Will be edited as I have the time :-)
15 June: Uploaded a few front pictures and added amp draw.
16 June: Uploaded comparison pictures of the light with other known lights and some of the driver details too. Also a fix to the non tailstanding issue is shown/mentioned and some details from the driver cavity and measuring the thickness of the led shelf.
16 June update 2: I am a fool. I did not think last night when I did the amp draw with my new shunt resistor. THE OLD NUMBERS ARE WRONG! SEE UPDATED FIGURES! ( I am sorry guys. I hope the amp draw alone did not make anyone buy this light. If it did... You have my unconditional apology. )
18 June: Updated with driver information (modded) and lightbucketbox numbers when running hot.. Very hot :-) See end of this post.
I initially saw this light mentioned in some thread about new lights and immediately liked the overall lines. The finns seemed to be in the right position in relation to the led and the lack of a attack bezel. As seen in the pictures there are not even any scalloped cut aways. It is flat.(Foy would be pleased)
It had a clip. A clip you can take off and of a type I know and happen to think are among the best clips you can buy for money.
It also seemed to have a design that would be good for pulling out of and putting back in to your pocket about a million times a day. Which I like for a work light. And I wanted to test this light out as a beater. By the way I ordered it in U2-3C (5000K).
It is also significantly smaller than the C8 lights and I wanted less throw for a change along with the pocket-ability.
I received this light pretty fast. 10 days. That is good.
Here is what the site says about the light:
Specification:
| Product name: | Eagle Eyes X6 CREE XM-L2 U2 LED Flashlight |
| Brand: | Eagle Eyes |
| Model: | X6 |
| Emitter Brand | CREE |
| Emitter Type: | XM-L2 U2 |
| Color BIN: | U2-1A cool white(6500K--7000K),warm white U2-3C(5000K) |
| Material: | Aviation aluminum |
| Mode: | high,middle,low,strobe,sos |
| Battery Configurations: | 1 x 18650 battery (do not included) |
| Circuit: | constant current circuit |
| Switch Type: | clicky |
| Switch Location: | tail of the flashlight |
| Brightness: | 350lm |
| Runtime: | 1-3hours(according to the mode) |
| Carrying Strap: | yes |
| Waterproof: | IPX-8 Waterproof |
| Color: | black |
| Weight: | 120g |
| Size: | 133mm (length) |
And this is what I say...
The weight is off by a little. Mine came in at 134 g
The modes are correct. The strobe is somewhat slow. The SOS is correct and about 9 seconds for a cycle.
Memory is off time based so when you want to change the modes you do a quick half press. The button is reverse clicky. And protrudes just enough to not be able to tailstand. But that can be fixed.
It is delivered in one of these white no-good cardboard boxes that the postal workers love to flatten especially when they are inside one of those yellow bubble envelopes we get from china. The box was actually wrapped in some layers of foam too. Inside the box was a bubble wrap bag with one of the better quality lanyards, 2 extra o-rings for the light and... who the h... cares. The light was fine.
The design is very good for in/out of pocket. Mostly because it has quite thin gaps between the fins and in part due to its small overall size.
The threads are acme threads on both ends of the battery tube and they are anodized so lockout can be achieved easily.
The ano is flat black and one of the more attractive anodized lights I own actually. No color mismatching at all and it is tough! (More about that later...)
The knurling is smooth but it does add to the grip without really gripping back at you at all. And it is in the right places. Which for me is almost all over.The key feature for grip is provided by the fins which arent exactly sharp edged but not rounded either if that makes sense?
By the way. When you pick this light up it feels like a good quality light. It just has that combo of heft, grip, weight distribution and clickie tactile response that tells you this should be good...
This is it taken apart initially. Battery for size comparison. The threads were lubed by the way. There were o-rings where they should be. They are small and puny but they mate up fine where they should it seems. No water got in when I dunked it in a bucket of water for a few minutes. No tell tale bubbles. :-)
The battery tube can be reversed if you like to carry the light with the head up.
The driver and tailcap
That brass ring is 4 mm thick by the way. And has the same square cut acme threads as the rest of the battery tube. And does nott ake kindly to drivers with components on the battery side. More about that later..
Output.. Hmm. I cannot for the life of me do beamshots. I mean it. I tried. I suck at it. It never looks like it should and it bugs me so much I will not even try. Please don't ask me to. Been there, done that, sucked at it like no other... ´Beam profile is close to that of the starry light from the group buy some time back. If that means anything to you.
Anyhow I did measure the tailcap draw which came up as 1,6 amps. But that did not sit well with me because I felt it get hotter almost immediately so I retested my meter and guess what? It is crapping out on me again. Doing control measurement on a 3 amp qlite gave me 1,4 amps. So the amp numbers are up in the air...
That was with the standard driver with the unknown amp draw. And no PWM visible at all. None. And no whining or any other undue sounds disturbed me.
Teardown.
Was a royal pita. The bezel is glued. And they did it well. Got it off though. Here you see the picture of the tools I used.
Except for the butane torch. It took some heat too. I hit it with a big flame for 5 seconds at 4 equidistant places around the perimeter to get it off. I first tried with a 3 second heating but that did not cut it.
Could not do it with the strap wrench either. It started started melting or at least going soft on me. Had to use leather strap and pipe wrench while holding it tight between two pieces of plywood in the wice.
That is how hard I pressed it in the wice.. Those were straight when I started :-)
Here is the head before cleaning it up. Lots of wood debris on it. And you see the glue remains- I took that off with a steel brush later. Did not scratch the ano one bit.
Some measurements.
Driver is 17 mm BTW.
Glass and outer rim of reflector. 35,4mm
Reflector height.24mm
Look at that rim by the way. The red o-ring (Foy would be pleased) sits there on the outside and securely closes out water and dust. The reflector is aluminum by the way.
Here is another pic of the rim.
The brass ring that holds the driver in place. 4mm thick. (crappy pic I know. I know.)
Here is a closeup of the led mounting. Those screws were not tight enough on my unit. But it did move some heat even before I opened it up thought. I think that the reflector probably presses down hard on that led isolater gasket. Which is the thinnest gasket I've yet to see. Clearly sub 0,8mm thick.
Edit: Forgot the bloody picture.. It is late but come on!
I am not done with this yet I think. Please ask me any Q's so I actually get it finished :-) LOL
But here is my initial conclusion.
I am thrilled! It am more thrilled than when I got the starry lights. More thrilled than when I got my 7x XM-L2 King clone. This light will be a keeper. Due to size, beam profile and overall feel.
If you can live with the 5 mode driver it comes with it is a great light stock. Remember it has mode memory and no PWM I can detect.
The clip is great. The small size is super pocketable. It can to tail cap lock out so I can stuff it in a bag with the battery in it.
Modding. It sucks! The super duper mega glue-happy midgets that build this light love their job and want no one to mess with it. I've never come across any other light where the glue held on that tight. And it is some kind of abrasive mineral based crap too. Because the steel brush made sparks on it when I removed it.
The UPside of that whole mess is that the light is fine after the treatment. Nothing is oval. The bezel screws on just fine. There is not a mark in the ano. Gotta love that for 19 usd to your door!
15 June:
Amp draw: This was measured with a shunt resistor i made from 84 mm of 1,5mm2 copper wire. According to a great post from dchomak and Texaspyro added some in depth info further down. I did it this way since my meter reliably measures voltages but unreliably measures amps. I did double check it against a light that has always drawn very reliably the same watts from either a 2 cell or 3 cell setup and came up with a ~0,5 W difference out of some 39 watts. So quite close but I'd still take these measurements with a LARGE grain of salt as they seem high to me.
I am a quack, an amateur and a fool! Only this afternoon did it occur to me that I did not test against a reliable current source. A standard nanjg and a standard qlite.
And the old current draws were high. Way high. The new current draws are also from a shunt resistor, but I now thought to calibrate it against nanjg and qlite drivers. It now shows correct with those lights.
High: IMR battery/Protected Pana NCR 3100 4,2/3,8 amps (WOOT if true :-) )
Medium: IMR battery/Protected Pana NCR 3100 2,1/1,9 amps Argh! Not low enough. 50%!
Low: IMR battery/Protected Pana NCR 3100 0,3/0,2 amps Really not that low.
High: IMR battery/Protected Pana NCR 3100 2,0/2,0 amps
Medium: IMR battery/Protected Pana NCR 3100 1,0/1,0 amps 50%
Low: IMR battery/Protected Pana NCR 3100 0,1/0,1 amps 5%
Front pictures. Maybe you can see how low that reflector sits around the led. The flat part is level with the silvery substrate!
And one to show how well it centers the light from a rather diffuse florescent tube light in the ceiling. And I liked the picture :-)
Additional conclusion: I like the original driver much more now! And that explains why I feel the head get warmer almost instantly. And it still is just a little light in the pocket.
Comparison to other known lights:
Trustfire X7 (also known as T8), SRK clone with diffuser scotch tape, Jacob A60, Niteeye I10
Side view: Same lights
Straight on...
The driver. @ djozz: It does indeed look like the same driver. I did not look into schanging any resistors based on my amp draw measuring.
Here is the tailcap dismantled. Sorry about the crappy pics.
And the fix. An O-ring...
Notice how small that clicky is. It feels much more like a big 2,5A omten switch though. I was a little surprised at the physical size. Oh! And the spring by-pass wire was installed by me. Not factory standard.
For giggles here are a few pictures of the driver cavity.
There is very little room past the combination of those little holes and the 20 mm star the emitter sits on. I opened it up a bit with a 2,5 mm drill to ease installation of the new 18 gauge wires i put on the driver.
Here you can just see those screws peeking out at you. They are 3 mm I think. Did not think to measure them when I had them out.
The thickness of the emitter shelf comes to about 2,4mm thick and it just so nice to have lights where the emitter clamps down with screws. Love it!
Modding the original driver:
I tried adding a 0,02 ohm resistor across one of the original 0,14 ohm resistors to see how this driver would do. I did not have high hopes due to what djozz already mentioned earlier in this post about getting good output but no modes...
It should be added here that the emitter is now sitting on a gen. II Sinkpad.
Anyhow the amp draw and the lumens numbers after the mod are:
IMR Battery was used throughout the test:
High 4,1 A - 1182 lumens at startup
Medium 4,3 A - 1197 lumens (I dont know why the amp draw is higher but it consistently is.)
Low 0,7 A - 236 lumens
Lux measured @ 7 meters : 449 <=> 22 kCd ~ 296 meters (this was done right after a 5 minute run on high.
So how does it handle its new found power??
Well. Very well.
Here is a 5 minute run of the light in the lightucket:
Turn on 1182 lumens
1 minutes 1169 lumens
2 minutes 1156 lumens
3 minutes 1149 lumens
4 minutes 1136 lumens
5 minutes 1126 lumens
Total drop: 5%
The light´s head was too hot to hold after the 5 minutes. I could easily touch it and handle it but for holding it my fingers naturally seeked out the battery tube. Which was surprisingly cool compared to the head.
