As promised, did a short review that took a little more time to complete since it was fun to take it apart and make pictures of its guts, my cheapo DMM is broken so no tailcap reading or any other DMM action, also, take the tape measurement with some 1mm error, both DMM and digital caliper are on their way to me(got the DMM already), but for now enjoy this review :)!
Saik SA-125 Cree LED 2xAA single mode flashlight review, paid 6.41$ at Lightake.
The reasons for buying this flashlight, actually two of them were 1)it was the cheapest 2xAA flashlight from China that came with 2)real Cree LED and not some generic no name weak LED.
Pros
- Cree LED
- Takes two AA batteries
- forward clicky, which means momentary light activation as soon as you slightly push on the switch, you dont have to actually click the switch in case you dont want the light to stay on permamently
- rather attractive design for flashlight at this price point(some might like it, some might not)
- feels lightweight, weighs around 43.5 grams without batteries and 95.5 grams with two AA 2000mAh Eneloop rechargeable Ni-Mh batteries
Cons
* as expected for flashlight at this price point it doesnt have real annodization on it, its just thin layer of black paint that scratches rather easily
* not waterproof as advertised, it has two o-rings, one for tailcap and one for head, but there is no o-ring for lens, thats where water will ingress
* crenelations in bezel show up in beam profile, you will see it on outer parts of spill thus deforming the beam, see gallery bellow this review
* LED’s are not centered and that shows in beams profile, hotspot is not even close to being somewhat centered in the middle of beam and the steeper the angle at which you shine your light upon objects, the more its hotspot will shift away to the side of beam, its very visible, see gallery bellow this review
* not constant beam profile and brightness among my lights, one is considerably brither and has tighter hotspot while other one is not as bright and has floodier beam, see gallery$video bellow this review
* light is not 260 lumens as advertised, see below for comparison video between both SA-125 and JetBeam BA20 which has 270 OTF lumens
* light runs really HOT, dangerously hot when left runnig for couple of minutes - there isnt much heatsinking between LED board and flashlights body, Im quite confident that 2*14500 will fry it almost instatly :D! See gallery bellow this review for pictures of pill
* and that brings us to fact that for some reason after running for around 5-10 minutes the light will turn itself off, not sure if it has something to do with light overheating or its just another quirk of it
* tried to test battery life but was able to do so only once when using AAA batteries with AA adapters, which gave me “stellar” 10 minutes of battery life from 800mAh cells before the light became unusably dim, soon after that LED started to flicker and the battery was empty. Battery life with AA batteries should be around 25-35 minutes at best given that rechargeable Ni-Mh batteries have 2000mAh-2400mAh capacity depending on battery model*
*Tested current draw with multimeter - draws roughly 1.2amps, thats around 1.5h on Eneloop 2000mAh, but that is in the best case scenario, in real life this light never worked for more than 5-10 minutes…
* switches on both lights failed to work after playing with them for less than one day, they will work now only as long as tail switch is pressed, as long as you release your finger from switch, no matter if you actually clicked it or not, the light will turn off
Other throughts
+/- lens is plastic
+/- plastic “matte” OP (orange peel) reflector with lots of small OP “wrinkles”, dont know whether I should call it LOP (light orange peel) or OP
+/- feels kind of cheap in your hands, but then again, it is CHEAP and doesnt work good, so its epitome of word cheap in its worst meaning Verdict: Not worht it, avoid this flashlight, there are better options out there for the money.
Verdict
I dont have enemies, but if I had some, Id give them this for surviving the apocalypse!
After some miscommunication Lightake issued me full refund for faulty items and gave me 5$ coupon code as compensation for troubled items.
Thanks to their CS for taking care of this situation!
And heres the gallery:
Side by side
Both lights, one with head and tailcap unscrewed. Noticed o-rings on both ends of flashlights battery tube, water will not ingress there, however it will near lens, since there is no o-ring or any other water protection
Clearly visible, how “centered” these emitters are
Crenelations show up in spill, not as visible in farther distance, but clearly visible and to beam profile elitists it might be deal breaker in closer distances
Flashlight 1, beam is not centered due to poorly placed LED, this one is brightest of the two and has tighter hotspot, due to less than stellar camera performance Ill point out that its more pronounced in real life than it is in pictures, but you can clearly see how hotspot has shifted towards lower left corner
Same problems in flashlight 2, except this one is not as bright as with less tight hotspot
Pill is screwed in, not fit-pressed, which is good, because it allows to easily remove it from flashlight in case you need to do so
Plastic reflector and lens, reflector is matte, not as polished and reflective as in other flashlights that I own, I dont think its a feature, more light is lost due to not reflecting from it and going out the front of this light. Its some sort of OP/LOP with lots of tiny OP wrinkles
Poor heatsinking between LED emitter and flashlights body, no thermal paste there and hollow space below LED emitter, right between LED and driver board. There should be some more heatsinking, I think
And heres the driver board of this flashlights, let me know if you would like to know the numbers and designations written on them
Switch in the tail is screwed in, which is good, however in this flashlight it doesnt add any benefits, because due to switch’s architecture its imposslble to take it apart and fix it
Tailcap taken apart, this is as far as it will go, you cant dissemble it any further, there are no other parts that could be safely pried off or unscrewed
No way to dissemble it, thus no way to fix it, thus I couldnt care less if the switch is pressed in or screwed in, unless I plan to use this light as host
Dimensions
Thanks for reading!