RC-29 Zoom-Flood R5 Mini Review

A couple of days ago I received my version of the RC-29 modded with a 1 mode driver and the XP-G R5 CW. I have to say again that the build quality of the Romisens for the price is still impressive... with nice thick Aluminum walls and nice anodizing. The zoom-flood feature is really cool...my wife likes the full on flood mode for walking around the house at night because there is "no spot thingy" and it's true... the full flood mode is very useful for up close tasks. On full on zoom mode... you see the emitter reflection and you get respectable throw but it isn't as useful as full flood as even at 50 feet the beam is perhaps only 6-8 feet wide meaning you'll be looking around everywhere to find something. But I didn't buy this light for pure power but more of a novelty and as a solid all around light (affordable, floody, throwy, 1xAA format). It has a very similar body to the RC-G2 which I love but this one is a touch shorter (perhaps .5 inch) and it has some wild tailcap design which I'm not fond of as it's kind of sharp but it allows for it to tailstand. The tint is on the cool side but not "cold" for my eyes. I have no way to measure lumens but if driven at 700ma like I think it should be around 280ish emitter lumens. The only thing I'm a bit sad about is that on full zoom mode.. it isn't as bright as I would thought it would be but I think that some of the light is being lost and not collminated like it should be or would in an aspheric/reflector combo.

Right now I'm doing a couple of run-time tests....I have the RC-29 and RC-G2 running on 2 different AA's... one a cheapy Ultracell "3000" mah and the other a Kodak 2100 mah. Since both use the same 1 mode driver (different emitter) and same current. Although I have no way to confirm this I'm interested to see the runtimes. I'll put up some pics soon and I'll update the runtimes later.

Thanks for the mini review. Looking forward to your test results. Interesting!!

Full zoom mode is "8x" (focused beam, tight hotspot). Should be quite bright because of the focusing! (yeah, none of us has the means to measure brightness lol)

In my review i observed that in 8x-mode the Romisen (1x 14500) throws much further than my expensive Eagtac T20 (1x 18650), which is interesting because the Eagtac has a newer LED (XML) and the more powerful cell. Conclusion: collimating lens beats LOP reflector!

Congrats to the purchase! :D

Thanks man... I don't doubt that with a 14500 I'd see at least a 50% increase... but I'll take out my P20 (XML-HO) out tonight and see how it does compared to the RC-29. As an update... the ultracell was down to near useless brightness after only 50 minutes the Kodak was still brighter but is noticeably dimmer than when it started as well.

About 15 minutes later the Kodak had pretty much given up the fight... so roughly 50ish minutes for the Ultracell and about 65 minutes from the Kodak... this seems a bit disappointing but for short bursts it should be fine on a 1xAA cell... although now seeing this makes me realize the usefulness of a low with longer run times. However.. I've got 3 other lights with good low's with multiple day run times if I need it.

Thanks a lot. i've linked your quick review thread in my DX thread. Interesting to note that my driver runs twice as efficient: 2.0hours in High-mode for the Alkaline (That's because yours is brighter in High-mode, newer LED emitter!). I will re-run the runtime tests with the Alkaline. Will cost me another 2 Mignon cells haha.

Maybe someone with eneloops can re-run the tests with both RC-29's.

you're writing something?

haha.

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. :bigsmile: