Review: DQG AA (world's smallest AA light)

Nice pics, much appreciated for the review!

From your rubber ring picture, I must say it is a needed upgrade. Small but necessary.

I have AAA and there is a couple of "chips" missing from one of the circuit boards components. Probably because of battery rattle.

I was hoping maybe a bit lower output on High for the runtimes but I think I an deal with it. 126lm sounds not bad at all.

Do you think that i should do a drop torture test for the AA version? Seems like it would survive due to TIR, solid pill inside.

I am thinking of doing a 2-3m drop test. How many times should i drop?

i like your seeking attitude. Looking forward..

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us 2100. How's the beam like compared to a reflector equipped XP-G R4?

It'd be somewhat better. Something like a very very nice OP. I only have 2 OP XP-Gs, namely the Romisen RC-R2 (something like that) which is a P60 sized light and also the Sunwayman V10A which i guess is the closest for comparison. The DQG has a better beam than the Sunwayman V10A. I guess for such a mini EDC, flood qualities is more important and useful than throw.

I have already posted a photo of the V10A vs the DQG above.

What you can clearly see is that there is spill, and then smooth hotspot. For most lights incld OP reflectors, you get spill, corona, hotspot. It is usually not an issue for semi-throwers or bigger lights because they would be used for > 5m anyway so the corona usually won't show up, but for EDCs this is impt. This is why a TIR lens work.

Cheers 2100, from what I see from your beam shots, it seemed the DQG has more spill. Since the DQG uses a TIR coupled with a XP-E, I would have thought that the spot would be a lil tighter & narrower, hence my curiosity.

The beam is indeed beautiful

I see that you have just added more clarifications, thanks a bunch.

Ooh, that sounds like a very nice runtime on low. Very interesting.

Thanks for the nice review! Frontpage'd and Sticky'd.

not stick it in 1x AA forum section?

anyway. good it's stickied. i had trouble finding it.

Oops, thanks for the heads up. It's moved to AA now.

Until it dies, Mr. Bond!

:bigsmile:

Any chance we could get a side-by-side comparison shot of the two tints on high? I'm partial to NW tints but if this CW tint is pure white similar to the EZ AA R2 tint I think I could go for that as well.

Thanks for the excellent review!

Love that smooth beam .

Runtime on Hi with eneloop AA? Please (I ordered one and want to know). Do You measure it?

Hi!

Thank you for your detailed review.

I'd want to know if there's a low voltage cutoff built into the driver (for 14500).

Is the driver a buck-boost, right? I hope it's not a cheap boost driver that direct-drives the led when Vin > Vf.

Is it able to squeeze every mah out of a 14500 without lumens drop, triggering the LVC inside the (protected) cell? Or it goes in a sort of "low battery moon mode" at around 3V?

Thank you very much.

EDIT: see my review in the following post.

received mine.

driver is very good, it starts blinking 3 times each 5 seconds from 3.0v to warn you of low battery. obviously no blinking at 1.5v.

no LVC.

same brightness down to 3.0v, then it starts decreasing a little, and remains stable down to 1.1v.

buck-boost driver, startup voltage must be greater than 0.9v, then it stays acceptably lit down to 0.5v.

memory resets after a 4 seconds shutdown. perfect timing.

beam quality is not as good as said by the OP, emitter is not perfectly centered (mine is NW), and in the side beam you can see the shadows of the 2 gold connection wires inside the emitter projected (2 triangles projected).

the pros are that the light is quite floody and thet there's not color shift in the side spill (in lights with with reflectors it always tends to be of a cooler and nastier color).

light came not lubed. I use motorcycle chain lube: not silicone based, does not damage orings-plastics, and it's very greasy, smooth and persistent.

the small hook at the bottom of the light seems flimsy: it moves in and out for about 2mm (but it does not come out).

operation with aw protected 14500 is problematic: nipple is short and you have to twist hard to compress the rubber disk and light on the flashlight.

if you manage to increase nipple lenght of about 0.3mm by pinching it with a claw, operation becomes silky smooth.

one last note: mine came with the oring misplaced: it was installed in the outer slot (too big in diameter, oring damage will occur if left there).

I moved it in the inner slot (slightly smaller) and now the twist is smooth.

CONCLUSION:

with a better emitter centering, it is WELL worth the 35-36 usd.

ultimate edc AA+14500, full stop.

Hmm...my beam is good though. Even better than my Sunwayman V10A (it's good by XP-G standards, just a wee bit of donut, but corona-hotspot area is a bit ugly)

I suppose my beam is not very good because of misalignement of the emitter (it is 0.5mm off the center).

I don't know what to do.

Ric, can you tell me something? I love this flashlight, I was one of the first to pay for it (even paid 2 dollars more, because I bought it before the price drop)..

what a pity for this little problem.

Never thought we’d be giving purple nurples to a torch

lol