Xtar TZ28-1500 More fun.....

LED Flashlights – General Info 18650 Flashlights
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Hi all, some of you will remember I won a TZ28-1500 from Xtar. The first one turned up DOA and after a bit of negotiation Xtar very kindly sent me a new one.
Well, despite being used literally 10 or so times (and that was only really showing friends), it has developed a fault.
When you turn it on it should go to instant max mode, which it used to, but now it drops immediately…… not every time but most of the time. Oddly it does it sometimes when it’s been working fine, you switch it off and it does it, maybe switch it on again and it doesn’t. Even when you use the little switch to go through the modes, as soon as you leave it on high it drops again within a second.
Now I am not the only person who has encountered this, and luckily I can across a Youtube review where it does the exact same thing. I actually noticed it before the reviewer, as it did it early on when he was demonstrating it, but apparently it got worse and worse, like mine.
have a look at this video from 7.40 onwards, you’ll see what I mean.

I have the DOA one, and have tried quite hard before to get to the driver, and for the life of me I cannot get it apart - so I gave up. Unusually none of the reviews I have found show it stripped down, which is usually the case with reviews, this leads me to believe they couldn’t get it apart either.

I have to say, considering it is by far the most expensive light of this type I have, I’m not exactly blown away by the quality - everything except the electronics seems fantastic quality, but something is letting it down in there. It seems odd to me they seem to start out fine, but after a little use they start this odd ‘dimming’ or dropping to a lower mode (presumably) - it is not anything to do with heat as it’s not on long enough to even start getting hot.
Just wondered if any of you have encountered this or have any suggestions as to why it is doing this odd behaviour, I have already tried the DOA tailcap on the working one - it does exactly the same thing?
After some more looking, it seems Xtar ran the same giveaway on CPF, and guess what BOTH the winners lights were both faulty too, with the same issue…… LINK :person_facepalming:
I have also messaged/emailed Xtar to see what they have to say - I’ll keep this post updated.

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Hmm, wonder if their engineering design or assembly QA is faltering? Some divers got their new D26-1600 dive light and the thing has horrible parasitic drain. The low voltage cut-off seem to be set just below full battery so it has a very short run time. Their solution was send them a new spring, which of course is useless.

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Hmm , to be honest I don’t think there’s a lot that can be done about the problem with these TZ28’s, the fact I found 4 or 5 with the same problem says to me it’s probably the same with all of them, maybe why no one really sells them much or has sold them off.
Shame because it’s a waste of what is, apart from that a lovely light. But without that highest setting it’s nowhere near as good.
I wait to see what Xtar comes up with, if they really all do suffer from this problem they should have replaced all of them as people complained - I may have got mine free, but it’s still under a warranty, and it should still work.