twisted raven wrote:

Vinh tested his first sample of an L3K at only 1.5mcd, while all L2K at around 2.5mcd.

Is it possible his has a fault? Does he have the L2K to compare numbers with 1Lumen?

I got 1.9 mcd, I’ll do another test tomorrow at 20m and report back

My video review is almost finished, should be up by tomorrow night of the L3K. It’s taken me many, many hours to pull this one off.

If it does not let you see in the dark, it’s not a flashlight. It may be something else, but not a flashlight. The LEP is a direct contradiction of light in general. It really has more characteristics of a laser than a flashlight. I think the image presented makes that very clear.

Yesterday evening i was playing a bit with the L2K and WT90.
The L2K throws way farther, but the beam of the WT90 is fantastic! It might not reach 2,5km but the beam is a lot bigger and way more useful as it lights up a lot more with very limited spill

Absolutely, I would never buy an LEP, I just grabbed one for a review and getting a reviewer’s discount it was a great opportunity to try an LEP.

Immediately regretted it after seeing just how difficult it was to capture the beam on camera. Flashaholics channel on youtube only uses reflective buildings, but on a farm it’s so much more difficult.

Since there’s zero light pollution the camera can’t use auto focus, so I need to do everything manually.

I find building footage quite deceiving for the viewer as it’s an entirely different story with real world use

I find beam angles below 3° to be rapidly declining in usefulness, especially for distances <1/2 their max range. Even then, often times a light with less peak intensity but wider spot provides better visibility. I’ve never tried an LEP, but I do have 1mm² Osram aspheric and fresnel throwers that are quite useful for urban environments or areas with light/reflective objects in the foreground. My thinking on this LEP tech is that it’s best suited to short focal length optics <40mm Ø. Cd/lm is just too high otherwise. Maybe they’d be great through binoculars?

Review is uploading, should be finished in 4 hours….slow rural broadband

Youtube corrupted my file on completion. I’ve had to start again, damn it.

ChibiM wrote:

Funtastic wrote:

Youtube corrupted my file on completion. I’ve had to start again, damn it.

Review is now live finally after 8 hours lol

Now I need to sell this LEP, I’ll never use it again. I’ll list it in New Zealand’s hunting forum, I’m sure someone will grab it

Anyone up on where I can find the cheapest price for xsword lep?

dthrckt wrote:

Anyone up on where I can find the cheapest price for xsword lep?

ChibiM wrote:

dthrckt wrote:

Anyone up on where I can find the cheapest price for xsword lep?

There’s a discount coupon on my site for the L2K. 

https://1lumen.com/review/maxtoch-xsword-l2k/ 

Thanks, I read the review but missed the coupon. I’m thinking I might go with L2Kvn, though I wish that one was also 2S.

I wouldn’t. As far as I know, Vinh mods it with a linear driver which means the light will decrease in brightness as the battery drains which makes it much worse than stock.

Laser diodes have a Vf of around 4v which a single lithium ion cannot maintain.

Good point. I’ve emailed him some questions. I’m not sure linear would matter much for how I’ll use it, but I definitely don’t want it to cycle through modes when I run the light for less than 5 seconds.

I will use it in 2s to 30s bursts, probably 30s to 120s in between. Total run time might be 5 minutes, and I’ll have backup batteries on hand.

CLEAR LENS WORKAROUND

This may not work for everyone; but you can easily sand or polish off the green tint (it’s only colored on one side). I don’t hunt, and I never used the green lens. This worked well, and took maybe 3 minutes; Can’t even tell it wasn’t always clear either.

Impressive light!

I have never used a LEP but always wondered if the amp draw was so low why most of these lights struggle to maintain turbo? Is it because the laser module is more sensitive to heat? driver output voltage?

Specially the jetbeam which hard drops to about 50% of the output

Because the L2K uses 2 cells where most LEP lights use single cell design.
Single cell lights draw 2 times as much.

As I understand the blue lasers in these lights run optimally at around 4V.

ChibiM wrote:

Th558 wrote:

Thanks for the quick reply. So is the small brightness drop we see on turbo due to the laser heating up? If you let it cool down and turn it on again will it come on at full brightness? I want the 20350 version but will only use it for less than a minute at a time. I just want to be sure that it’ll come on at max brightness even with those weaker cells.

If you look at the graphs, you can see that the drop is very minimal (that’s why this is such an interesting light). You won’t be able to notice the difference. This is not a high power SBT90.2 flashlight that drops to AA flashlight territory in 2 minutes

Fun fact, i bought the original 2*21700 version L2K with Chibims coupon code half a year ago or so.
After using it for a few times the length annoyed me, so I decided to contact Maxtoch and ordered the shorttube. Using it together with 2*18350 cells, it served me great.

However after reading that newer Maxtoch versions (dont know the exact model type) support single cell, just out of curiousity I just threw in a single 21700 in the shorttube and guess what?
It just works as it should!

(Did not measure Cd’s yet, so i cannot guarantee the same output)

Hm, very interesting. I will have to try this myself sometime. Thank you for the info, Yokiamy! I would love to hear about your Cd’s measurements with only using one 21700. I unfortunately do not have the equipment to measure Cd’s.

I am also curious about this. It looks like Vf for the LEP module is around 4V. My guess is that L2K has the buck driver because it has very good regulations. Now, it turns on with one 21700, and it seems to be working OK. Is the driver buck/boost, not buck only? It is possible the light is running without regulating the output if it is buck only. However, the voltage for one 21700 under the load (something like 2A in this case perhaps) is likely to be below 4V. That is very low for the light with two cells in series.

With all of that above, is the driver for L3K different from L2K?

Yokiamy wrote:

Fun fact, i bought the original 2*21700 version L2K with Chibims coupon code half a year ago or so.
After using it for a few times the length annoyed me, so I decided to contact Maxtoch and ordered the shorttube. Using it together with 2*18350 cells, it served me great.

However after reading that newer Maxtoch versions (dont know the exact model type) support single cell, just out of curiousity I just threw in a single 21700 in the shorttube and guess what?
It just works as it should!

(Did not measure Cd’s yet, so i cannot guarantee the same output)

Th558 wrote:

Someone needs to make a single 20350/18350 50mm GT mini sized LEP with a buck/boost driver. You may ask "why should someone make this?" Well because I WANT it. Now stop asking questions and get to work!

                   " LMFAO "