I received the Multi-Color Flashlight from ThinkGeek today and it is essentially DOA. This is annoying of course. If you buy cheap products from China in China you expect this and pay less. When you buy cheap products from China in the U.S. you get them faster but pay more. When they don't work it is especially annoying (to me) for some reason.
Technically it's not DOA. When you turn it on you get red light. However it's supposed to be white light. This is with the on/off switch in the tail cap. There is a button (switch) in the head that is supposed to cycle through 9 colors. That doesn't work at all.
The thing is it appears to be well made and it's a really interesting light. I don't know how to take it apart without tearing it up and since I want to return it I won't be trying that.
It is all shinny aluminum (no paint) with a firm feeling tail switch. You unscrew the tail cap to put in 3 AAA batteries in a cylindrical carrier. I checked to see if a 18650 would fit but even a flat top is a little too long. The head and the body unscrew as well and that appears to be it. No bezel that can be unscrewed. It has nice knurling in several areas.
When you look into the head after separating it from the body you see a disc with two holes rather than the little indents that are more common. I thought it would be easy to unscrew this with needlenose pliers but my pliers would break before the disc would move. Maybe it's glued in as well.
The other interesting thing is when you look into the head from the lens side. It almost appears empty! The front lens is curved (think aspheric) but is protected by the head extending out far enough that you can sit the light on its head.
After the front lens all you see is the shinny empty interior and then just before the area where the leds must be is another white covering. It must be diffusion material of some sort. So that's all you can see in the head. You never see what's producing the light.
On white it's supposed to be 30 lumens and less than that with the other colors.
All I can go by at this point is what the red beam looks like and unlike one picture I saw online somewhere where are no rings or artifacts. Nor would I expect there to be with the diffusion material in there.
When you shine it on the wall from about 8 feet away I'd say the diameter of the beam is about 4 feet and it's a completely clean and even light.
If it were easier to get into the head I might be able to fix the switch (or not). I'm going to return it and rather than get my money back I'm going to have them send another one just because the effect is much cleaner than I expected.
If the new one works for a while and quits (due to the side switch) I'll probably put the whole light in a baggie and boil it in water and then see if I can unscrew that disc. It's too bad the side switch seems to be the weakest link since that would be the hardest to replace (no standard sizes).
This should cost $15 rather than$25 however. It might be worth the $25 if the side switch (and the rest of the light) turned out to be robust. It sure looks well made and thought out.
When I was first messing around with this light one of the other colors come on for a minute so I think there is just a loose connection in the side switch but I can't get it to do anything.
There are very few reviews of this light. I found two from several years ago. One guy said the light worked well until his 2 year old threw it in the swimming pool but another guy said eventually his light just quit working. None of these people appeared to be the flashaholic types so there wasn't a lot of detailed info.