Heres my little review of Sunwayman R20A flashlight that I recently received from DinoDirect
Price was 23.99$, but now its hefty 43.99$ which is way too much for this light, I was able to snatch it for cheap and get it delivered within around one month, surprisingly they shipped it out within hours, which made me suspicious that they might have not honoured my order and are simply playing their shoddy games, good to see I was wrong about them, this time ….
Its DinoDirect, so you never know for sure what and when you will get, if ever …
Official specs from manufacturers webpage:
● CREE R5 LED, with a lifetime of up to 50,000 hours;
● Three levels of constant output, one police strobe mode (below is the output and runtime of using two 2600mAH Ni-MH batteries) Three levels of constant output: 180 Lumens (2hrs)- 37 Lumens (50 hrs)- 4 Lumens (200 hrs) Police Strobe mode: 180 Lumens
● Reverse Tail Cap Switch, fully depress the switch to turn on the light, and depress it halfway for different outputs
● Constant current circuit, constant output
● Uses two 1.5V AA (Alkaline, Ni-MH, Lithium) batteries
● Electronic reverse battery protection, no need to worry about battery reversal, effectively protect flashlight
● High quality reflector maintains great throw distance and spread with an ideal beam pattern
● Dimension: 147mm (length) x 24mm (head diameter)
● Weight: 57g(battery excluded)
● Aerospace-grade aluminum alloy
● Military Specification Type III- hard anodized body
● Waterproof, in accordance with IPX-8 standard
● Ultra-clear tempered glass lens resists scratches and impacts
● Included Accessories: O-ring, rubber cap, lanyard, holster
So lets start with the good points:
+ Nice, simple, rather clean, non-tactical design
- Rather compact
- Very good build quality, no complaints at all(read below)!
- No visible PWM on any of its modes, so its either very high PWM or current controlled
- Hidden strobe that can be actived when you cycle through all modes twice in fast pace
- 3 modes: LOW, MED, HIGH
- Strobe is not your regular non-stop Pokemon seizure inducing attack strobe, its much more usable so called “police strobe” when it blinks for around half second then stops for the same amount of time and then goes off again, cant detect its frequency with my eyes and dont feel like trying too hard lol, dont want to go blind
- Doesnt run too hot, tried to leave it on max output for 5-10 minutes, it became noticeably warm, but not overly hot
- Rather big and definitely robust square cut threads in the tail cap, love ’em!
- Comes with holster, yeah!
And heres the only weak spot of this light that I have encountered thus far, but it might be a deal breaker for some:
- Mode switching is a bit awkward - unless you switch instantly between modes when youve turned on the light then switching sequence to whichever mode you need is quite long - first click will get you to LOW no matter the current mode, then the second one after that will get you into MED mode and then the third press will get you into HIGH mode, all this has to be done without pauses or else it will default back to LOW when youll press the switch.
Switching from MED to HIGH is exactly the same - first it will go into LOW, then back to MED and only then into HIGH.
Thanks to eebowler for confirming that his light acts the same, looks like its how it was implemented by Sunwayman!
Other things to consider:
+ / - Reverse clicky
- / - Will not tailstand, however Im not too concerned about it, 2xAA lights arent the most stable in this department anyway
- / - Its anti-roll/lanyard attachment system could have been less protruding and oddly looking
- / - No mode memory, always starts on low
- / - Tint is slightly towards purple
- / - No noticeable beam artifacts, beam seems smooth for light like this
- / - Reflector is OP
- / - Noticeable, even gap between stainless steel bezel and flashlights body, not sure, why, perhaps there was supposed to be an oring there?
- / - Havent done any battery life tests, Sunwayman tested this flashlight with two AA 2600mAh NiMh batteries which is rather misleading for their stated battery life numbers because, IMO, decent companies test their flashlights with “industry’s standart” and that would be Eneloop AA 2000mAh batteries, Id consider this to be little bit of cheating with data from Sunwayman’s side. Id rather use 2400mAh batteries in a flashlight that has been tested with 2000mAh batteries and get good increase in real life runtimes instead of getting far less than officially advertised in Sunwaymans(and Fenix, JetBeam as well) case!
Nevertheless even considering runtime with either 2000mAh Eneloops or 2400mAh Turnigy’s this light has respectable MEDIUM and LOW runtimes. Runtime on HIGH is on par with JetBeam’s while MEDIUM seems to outperform BA20, at least on paper that is.*
*I tested current draw with my multimeter: 0.8(AA)/0.9(AAA) amp on HIGH, 0.28amps on MEDIUM and 0.02(AA)/0.01(AAA) amp on LOW. Thats approximately 2+hours on HIGH, 7+ hours on MEDIUM and 100/200 hours on LOW. Variation in current draw in amp’s is due to using two different battery setups – one was Turnigy AA rechargeable NiMh batteries, the other was using Turnigy AAA rechargeable NiMh batteries placed in AA adaptors.
Some personal observations - compared to JetBeam BA20 which is rated at 270 lumens this light is visibly dimmer, I did comparison video, but the way my camera picks up colors in the darkness gave out wrong impression regarding R20A’s brightness versus BA20.
R20A on the other hand has visibly brighter MEDIUM mode than the one on BA20(it has two modes, HIGH 270 and MEDIUM 30 lumens) even tho its advertised as 37 lumens by Synwayman, its really much brighter than JetBeam’s which has advertised 30 lumens output in MEDIUM mode.
And here are some pics of the light itself:
Sunwayman R20A in its glory:
Next to JetBeam BA20:
Full view of accessories:
Gap between bezel and lights body:
Bezel unscrewed, lens is held by pressure between bezel and oring, you can see this oring around reflector in this pic, notice that lens and bezel have been taken off:
Oring removed, I had to use small needle to remove it to avoid damage to oring or light itself:
Bezel, lens, oring, reflector removed from light:
Took the head apart as far as I could, I couldnt screw out the pill, its probably glued in with some thermal paste, but I can see threads inside the head so with some effort you will be able to get out that pill:
Tailcap with switch cover and anti-roll/lanyard attachment part:
Decent looking square threads in the tail, looks like these are going to last a long while:
Switch is screwed into the tailcap, didnt try to remove it, its pretty narrow there and I didnt want to scratch the light:
Feel free to ask if I have left something out ;)!
Thanks for reading :D!