Mag-Lite 3rd Gen LED D-cell lights: 2D - 524, and 3D - 625 lumens

Don’t think they are. At least not on other models. One was a buck the other boost.

Imagine if it was a Chinese company producing flashlight with problems like this the Americans would definitely call it “chinese crap” without a second thought lol.

Good engineering means that a product is neither over engineered nor under engineered. Chinese products often times have NO engineering, and are sometimes just copies of someone else’s design with cost reductions with no thought as to the functionality of it. I have seen so much stuff from China that are obviously copies of something, but have NO chance of being useable because of the cost reductions that render the item worthless. I am not just referring to flashlights.
Maglites on the other hand are engineered to be USED and abused. We as flashaholics can tolerate some issues with the Chinese copies of lights that we buy, but the general public can not. For them a flashlight needs to just work.

Biased opinion because it is US made, but maglites are not even waterproof !

(Full disclosure - I also posted this at CPF, but no one seems to care.)

I was in Wally-World, and went to the flashlight section (of course) to see if they had anything new. I noticed the 2D LED on the racks, and something caught my eye.

412 meters. So I looked at the rest of the specs: 168 lumens, 42533cd, 6h45min. The LED is still small, but there is not green. I’m thinking it’s an XP-E2, but It’s hard to tell though the packaging. That would explain the increased throw. The body still looks like the classic 2D.

The 3D still has the XP-E, but maybe those are old stock.

I find this interesting, as the 3rd Gen (with XM-L2) seems to blow away the regular LED models in every way except throw. I figured the 3rd Gen was going to replace the old one, but it seems like we have a choice between the two. The price was around $35.

I wonder if HD or Lowes will carry these for 14.95 on Black Friday like they usually do. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we just get the xpe versions. I’ll be watching.

I’m curious about two things:

What part number indicates the 3rd Gen LED?

Also, how is the LED housed? Could we buy a replacement LED for the 3rd Gen for use in older models with 18650?

Mag 2D part numbers

Incan-S2D

Black-S2D016

Blue- S2D116

Red- S2D036

Green-S2D396

Purple-S2D986

Silver-S2D106

Gray-S2D096

LED-ST2D

Black-ST2D016

Blue- ST2D116

Red- ST2D036

Green-ST2D396

Purple-ST2D986

Silver-ST2D106

Gray-ST2D096

LED 3rd GEN-ST23

Black-ST23016

Blue- ST23116

Red- ST23036

Green-ST23396

Purple-ST23986

Silver-ST23106

Gray-ST23096

I don't know what colors the new mags will be, just put down the regular colors as reference.
No, you cannot just change out the led/pill.

If Lowe's has anything for Black Friday, I would imagine it will be the older LED Maglites. The new 3rd GEN are not in stores yet. Only online and only in a couple of places. Apparently they have not started regular production yet, either that or there's a ton of the old ones dtill out there. I suspect the latter. I did notice Lowe's had dropped the price on their 2D LED inventory, so maybe they are cleaning house for the Black Friday sale? Or the new 3rd GEN coming? Maybe not.

Well that certainly makes up my mind as to the future of my Mags. Basically going to go as cheaply as possible in keeping them going.

I wonder if there will be a way to run the 3rd Gen Mags with an 18650, or how they will perform on AA>D Adapters.

I have grown to loath D-Cells.

Running them on 18650’s is easy if you want to change the electronics. But much harder if all you want to do is change the battery source.

2D = 3.0v

So chances are it’s some kind of boost driver to get the correct vf for the LED. A single li-ion is going to more than likely fry one of these.

3D = 4.5v

So more likely a linear or buck driver and certainly in a similar realm to a single li-ion. But tbh I’d feel kind of stupid carrying a 3D around with just a single 18650 floating about in the body.

So you’d either want to cut the body down, or have some fancy carrier for parallel 18650’s.

As for AA. Easy, Eneloop do 1AA to D cell holders and you can easily pick up 2AA ones and maybe even 3AA ones. Just make sure they are parallel not series.

The only down side will be runtime vs the D cell. A D cell is what, 15,000mAh or more. NiMh AA’s are normally 2000-2500mAh. So even with 3 per holder that’s circa 6000mAh at best.

Forgive my ignorance, but what would need to be changed in electronics of the light to allow for running an 18650?

Is it possible that instead of LED swaps, we’ll see switch swaps? Or would modifcations of these new 3rd Gen lights require both new switches and new LEDs?

Drivers. I am happy to be proven wrong, but as said earlier, I suspect a 2D uses a boost style driver.

It uses this to boost the input voltage from the batteries to that needed for the LED, it uses mAh to do this.

In many respects this is no different to how most 2xAA lights work, just you have more mAh to play with using D cells.

Normally boost drivers like this won’t work on the higher voltage of a Li-ion.

Ahh, so it would burn through 3xAA in Parallel pretty darn quick. A little under 3 hours probably on high.

Heck, it would burn through 3400mAh 18650s pretty quickly as well. You’d have to parallel bi/tri-bore to get decent run times. Now I know why people prefer to run the 26650 in “forget about it” lights like Mags.

You can run a single 18650 or 26650 with a dummy cell, in the 3rd GEN 2D Maglite. I already have done it and it works fine with the stock driver. That's 3rd GEN.

** As far as the quality, let me qualify that statement. Maglite is not as good of quality as it was, but I am very picky. Little niggles are huge things to me and Maglite is still the absolute best quality over ANY Chinese light I have ever had! That is just a fact, as far as I am concerned.

Not gonna burn through the 18650’s so quickly. They are higher voltage than alkalines or NimH, so total power is more. I’d think 18650’s would do fine in a 2D or 3D Mag. Of course, 26650 will do better! :wink:

Just discovered 32650 batteries as well.

Awesome!!! Just got my ML300LX from an Amazon dealer after Cheaper than Dirt refused to ship it to Hawaii for no good reason…??? (and treated me like dirt for the order… never again!)

Just starting to play with it… loaded it with three regular duracells to try it out. Bright, I like it!

Leaving it in standard mode for now. High, Medium, and Eco…

High and medium work well in my yard to light it up to check on the dogs and noises, etc… Eco is cool to walk around the house without lighting it up and waking everyone up.

Seems just tad smaller and lighter than the old 3d lights but tough and well built so far. Fits good in the hand and will go on my night stand as my go to light for home defense… Flashlight/small club… Cool! Which is why I always have loved mags!

Checking out the different modes, strobes etc. will report back.

Seems like a total winner to me!

Haven’t bought a USA made light in awhile.
In for a 3D gray as a new walk light.
Will use AA Eneloops in 2x adapters.
Or Ds. Or Cs in adapters…

once the price drops abit i may get a 3D for old times sake :stuck_out_tongue:

At the moment i am getting a ThruNite Archer 2A V2 NW each payday till the whole family is kitted out.

Then it is time to research for LSD D cells and a D cell charger to see if the cost benefits add up at all for maglite.