The flashlight was sent to me by Fasttech for review.
Here's the product's link: Smiling Shark 8029
5% Off Code: BLF (applicable on all flashlights)
The flashlight comes in a hard cardboard box.
Other than the flashlight, the following accessories are included:
- 16340 battery cell.
- Pocket clip.
- Magnetic charging cable.
- User manual.
The Smiling Shark 8029 comes in a black matte anodization.
The flashlight is operated by an e-switch that's mounted in the lower part of its head.
The e-switch is backlit and is used as a battery level indicator.
The head of the flashlight comes with a flat metal bezel.
The head houses a TIR lens along with the OSRAM P9 emitter.
The emitter is perfectly centered.
The head is glued to the body.
Looking down the tube, we can see the driver board, which uses a short copper spring as the positive terminal.
The rear part of the tail hosts the charging pad. The pad sits flush with the tail, so the flashlight can easily tailstand.
The inner part of the tail houses the negative terminal, which is held in place via a retainer ring.
Interestingly, the negative terminal is actually a spring loaded pogo pin.
The rear threads are quite shallow and lack anodization.
A detachable pocket clip is also included in the bundle.
The pocket clip is mounted in reverse and it allows for a deep pocket carry.
Charging
The manufacturer includes a proprietary 16340 cell that's rated with 700mAh of capacity.
The rear of the cell includes this interesting looking board.
The inner section is the negative terminal of the cell, while the outer ring is connected to the positive terminal.
Such cell design is pre-requisite for getting the battery's charging circuit to work.
The charging pad is made out of metal plate and a pogo pin.
Its outer shell is made out of anodized aluminum.
While recharging the included 16340 cell, I recorded up to ~ 0.6A of input current.
User Interface
These are the actions supported by the flashlight's firmware.
Turn on: Single press.
Turn off: Single press (only after the flashlight has stayed in the same mode for > 10 sec , otherwise a single click will cycle through modes).
Mode Cycle: Single press (High > Medium > Low > Off)
Turbo: Long press (both from on and off).
Strobe: Double press (both from on and off).
Unfortunately I found the UI of the flashlight to be odd.
Having to go through the all the available modes or stay in the same mode for at least 10 secs in order to turn off the flashlight is inconvenient.
The fact that the flashlight will cycle from higher to lower modes could be acceptable in case there was a shortcut for Low, but no such shortcut is currently present.
Output
Here's my output measurements along with the respective current draw per each mode.
As can be seen, the flashlight pushes 979 lumen at turn on, which is surprising for an 16340 flashlight.
The mode spacing looks good, although having a moonlight mode would, of course, be appreciated.
Bottom Line
The Smiling Shark 8029 had the potential to be a great flashlight.
Its build quality is great, its output is excellent and it's quite compact.
With that being said, I believe the following things should definitely be addressed:
- The UI would require a major re-design, as it's quite inconvenient.
- The charging circuitry should be designed without requiring a proprietary cell.