Review: EagleTac D25A Ti 219 (mid-2014 botch, er, batch)

I verified it on another D25A, and on an Olight S10. Stock AR lens equals nasty tint with a blue halo, no lens equals beautiful beam, plain piece of glass also equals beautiful beam. It’s not the reflector. I think this is also why so many ZebraLights have green tints, but I can’t remove the lens to test those.

Odd that they would use such bad coatings then. I don’t see green or yellow with my eyeglasses. Maybe a lot of people want coated lenses because that is like other optics but don’t notice the quality. Or maybe they don’t know what they are selling.

Just a quick note. You must have gotten a Friday afternoon sample. My late 2014 D25A (Nichia) has a similar low mode to my 2012 model (around 0.5 lumen or less).

The threading is nice and tight (a bit sloppy on the 2012 models I’ve seen), and I like how they redesigned the head to hide the brass threads. Overall, not a huge difference from the 2012 model (excluding 14500 use, I don’t use 14500 in these lights).

My knurling was clean, and I did note a blue tint to the edge of the spill but I don’t see it in use since it’s at the very edge.

Overall, I’m quite happy with my late 2014 model. I think you just got a bad sample. Unfortunately these mass market lights can have pretty big sample variation.

Ha! Great review and nice pun in the title.
The D25A was high on my list but, aside from ergonomics (mode switching), it seems that QC also prooves bothersome.

BTW, the driver came out of my D25A while I was trying to melt the glue holding the head together. It looks like the driver will be relatively easy to replace, and I can even keep the original contact plate.

So, the plan is to replace the driver, connect all three pins of the contact plate (batt plus, batt minus loose, batt minus tight), and write some firmware for it to take advantage of the tight/loose sensor. The down side is that I don’t have any boost drivers available so it’ll require 14500 cells after the mod.

And I still haven’t gotten the pill to unscrew from the head yet. Sigh. Stupid extra-strong glue.

Oh, and I also have a 2012 model of the same light now. It’s much better than the mid-2014 model. However, it still needs the lens replaced to get rid of ugly tint… but that’s a simple matter since the bezel unscrews easily.

Mostly, I’ve just been too busy to finish it, and the availability of other drivers is a fairly recent development.

Sorry to hear you got a lousy sample but I’m interested in what drivers you find to fit in there!

RMM sells a 15mm 5x7135 driver right now which should work, if you remove the D25A’s contact board. And the oshpark thread lists a 12mm FET driver which should also work (piggyback on the contact board). These are both available right now, and are both pretty good.

I’m hoping for a FET+1 driver or maybe a 2x7135 driver instead, though even a 1x7135 is bright enough for my purposes. And I’m hoping for a 14mm solution too, because that would work in both the D25A and in the new CNQG brass AA lights.

In any case, there are options. I mostly just need to do it.

Please post when you do! So few decent AA drivers. Do you like the brass AA? I prefer the old knurling pattern so skipped it. No clip for it right?

I like the brass AA as a host, but its driver is only 3-mode and has slow PWM and inconsistent memory and it’s not reflashable. The plan is to replace both the driver and the emitter, and then it should be a very nice light.

Also, no clip. It’s unfortunate, but nobody makes any clips compatible with it.

I usually just take it for granted now that every light will need to be reprogrammed and likely also modded physically before it’ll be worthwhile. So I view most of them as nothing more than hosts. But maybe if the BLF A6 sells well, some budget manufacturers will start using better drivers and firmware in stock lights.

I ordered a 2014 D25C Ti from Illumn recently and got heads up from ToyKeeper about possible issues with models from 2014.
Have spent 30 minutes reading this thread.
Still waiting for my light to arrive but one thing I can confirm is that the AR coated lens will shift the tint to warm/yellowish.
If you wear AR-coated glasses and you are reading this, just try to put on and put off your glasses while looking at your screen.
Tint shift is pretty noticeable.

I got my 2014 D25C Ti with Nichia about 20 minutes ago. This is my first Eagletac light. The UI is quite new to me.
I played with it to test function, and paid attention to the two major concerns ToyKeeper had in her review. Neither of them exists on my sample! Lucky me.

  1. Tint and blue halo
    The tint of this nichia219B is just perfect. It is not cool at all but very pleasing neutral white without being rosy. I will upload some tint comparison later. Right now I am at work and only has D25C and nitecore MH20 with me.
    I did see some blue halo outside the beam when close to a white surface. But it is way less obvious on my sample than TK’s. It is also way less obvious than Olight S20R, SWM C20C, or ZL SC600 MK1.
    One thing I noticed is that TK’s D25A is with light orange peel reflector. My D25C has a SMO. The lens on mine is a same or similar AR lens.

2. Moon mode
When head is tightened, there are two modes, turbo and strobe (group 2).
When head is loose, I get group 1. By tightening/loosing head three times, I get to lower or raise the output of whole group 1. When group 1 is in the lowered state, the first mode is a true moon mode, being less than 0.5 lumen if I assume MH20 has a 1 lumen low mode. When it is in the higher state, the first mode is brighter than MH20 1 lumen mode, being maybe 3-5 lumens (only by estimation). Though I am using an efest IMR 16340, the other two modes (medium and high) are retained at some extent except the medium mode is too bright (about half of high). This is expected as mentioned on Eagletac specs. This is also similar to what you see when switching from eneloop to 14500 on Thrunite T10.
Overall, the modes are satisfactory on my sample even using 16340.

I completely agree with TK about the upper/lower Group 1 crap. Why can’t they just assign four nice modes in Group 1 (head loose), and group 2 as tactical mode (head tighten).

I did observe PWM in lower modes. They are pretty high frequency. I have to wave my light really fast to see it. So this will not likely to bother me.

From Eagletac website, D25C was the one that user can open the bezel and replace the lens. D25C was the one to have optional mode memory in Group 1. D25A and D25C may have different drivers based on what Eagletac said. “D25 clicky Ti series use the A400RC III driver and A950RC III driver. Both feature high efficiency, clicky and twist head operation, programmable 0.5 lumen moonlight mode, optional mode memory (D25C only), added auxiliary modes (i.e. disorientated strobe, fast SOS), and most importantly dimmable feature with single li-ion.” The one in D25A might be less consistent compared to the one in D25C.

Overall, this is a great buy for me, especially from Illumn at the price, and three days delivery. (There are quite some purchases go like “that is not what I wanted” in the first twenty minutes I had it in my hands. This is not one.)

I’m glad to hear the D25C is better. :slight_smile:

It’s especially interesting that the blue halo is weaker than the lights you compared it to. I have an Olight S10 and a couple Zebralights, but the D25A’s blue halo is far brighter than any of my other lights. It sounds like the D25C really is better about that.

I might be able to fix moon on mine. When I was trying to unscrew the pill to change the lens, the driver popped out instead. And on the driver I found what looks like a potentiometer. I’m guessing this might control the brightness of moon, or maybe adjusts all the non-PWM modes. I haven’t tried yet though, since some internal wires broke and I kind of want to replace the whole driver anyway. A small 1xFET or 1x7135 driver should fit, and I can write firmware to drive it. The light will then be 14500-only, but that’s okay.

I’m looking forward to tint comparisons. And if I ever get mine put back together and functional again, I should do some tint shots compared to my other Nichia 219B lights. All my other Nichias look pure white.

Note, I put a 17mm Dr. Jones lucidrv /ft driver in my D25C. So cool. Used the stock contact board too. Now it’s 16340 only but MUCH better.

Oh, nice. I didn’t even think about modding the C model. It has so much more room for a driver! And IIRC, it’s still reasonably small for a 16340 light.

I’ll probably have to use a 12mm driver, floating in the pill like the stock driver does. But it should be able to use the stock contact board and I can even make the tight/loose sensor do something too. :slight_smile:

FWIW, Eagletac is still not Constant Current, despite claims to the contrary

EagleTac D25C Ti 2017 w Nichia 219B 5700k LED, taken with Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, photo and video courtesy of Dr. Forinor

still photo

a friend bought a Ti 2014 D25c, modes do not work properly on LiIon

pic is a link

I thought this was only for the D25a. My 2014 D25c ti functioned well on lion. Can’t check it anymore, now I have a blf A6 driver in it.

I do not know how to identify which 2014 Ti units had the “direct drive” feature/bug

some people never use their lights
the seller had no idea the light did not have modes on LiIon, the light just lived in a box.

thanks for letting me know some D25a Ti 2014 also had the direct drive, driver

I myself have not owned an ET… the AA version interests me, but I see the D3A is not moddable, no bezel… have not learned all the variations in the lineup

is the D25a moddable, does it have a removable bezel?..

Its a long time ago, but I think only the D25c model had the easy to remove bezel and room for a 17mm driver.
There was also a difference in moonlight mode between the two. D25c had a much lower moonlight mode.

The aluminium version, yes. Gives access to the LED, no idea how to get the driver out though. I’ve not had the titanium version but the voices on here say no bezel.