I have an Acebeam K60 that I absolutely love. It’s perfect for me and shines across the pastures well enough so I can keep all the monsters in check…
It quit on me so I had to send it back to Acebeam. They are being great about it so far, but I had to send it to China which cost me $45 plus I had to drive to another town to mail it…. I’m in the boonies, lol
I was hoping for a more local brand. I think Thrunite (sp) is based in the US but I haven’t gotten any response from them.
Are there any other good brands so if I have problems I don’t have to send it so far? Sorry if this is rude or out of line.
I was hoping for a replacement/backup for my K60 but that doesn’t cost as much, maybe $75-125…
Thanks,
Cheers
$45 for absolute love is cheap.
a couple of companies with offices in USA:
Olight is in Georgia
Malkoff is in Alabama
what went wrong with the Acebeam K60?
Lol, Yah but I’m ~$250 or so into this light now, it’s starting to hurt my feelings a bit….
Cheers
Thanks very much. I’ve seen several reviews on the Olight brand and I think a couple on Malkoff, will look at them some more. I really appreciate it.
Not sure on my Acebeam…. It just decided it didn’t want to come on. No flicker or nothing. Springs look good, cells are all still good, if I had half a brain I would have gotten my multi meter out and checked it, but I didn’t think abt that until too late…
Cheers
Most flashlights can be fixed with basic tools. And I am not saying an entire driver has to be assembled, but drivers are also available on the market. I don’t know this specific light, but BLF is an excellent resource for any issue on flashlights. There are so many helpful people on here.
edit: Not a brand we talk about very often, but to complete the list, Maglite is California based.
Fenix is a Chinese conpany with offices here. Zebralight is US based, and Armytek is based in Canada (closer than China anyway).
yes and no
Fenix-store and Fenixlighting are USA vendors, they are not actually Fenix Company Owned stores.
Are they some form of franchise or can anybody use Chinese brand names and open a US based store? very keen to know more about this topic.
iirc, David Chow created the fenix-store
After selling that business, David developed a relationship with Olight, and they built his 47s models. iirc Both Olight and 47s have/had brick and mortar locations in Marietta, Georgia (USA).
David subsequently closed his 47s store and sold the 47s label to darksucks.com
so yes, “anybody” with the energy and resources to partner with a chinese manufacturer to obtain distribution rights, can try their hand at making a go of it in the flashlight business.
another option is to buy Special Factory Orders, which is a MOQ of a light financed by the vendor. Maratac is an example of that, as was also ReyLight, when he first offered the Copper Tool with Nichia.. until then, Lumintop had not built a copper Tool, nor used a Nichia.. but I digress
bottom line is the flashlight industry is multi layered and includes posers, who give the impression of being an official factory outlet, when actually they are just dealers..
another couple examples of stores that give the appearance of being factory sites, but are actually independent vendors:
https://www.lumintoplighting.com/
https://www.nitecorestore.com/
I always get a special feeling when someone repeats the old Armytek mantra.
Armytek is a Canadian based manufacturer who happens to own some factories in China.
Fact is that Armytek is a Chinese manufacturer with a pro forma Canadian HQ.
Their current address is in an office building, before that it was a regular house in a residential area.
You are a flashaholic if you are forced to come out of the closet, to make room for more flashlights.
Thanks again for all the tips/suggestions, I honestly do appreciate it.
Zebralight.com is no longer active so don’t know of they are still in business.
Maglite was mentioned. I just went by their site recently doesn’t seem like they’ve kept up w the times. I got my old ones out and was really surprised at how less bright they are than the Acebeam. I remember being soooo proud of those when I got them. They are also a terrific company to deal with. I have a 6D light and the batteries corroded up and ruined the light. They replaced it for free. I was impressed that they helped out w my stupidity.
Plus it’s just interesting to find out about other good brands. I hadn’t heard of Olight or Malkoff before my recent search.
While “Have to” is a bit strong, I would like to get out in the fields as far as possible with good hot spot and floodie. The furthest point, I think, is about 3000ft but it’s also ‘forest’ all around me.
Cheers
this zebra link works for me
http://zebralight.com/
lol. nice troll.
Armytek is pure Chinese, but have offices (dealers) around the world
This is so true, and you even put it in perspective for me. And also to the OP, I understand the wanting the extra convenience but for $45, a company will give you great customer service and you “absolutely love” their product, I don’t know if there is something better out there. That’s not too bad. Not bad at all..
Thank you for letting me know. Turns out firefox had some kind of a bug and was redirecting me to a different site that said zebralight.com was no longer active.
When I tried a different browser, I went right to it. Other links seemed to work fine so I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t said something. Disabled addons, ran malwarebytes and bitdefender but didn’t help so just reset firefox and good to go again…..
Cheers
I realize it’s not that bad, and I mean no offense.
I’m just thinking that sending it back in, hearing stories of shipping times of a 2 or more months, and things simply not making it to their destination when shipping to China. That’s nothing against the company, in fact, Acebeam seems to be one of the very best out there.
So, having to drive to a different town to mail it, not being able to track my light, and the rest, it just seems like there might be better options out there for me.
I was also thinking my initial subject line might even be offensive to some and I should have said something like reputable companies with a presence in the US….
So, anyways,
Thanks to all and be blessed
I also use Firefox, it did not do that, but I believe you. We may have different versions… and different security settings.
it is possible that Firefox is trying to protect you from sites that are NOT secure, such as http://zebralight.com
unfortunately the secure version of the site https://www.zebralight.com is non functional, and redirects to the insecure site
yea, I wouldn’t create an account or enter any info over http…
I don’t think it’s a troll. I get a redirect to 3dcartstores.com when I try to visit zebralight.com in firefox. I can get to it in other browsers though. Not sure if it’s my plugins or their site doesn’t work right with firefox but I can see how someone would think their site is offline.
I’ve had this redirect happen in certain browsers when I didn’t type ‘www.’
Sending things back to China isn’t really cost effective usually with a budget light which Acebeam is not. Perhaps a Sofirn or Convoy brand. You could buy 2 or 3 for the price of one Acebeam and in the unlikely case one quits working you are still covered.
example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002568150343.html?spm=a2g0o.store_ho...
given his response, i no longer think he was trolling. i agree with you.
but as you deviate from standard software configuration (firefox in this case), it increasingly becomes your responsibility to understand what's going on. otherwise, you risk creating misunderstandings for yourself or others. like publicly declaring that a business may be defunct lol
you both indicate that you use addons/plugins.
in a vanilla installation of firefox, visiting "zebralight.com" or "www.zebralight.com" works -- i just tested. on the other hand, i am not a fan of their website and how they present information. i think they make it very hard for anyone but a hardened flashlight/emitter nerd to understand their offerings.
The addons are not affecting whether or not I can see the zebralight.com page.
I was going to attach a couple of screenshots but since I can’t just do a simple drag/drop attachment, will skip it.
The security settings for Firefox 88 either allow or default to
Enable HTTPS-Only Mode in all windows.
The other two options are
Enable HTTPS-Only Mode in private windows only.
or
Don’t enable HTTPS-Only Mode.
I bumped up my security settings and am using the Enable HTTPS-Only Mode in all windows.
When I goto http://www.zebralight.com, I am quickly redirected/forwarded to a page w a green background from 3dcartstores.com stating the page I am looking for is no longer active….and some other garbage.
Now having looked around, and temporarily cutting back my security settings to allow Http: mode, I ended up on
https://zebralight.3dcartstores.com/crm.asp?action=contactus
page as well as being able to browse their store which is NOT HTTPS.
I sent them an email about this a couple of days ago mentioning that I could not use their website since it is not all HTTPS, and asked a couple other questions.
I have yet to hear back from them. But as I said, it was only a couple days ago.
At one point, I completely uninstalled Firefox, removed all add-ons, and did a clean install. I still had the same issue with their website. It seems to be because they don’t use HTTPS on all their pages.
I was not and have never ‘trolled’ websites.
I apologize if my original wording caused folks to get a bug up their butt about this but I was just replying with what information I had when trying to look at their flashlights.
Actually ….ZL has either never instituted the HTTPS or let it lapse. So that page should be redirected to the non-secure site HTTP, but its not.
Many redirects are cause by malware. Wouldnt hurt to run malwarebytes. But this is not the case with the zl site.
I uninstall junkware, plugins, add-ons, browser helper objects, toolbars, useless free stuff, and I scan with Kaspersky, and every time I am still redirected to the surface of a severely overrated planet, replete with it surface of average hostility and denizens of average wickedness. Thank God for flashlight people and other spiritual, nice people.
Zebralight: I have read many nice posts about high quality regulation, high quality electronics, high quality heat sinking and dissipation, and high quality construction from Zebralight. But I still, after all of these years, have not gotten one yet, same with Elzetta, HDS or Malkoff. Maybe soon. I am currently set on EC03, FT02S, D4V2, FW4a, NSX, D18, KR1, and much larger size/power class lights.
Because I like big lights, my flashlightical views lean heavily toward both the extreme bright and the extreme heft.
I don't get much malware on my computers or my mom's computer, but my favorite tool for getting rid of malware is AdwCleaner.
It scans extremely quickly and gets rid of the occasional bad stuff it finds.
I also use Avast Free Antivirus for general protection, but almost never do virus scans with Avast.
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Let’s not act like zebralights are made in the USA. They’re not too different from Olight in that regard.
And I love my Zebras. I’m just saying.