I purchased this from fastechs recent sale at 40% off the regular price of $37.00
I have looked at a few marsfire lights for sale and thought they looked pretty good quality.
It arrived in about a month
The good
nice retail box , includes 26650 battery, charger and lanyard
near flawless finishing
anodizing is slightly dull like some better lights. Seems nice quality but I have been fooled before.
real glass lens
stainless bezel
twist to zoom
very nice threads with close tolerances, including zooming head
good heat path for a zoomie as the head heats up before the battery tube
solid pill, not hollow.
tailstands
accepts protected battery
5 modes always starts on the last mode you were in
Battery seems good, gold protection circuit and has very good runtime
Not so good
Twist to zoom takes 2 hands and about 4 seconds for full travel.
bluish tint too blue for me
xml emitter measured at 2.5 amps at tail. Not quite bright enough for me.
slight flaw in stainless bezel barely noticeable.
very slight shine difference in anodization between the sections
missing one oring at stainless bezel
2 of the 5 modes are disco.
charger charges to 4.26 volts (straight out of charger)
charger has wonky spring when putting battery in.
If you assemble the lense backwards by mistake it will dedome and or ruin the emitter.
Anyways I was assembling the head and lense without looking at it, I promptly dedomed and partially de phospored the emitter the second day I had it.
So on the fourth day I decided to mod it.
I wired the tailspring and postitive battery spring. I did not increase the wire size to the emitter. I soldered over a resistor that looked like It would improve the amps, I installed an xml-2 U3 emitter on a sinkpad.
I played around with it for about 20 minutes and , assembling the head and lense without looking at it, I promptly dedomed the emitter. (I think I better put threadlock on the bezel asap).
After dusting off the pulverized emitter dome it actually has seemingly the same flood and much improved throw.
It is warm white, slightly yellowish greenish tint, Not Ideal but Not bad! Far closer to white than an incandescant bulb
Now has 3.89 amps. I would say well over 1000 lumens. Great! Except now only one mode. Well at least there are no more disco modes. It does get too hot to hold in about 10 minutes or so. In spot mode it will light up some communication towers over 500 metres away.
Summary:
Stock: Compared to the super popular zeusray the marsfire is a big jump up in quality, but the zeusray is brighter.
Modded: with same battery and equal mods (direct drive, (Zeusray 3.38 amps at tailcap) dedomed xml-2 u3, sinkpad, wired springs) the marsfire is much brighter in flood and zoom. With a ceiling bounce the marsfire in spot mode even seems brighter than zeusray in flood mode The zeusray has a slightly wider flood, the marsfire has about 50% smaller spot in area.
I think this would be a very popular light if priced around $15-20 (without battery and charger) and upgraded to xml-2 with 3.5 amps.