerā€¦ā€¦ it is not that pleasant doing deco in 4degrees of waterā€¦.
Actually the light were perfect as a signal light when we used it together with a camera/videorig. The focusing is a really good idea for a small light like this especally if it is intended for communicationā€¦.

regarding drysuits the santi e.motion is good value for money, me myself have a DUI TLS for summer/vecation and a DUI CF200 for winter/abuse divesā€¦. The DUI FLX would be my choise if I should have only one suitā€¦ But there is a lot of personal preferences involved

I liked the light alot, but i did not like the packaging, there is a ring on the light that i think is bullshit, there is no place to tie a hook proparly, It would be nice if the body were fatter and could fit a bigger batteryā€¦. but all in all it is a nice lightā€¦.

Based on your experience which other aspheric lens in the 40mm range beats the lens from the UF-T20 in terms of throw?