Imgur link for those who don’t like walls of text: Gearbest Light Review - Album on Imgur
After posting in /r/flashlight on Reddit that I was seeking a reasonably priced 1x18650 submersible (minimum 150 ft) dive light for scuba diving, I was recently contacted by Dora from www.gearbest.com, who offered to send me two such lights free of charge in exchange for posting reviews on these lights.
Shipping: Dora first contacted me on December 16, 2014, I gave her my shipping information on December 19, 2014, and I received the lights on December 27, 2014. The gearbest.com company is located in China, and the lights shipped from there to my location in Texas in about 8 days. I am quite impressed with the shipping speed. The items were shipped via DHL. I was told I would receive a tracking number from Dora, but never did receive one.
The lights I received were the Brinyte Div05 (http://www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_71297.html) and the Brinyte Div08 (http://www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_67578.html).
Packaging: Each light came in a reasonably sized (8” x 3” x 3” approx.) cardboard box with some soft egg crate material for protection. These two boxes were inside a larger standard cardboard shipping box, which was then inside a plastic shipping bag. It snowed the night before delivery and was quite wet outside, but all of the package contents were dry upon opening.
Contents: The Div05 package included the Div05 light, an adjustable wrist strap, and a small package of three spare o-rings. The Div08 package included the Div08 light, identical adjustable wrist strap, package of 3 spare o-rings, and a single 18650 lithium ion battery.
Dimensions:
Div05: The site lists the dimensions as 21cm long, 5cm head diameter, 2.5cm body diameter, and 3.6cm tailcap diameter. I know these are wrong, because this light is actually a bit smaller than the Div08.
Div08: listed as 15.1cm long, 4.48cm head diameter, 3.2cm body diameter, and 3.5cm tailcap diameter.
I don’t have a ruler handy to measure these accurately, unfortunately.
Build quality: Both of these lights, in my opinion, are built like tanks. They feel quite heavy in the hand, which is a trait I appreciate. The opening on each of these lights (between the rear of the head and the start of the body) has 3 o-rings, which are factory-lubricated seemingly adequately. These have ¼” thick glass lenses, milled aluminum reflectors, and are made from heavy duty anodized aluminum. After reading online about the Brinyte dive light lineup, I was under the impression that the heads of these lights are sealed with LocTite to prevent opening and leakage while diving. While this may prevent leakage underwater, it also prevents any sort of tinkering and modification to the light. I was able to unscrew the heads of both of the lights that I received, and I did find some red glue-like material on the threads. I did not use excessive force to unscrew these heads, either. This is good for me, as I wanted to tinker with the lights anyways, but time will tell if it affects the waterproof-ness. Both of these lights had a spring attached to the battery contact in the tailcap, but neither had a spring attached to the battery contact in the head. As a result, my unprotected Panasonic 3400mah 18650s (which are flat on both ends) were not able to make solid connections to the battery contacts. I remedied this by placing a small magnet on the positive end of the batteries, which made good contact with the contact board in the head. Another thing I really like about these lights is the diagram on the body of the light that indicates how to properly orient the batteries. Very helpful.
Modes and Mode Selection: The Div05 only has a single high mode, which is advertised as a maximum light output of 600 lumens, and is powered on by twisting the body into the head. The Div08 has 4 power modes: High (700lm) > Mid (220lm) > Low (65lm), and strobe on high. The Div08 has a magnetic switch to control the modes, which I really like. the switch operates very smoothly. I don’t know what material the spring under the switch is made of/plated with, so I don’t know how well it will maintain when diving in salt water.
Output: I charged up a few Panasonic 3400mah unprotected cells to test the brightness of these two lights against a few others. The lights tested included the Brinyte Div05 (600lm), the Brinyte Div08 (65/270/700lm), a BigBlue AL900WP (90/225/450/900lm), an Archon D11V (860lm), and a FourSevens Maelstrom MMU-X3 (200/1600lm). The Archon D11V is a wide angle video dive light with a white reflector and the BigBlue AL900WP is a wide angle dive light. Unfortunately, I don’t have any lights that are in the 600-700lm range for comparison. For the beam shots, I used a Nikon D40 set to 200 ISO and a 1 second shutter speed. I’ve included images of the light comparisons in the imgur album below. The lights are very bright for their price point, and I am very pleased with the output. Both of them have fairly tight spots with some flooding. The DIV08 seems remarkably bright for only being 700 lumens. Wish I had a lux meter to measure true output!
Runtime: The Div05 did not advertise a runtime, and the advertised runtimes for theDiv08 were 90, 220, and 1090 minutes on Hi, Mid, and Low, respectively. As I am using unprotected lithium ion cells, I didn’t want to test the absolute runtime of these lights, but can confirm that both lights lasted 90 minutes using a fully charged 3400mah Panasonic 18650 cell.
Waterproof: I am not going diving for a couple months yet, but I plan on taking these lights along and seeing if they are waterproof under pressure and how their output is underwater. In the mean time, I did do a quick test where i put the powered-on lights in a large bowl full of water for 90 hour, and both lights passed without any issue. I did see a few small bubbles come out of the threaded connection between the head and the body on the DIV08, but there was no water inside the body after the test.
Images of the lights and testing, along with further commentary are located at Gearbest Light Review - Album on Imgur.
Overall: I’m very impressed with these lights for their price. They seem well-constructed and solid. Not long ago I was under the impression that Chinese lights were generally of low quality, but these two lights have started to change my opinion. I can’t vouch for their quality as dive lights as I haven’t dove with them to ensure they handle the pressures of submersion, but I can say they would at least make a good general purpose or outdoors flashlight. They are strong and heavy and provide a good amount of light. If these lights are truly waterproof to 150m as advertised, I will recommend them to everyone I know for a good budget (possibly backup) dive light.
Dora from Gearbest also gave me a few coupon codes to share for these lights if anyone is interested in purchasing from them:
For the Brinyte Div05, use code DIV05CM to reduce the price from $32.21 to $29.99.
For the Brinyte Div08, use code GBDIV08 to reduce the price from $56.67 to $53.99.
I know the coupons aren’t too huge of a discount, but something is always better than nothing