Review TrustFire TR-3T6 Triple XM-L T6 5-Modes Memory LED Flashlight (3x18650)

well put imo sb

thinking out loud if the TF-3T6 is 2.5 amp and the driver is buck plus bost and the new DRY is claimed 5 amp is that driver buck and i doubt its buck plus bost ? and if people get the full claimed 5 amp draw will it put out much more light to the human eye then the other tripple xm-l,s,or tripple xm-l,s with buck plus bost drivers ? just thinking out loud i have not followed the light or any of its threads as it is not my thing and i have a good reliable tripple so im just thinking out loud.

while thinking out loud, people ask me witch one to get torch or RC, i recomend what i know and what i think is good and what i think will last, in my younger days i would buy any thing and would push every thing to the limmet they stand back when it failed and scratch your head.

like realy cars these days i like a big lazy 6,s then a small high reving 4 bagger and the lazy 6 engine will do many more miles but it might not have the same top end as the 4 banger engine, also the more common lazy big 6 is the one has the most spare parts forsale and the best price thats the most common....

i like the trustfire brand i like the constant current drivers as they seam to last long and can be ran for longer if im the guy who keeps harping on about the trustfire,s as Sprivey puts it Laughingi will say this to him, please buy the fandy fire one mode thats a drop in and it will do poorly with heat and will not handle heat or long runs, well not with atlest modification imoh, or buy the fry ray and beat that drum how its a great torch if they are like the one ive seen personaly and the countless hours of threads ive read on them before making up my mind witch one to get.

i also like manafont, but you dont have to buy from there, you dont have to read or participate in my threads please feel free to report any of my threads or post to the mod,s as to me this is just a internet forum and if your not sure witch light to buy google is your friend, good thing about budget lights or none budget lights there is that many around to suit just about any one Smile

[quote=benckie]

the new DRY is claimed 5 amp is that driver buck and i doubt its buck plus bost ? and if people get the full claimed 5 amp draw will it put out much more light to the human eye then the other tripple xm-l,s,or tripple xm-l,s with buck plus bost drivers ?

[/quote]

The new Driver is just a different arrangement of modes + medium, and it's direct drive @ 5A on Turbo. It will not put put the double from 2.5A. simply because the XM-l @ 2.5A outputs about 800L and @5A outputs 970L. And there's the batteries, are they capable of that, not all of them. And there's the heat.

Mentioning about human eye is useless in my opinion, because you could easily argue about this on all kind of output levels, on all kind of flashlights.

cheers so its no big deal then just a DD

i agree the human eye is usless and so are the torches if you use them against a wall.

And what's the scoop on using the DRY with protected cells? And what about using it with only 2 cells inserted?

after 2 mins of resurch the dry has a battery holder for 3 x 18650,s it will not work with 2 x 18650 unless you solder a bridge wire across the battery holder but that will depend if the torch will handle the lower voltage as the battery holder is wired in series so 3 x 18650,s is 12.6v and 2 x 18650,s is 8.4v.

since it has a direct drive driver (DD) i feel it might not be as bright running on two 18650 as direct driver torches drop in brightness as the battery voltage goes down.

if the torch does have the full 5 amp draw run time on 2 x 18650,s will be very short around 30 mins and running it on the standard 3 x 18650 setup will be around 45 mins maxium, you will need very good batteries to do this.

running it on protected cell,s could be an issue if you use cheap cells if the new dry draws 5 amps as battery protection might kick in and this will depend of where you get the cells from.

i use these they dont drip and no form of over discharge kicks in even with 5 amp busts Protected TrustFire 18650 but the same batteries from DX trip....

since the dry is direct drive you would be better off running it with 3 batteries or you going to lose brightness it does not have a buck + bost driver with constant current like the TR-3T6 that will maintain constant brightness untill the batteries have past there limmet whether you're running 2 batteries or 3 batteries.

becuase of this the new 5 amp dry at 5 amp is going to get pritty dam hot also so it will be a short run torch, just my thoughts from a quick bit of reasurch on this forum.

Thanks benckie for the reply!

Initially there were these two drivers.

High Low Strobe. High being direct drive with a max of 4A

Low Medium High Strobe. Which theoretically had to be regulated @ 3A. In fact it's direct drive even on High where you have PWM, Guys reported 2A- 2.2A .

Now there's this L-M-H-S with 3A max. It's not known if it's the same driver with direct driver on high as above, the supposedly regulated 3A.

And there the L-M-H-Turbo with 5A max.

Even running with Xtar's 2600 the protection could kick in @5A, on the other hand few cells are capable of that current draw. Anyway everything is a speculation for the moment.

We can speculate as much as we want, that running on 2 x18650 will not be as bright as 3 cells. From my initial tests it seems it can barely give any light with 2 x 18650, maybe 100L.

For the moment I do not like what drivers DRY is using. Great potential but there are actually 5 drivers out there.

I'll have to test the my DRY.

I'm interested on giving a try to this flashlight. Have anybody measured the current from the LEDs (not tailcap) at high mode?

Another interesting thing for me, is to compare this TR-3T6 with the DRY 3xT6 (throw, spill, beamshots).

i have not measured the current from the led,s yet i would have to disasemble the screw in for that, but at a guess since the driver is buck + bost and the led,s are in series i would gues they are driven at 3 amps or very close to that so each led would be getting the same cause they are wired in series.

comparing to c8,s jetbeam bc40 thats around 710 lumens and some other trustfires around 800 lumens the TR-3T6 is an eazy 3 + x brighter and since the TR=3T6 driver is constant current and digitaly regulated it will draw a steady current and maintain full brightness and because of the constant current it will run cooler and should last a long time due to not over heating or scaling up in current draw as the batteries voltage drops straing the driver.

once the batteries have ran past there limmet the torch will drop out of regulation, constant current and the torch will dim, this is where you turn it off and replace the batteries, but i have not ran into dimming with runs to 50 mins on 2 x 18650,s and 80 mins on 3 x 18650,s and i predict an easy 60 mins runs on 2 x 18650,s and 1.5 hours on 3 x 18650,s using my cheap Protected TrustFires

i took my TR-1200 and my TR-3T6 camping in the small wyvern nature reserve last friday we ran the torches on and off for most of the night gathering fire wood and checking the nets along the river i would say an easy 1 + hour of off and on running and when i got home i wacked the batteries on ballance charge the 3 from the TR-3T6 where 3.83v and the 3 from TR-1200 3.91v since the protection on the trustfire flames is ment to kick in at 2.75v i could of ran the torches much much longer (but i can not get any over discharge protectiong to kick in so i go by time used normaly or wait for dimming but i have not seen any dimming on the TR-3T6 yet)

before i left i did a quick test with a c8, ultrafire, jetbeam bc40 and my tr-1200 the beam on the jetbeam was brighter on the wall and out in the feild the beam of the tr-1200 was brighter and more focused at a distance of 2 meters on a tree as it will throw 300 + yards or 300 meters with its q5 emmiters but the TR-3T6 is an easy 3 x + brighter and with massive spill, while walking along the river with my TR-1200 that has good spill and a nice white light my wife walked up behind me using the TR-3T6 and totaly drowned me in light and the spill over took the spill on the TR-1200.

the TR-3T6 would have to be my first choice when i go into the bush (forrest) because of its wall of light its massive spill makes it a great exploring, walking light you can see every thing infront of you left right and straight ahead to 150 meters but my second choice is the tr-1200 due to its good spill so you can see whats infront of you but its ability to throw a great distance for spotting animails at a distance and its more concertated beam looking into clear water another reason i pick both of them over my other lights is the ability to run 3 x 18650,s it makes them a bit longer or bulky but the increased run time by 50 % is much welcomed by me.

my camping trip with my faimly was awsome im so glad i found bright high powered led torches and i dont have to use my old over priced dolphin or maglite torches that are usless in stock form and not very bright on rechargabiles.

will the extender work with a TrustFire USA 168???

http://www.manafont.com/product_info.php/trustfire-usa168-q5-3mode-memory-led-flashlight-118650-p-5494

I don’t think so as the tail cap looks more like a c8 then a TR-3t6 or TR-1200 but my trustfire USA should be here with in the next week so I’ll let you know

Thanks!!!

no i tryed the extenders from my TR-1200 and TR-3T6 (same thing) and it was a no go sorry

well ive been telling people the TR-3T6 has a throw of around 150 meters as its been hard to do beam shots and test the range of the light in the forrest as the wall of light it put,s out, but last weekend when we whent camping it made me think it had more throw the i have said, so we took it over to my old man,s who lives on a cattle farm to do some measured range testing with some other lights and i was blown away.

my actual measured range test

we test my TR-3T6 3 x 18650 on two trustfire flame batteries with a caip cap current draw reading of 2.7 amp's

250 meters (273 yards or 820 feet) of good usible throw with massive spill and i mean massive spill it basicly lit up the whole feild during the test.

300 meters (328 yards or 984 feet) of throw.

i was blown away by this i has under estimated the throw of this light due to the size of the reflectors and them being xm-l,s but xm-l,s seam to throw dam well also.

Thanks benckie!

I will buy it

250-300m of throw, although it seems to have the same reflectors. I don't think my DRY throws that far but maybe in a pitch black environment it will :)

Your DRY with the turbo mode even with neutral white emitters (-15% for T4 5A3) will definitely outthrow the the 3T6 with CW, by quite a lot.

These lights are really fun to play around with. I ended up getting one of these as a gift.

I wanted to ask: Did anyone experience some issues with the modes? After running on high for 30 seconds, the rest of the modes don't work (goes black). When switching to medium after it ran for 30 seconds, it will go black. If you leave it "on" medium it will kick back on in about 10 seconds. Cleaned and lubed it pretty good. I re-heated the solder on the outer-spring part of the module but that had no effect. No idea what the next step is.

Can anyone provide any input?

Otherwise, it's a really fun light. It feels heavier than my Sky-ray drop-in I purchased earlier. It's a tad dimmer also as others have mentioned. I'm probably happier with my SR just because it held up very well so far.

Is the UCL lens a worthwhile upgrade?

I intend on keeping this thing, its probably the plateau for performance/technology/cost for a long while. Its a long term "keeper".

No issues with mine. Where did you get yours? There appears to be some fakes on ebay