Ok, I just got back home yesterday and picked up the C8s and the bike light from the post office, so this is a quick first look.
First impression: Very nice quality. Great fit. The matte anodising looks a little dry and easy to scuff, but this is deceptive. With a little handling it smooths and becomes a very nice finish. I suppose if you like things shinier you could use e.g. a hard car wax on it. It passes my “scratch” test, it is definitely hard.
After successfully checking it out with a battery for a few minutes, I had to take it apart.
Which was very easy, nothing over tightened, no thread lock used.
The business end:
Faultless. Perfectly clean. Perfect reflector surface. Perfect LED centering ring (white) which sits flush with the LED die, no masking. Big hole should accommodate almost any size LED.
The bezel:
O-ring to seal against glass, and another one for the thread. Scalloped for safety, not an “attack” bezel, no worries about e.g. airport security. Now if it was made of stainless steel for durability, it would be perfect, but not so “stealth”.
The glass:
Plain (no AR), ground edge, no chips, 2mm thick. Optically clear, no visible tint (e.g. greenness).
The LED assembly:
Looks like an aluminium star, secured with screws, Can’t quite see the thermal paste, but I’m sure it is under there. Not familiar enough with DTP construction to guess whether this is or not. 20mm diameter, but room for something bigger. Pill is a separate piece inserted in the head. Looks like it could unscrew backwards, but I bottled out after firm hand pressure didn’t shift it. I’ll try again once I’ve made a tool to engage the screw holes. It may however be pressed in. Neat soldering.
The reflector:
Flawless. No hint of waviness to the surface. Big hole to accommodate larger LEDs.
The driver:
Securing ring unscrewed easily, standard thread. 17mm diameter. Beefy inductor. Plenty of room inside the cavity. Neat soldering, good shiny appearance, clean, gold plated. Concerned about proximity of red LED wire to edge, potential for short. Spring has three turns of 0.6mm wire. Lightly attracts a magnet, definitely not steel (good). Same spring used at tail.
The tube:
Beautiful square threads, lightly greased. Anodised at tail for lockout and durability. OAL 70.6 mm ID 19.1mm. Battery fit: well the tube is 70.6mm long, but the springs bind up slightly before then. The longest I have tried is 69.3 mm long, and it fitted just fine. Well fitting O rings, two spares also provided.
The tailcap:
Lovely internal thread, anodised. Locks out. Just enough tolerance to avoid jamming if some grit etc. gets in. Tube contacts tailcap metal, securing ring not touched. Securing ring has left hand thread (good) and was firmly but not over tightened. Switch PCB nicely done, plenty of vias to transfer current. Decent soldering. Un-named switch, nice lead design allowing heat sink clamp to avoid damage when de/re soldering. Big rubber boot with moulded pip to reinforce switch area. 16.5 mm dia. Aluminium washer to ensure solid clamping to avoid leaks. Looks like a good candidate for illumination. Excellent tactile feel. I like the shrouded design, I’ve had trouble with e.g. my BLF A6 going on in my pocket.
The lanyard is a bit rubbish. This is the one thing I would like to see improved. And a belt pouch would be nice.
Now to performance:
First impressions very very good. Excellent cool white tint. My BLF D80SE is in bits at the moment, so I can’t do a direct comparison. But I suspect it will look even more like the dog’s breakfast that it turned out to be,
No visible PWM, and I have tried hard to see any. Nor does my camera see any. Nor does the T-coil on my hearing aids pick up any EMI.
Nicely spaced modes, and lowest is very usable. Not “moonlight”, its similar to the second level of the BLF A6SE. Mode memory works well, time constant is about five seconds. I’ll put it in the freezer later to see how stable this is. Mode changes have a slight but noticeable delay.
Quick and dirty tailcap measurement (standard DMM leads, 18AWG, 2m total length)
Efest purple 2500 mAh 35A
lowest 9.4 mA
low 84.5 mA
medium 660 mA
high 2.50 Amps.
So far so good.
BUT this light is specced to run from 2xCR123 i.e. 6 volts.
So being adventurous I tried it with 2x18350, which fit nicely. And nothing has blown up (yet).
Sibeile 18350 700mAh 10A.
lowest 15.6 mA
low 145 mA
medium 650 mA
high 1.27 Amps.
Now consider that these currents are at double the voltage, you can see that all the lower modes are much brighter, but full power is almost unchanged. Which I find interesting.
Summary: this is a really good torch, at a great price (remember we have 20% VAT here), Fulfilled by Amazon , with all the confidence that inspires. Perfect for modding, especially if I can figure out how the pill is fitted. It will be getting five stars when I pen my review.
Thank you Mandy, and Doeracil.
Update:
Low voltage protection warning kicked in at 3.35 V when the torch started blinking. But you can then re-cycle back to turbo (or any of the other modes) and run the battery down to 3.24 V before it starts blinking again. And you can eke it out for a while longer by using lower power modes to reduce battery droop. Nicely done.
Better leads on the cheap multimeter. 20cm total of fat loudspeaker cable, chunky gold plated banana plugs. 2.66A with 42 mV drop across the multimeter i.e. the multimeter shunt resistance is 16 milliohms. This is probably as good as it gets.
Run on turbo, fresh cell, tailstanding, maximum temperature at the finned part of the body stabilised at 25C over ambient. IR thermometer. This is a very cool running torch.
Update2:
The mode memory is interesting. If you enter the (hidden) strobe, with a double-tap, it remembers it. Turn it off, then on again, straight into strobe. Then the next tap jumps you back to the last remembered standard setting. Which could have been e.g. lowest, or turbo, or whatever. How cool is that ?
Update 3:
Curiosity got the better of me. Just a little more force, with long nose pliers against the screws, and the pill unscrewed easily out of the front.
Its very nice, a lot of thermal contact with the head due to the long length of deeply square cut threads.
If spare pills become available (preferably copper ) I can see this being THE modder’s C8.
Rather than post my own pics, I refer you to the thread by Flashlion at Thorfire C8s Review(one of the HQ C8 lights)900Lm Max output + New pictures of the pill(Removable), whose pictures are far better than mine :bigsmile: