[review] Wurkkos WK40 R/G/B/W multicolor quad-emitter light!

The Wurkkos WK40 is the newest addition to the brand, following in the footsteps of the WK30. The original WK30 had 3 emitters: white, red, and ultraviolet (UV). The WK40 has 4 emitters: white, red, green, and blue. So the WK40 covers pretty much the visible spectrum based on one’s needs.

The light came in the typische orange and white Wurkkos box, chock full of goodies! There was of course the light itself, pre-stuffed with a 5000mAH 21700 cell and insulator. The cell clocked in favorably at about 4800mAH on my Opus 3100. Included is a big honkin’ diffuser, a USB charging cable, a printed manual, and a shorty tube so that you can use a 20350 cell! I can use it with an 18350 just fine, no spacer needed. So that makes it even more portable.

FIrst impression is good as always. Anodisation is flawless, the usual semigloss black with no dings or chips anywhere to be seen. There’s a quad TIR lens arrangement for the 4 emitters, and it’s protected by a real glass in front of it. No scratching the lenses underneath. The tailcap has a nice “tactful” rear on/off switch, reverse-clicky for mode-changes, and a beautiful all-around rim around the switch! No silly “thumb cutouts” anywhere, so this light tailstands beautifully! Definitely a “Thank you, Jesus!” moment when I saw that! There’s no knurling anywhere, just a tapered-hourglass profile of the battery tube, with wider head and tailcap for grip. The magnetic-ring which sets the brightness levels (4) is flush with the head, and the ring is segmented so that you can feel where it is and twist it easily. It’s not scratchy, /per se/, but I’d prefer a bit more goop (Nyogel, YEZL, etc.) to make it more “viscous” when twisting.

Overall feel is great. It’s a heavy light, quite solid, and while I wouldn’t use it as a “glass broker” or “brick smaher” (look it up :laughing: ), it’s definitely got some heft to it that can be used to good advantage if needed. Holding it in the hand, to me, goes beyond feeling good; it feels perfect. Maybe it’s that hourglass taper, but holding it gives an incredibly balanced feel with nothing silly (side-switch, charging port, bumps or flats, etc.) getting in the way. And with the wider head and tail, it naturally self-centers in the hand. And it makes no difference if you hold the light “sword” or “icepick” style, as it works out both ways.

There’s a charging port which I haven’t used yet, as the cell ended up charged after testing its capacity, so I’ll take it on faith so far that it works as it should. The port is recessed into the light and covered with a pretty thick though narrow rubber flap. The indicator light next to it doubles as a charging/done indicator, but also shows battery level for 5sec on turning on the light. Green for good, red for low, blinking red for “charge me now!!!”.

Operation is simple. Click the rear switch for on/off, select 1 of 4 brightness levels via the magnetic ring around the head. There are 3… groups?… of light settings. There’s white mode, multicolor mode, and blinky mode. You cycle through each group by 3clicking when on.

White mode would seem to be the most used mode, but not to me. There’s constant white light, and 2clicking selects strobe, and you can click back to constant. Meh. Multicolor mode to me is most useful. No blinkies, just on/off. When on, a half-press cycles through the 4 colors (r/g/b/w).

About the colors… The white emitter is a nice creamy color on full blast which takes on the slightest hint of green at the lowest levels, which I really have to strain to see, so I don’t find it objectionable at all. Even the highly regarded LH351 had that greenish tinge on its lowest settings, and I never minded it, so this shouldn’t be a problem at all. Red, green, and blue are monochromatic from what I can tell; none of the emitters seems phosphor-converted.

White, of course, would be used for general illumination. Red would be for preserving night-vision and/or not attracting bugs when outdoors. Green could be used for hunting, if you want “brighter” light yet not spook critters. Blue, well, I’m not sure what blue might be used for, but it does cause some items to fluoresce without the need for UV light.

Blinky mode has alternating flashes of r/g/b and r/g/b/w in 1 or 2 flashes per color. Infinite gradient slowly fades through each color. That’s one good way to use the diffuser and tailstand capability, by having multicolor “flashes” in a party setting. :laughing:

My own personal druthers would be to ditch white mode altogether and default to multicolor mode. Blinkies might be useful if someone wants them, but ask 10 people what blinky modes they might want, and you’ll get 37 different answers.

All in all, even with just multicolor mode, the WK40 has become my new go-to light for putzing around the house. I even keep it set to red and in its lowest setting so I can skulk through the house at night without ruining my night-vision or jarring myself awake, when I go to see what mischief my cats are doing when I hear them “exploring”. And using the diffuser cap and cranking it to full, bathing the entire room in eerie red light, gives a fun demonic feel to the room. :laughing: Or switch to green and pretend The Borg are coming.

Also, this could make a great Granny Light. The simplicity of on/off with the rear switch, and incredibly intuitive “volume control” of the magnetic ring for brightness could make it a great gift for someone who has issues with “double-clicking” or poking out flashlight modes in Morse Code on the tailcap just to turn the brightness up/down, etc.

It’s definitely a fun light, as well as being quite useful. The great feel, the colors, the simplicity of the intuitive controls, makes this a winner in my book.

Thanks for the review. I’ll be posting my review tomorrow, and it is always interesting to the opinion of others. It is a physically and mechanically well designed light, but I have given quite a bit of feedback to Wurkkos on how the UI/firmware can be improved for light painting photographers (e.g. additional fast colour fade mode, faster flash mode frequency, constant frequency strobes, everything memorised).

My own personal druthers would be:

— beacon (ie, very brief flash every few seconds) in r/g/b/w

— 50% duty-cycle 1Hz “hazard lights” in r/g/b/w

— a more even gradient (seems to linger way too long in red, and blue drops like a rock in one transition)

— fixed-frequency strobe for lightpainters

Maybe a “fun mode” like red/white police-flash of the WK30.

Rather than cycling through 58 different blinkies, default to what color it’s in, in multicolor mode, then 3click for blinkies, cycle through from there. “Fun modes” might only be accessible from white, even if they involve multiple colors.

Oh, and memorise the blinky, so that if you want strob, beacon, whatever, any 3click would bring you to that one.

But personally, I’d be happy enough with just r/g/b/w mode and single press to cycle colors. :laughing:

No pix yet, can’t link to any on Amazon ’cause it’s not on Amazon (yet), goggle-images doesn’t work for some people, imgur sucks ass, so I’m a bit at a loss where to dump pix and be able to link to them.

Someone somewhere mentioned abload, so might try them.

I might have been the one that mentioned abload.

I like abload, but it's in German so you need to auto-translate.

Wurkkos doesn't have any images on their website/s?

If Wurkkos does have images and you ask for their permission to use them, they might let you considering it's in their best interest if reviews of their lights have some pics.

I don't know how good they are, but I sometimes use https://freeimage.host/ because they accept webp images.

webp is in some ways better than jpg or png, but most people don't use webp.

Didn’t really look for mfr pix, but that’s a possibility. Better’n I could take myself, as I don’t have any of those fancy tactical-gloves everyone seems to have in advertisements. Best I could do would be an oven-mitt.

Seems to be unlisted already, I can’t find it by searching on their site and if you go directly to the old product page it is out of stock. Anyone know if that’s because the product page is for the preproduction version and now they’re working on the production version, or is this not coming back?

My wish for something like this would be independent ramping control of each emitter. So if 3C switches between emitters, 3H could ramp the current one up/down. You could cycle through them to get your perfect color blend (and have it be memorized for next time you turn on the light). Seems like this doesn’t have an e-switch so maybe that exact UI wouldn’t work, but something along those lines would be cool.

Thanks for the review.
Is the any ‘police’ blinking? Like red n blue?

I’ve just had casual chats back’n’forth with some ideas tossed around, and there probably will be some changes to it vs the early model, but exactly what, I have no idea. I’m really hoping it comes out again, because I know someone who definitely wants one, and I might just order a “spare”. :laughing:

There are quite a few in blinky mode, but they largely cycle through all the colors.

I’m spazzing out on the controls, but the ones I found are

rgb
rrbbrrgg
rrrgggbbbwww

Good to know, and I also got a bit more info from the man himself:

New updating my man.
We added the new mixed model of red+blue, red+green and blue+green this time.
And further optimized the automatic discoloration module.
After our National Day holiday closed, I will release a WK40 update demonstration video on Wurkkos page ; )

Thanks for the review Lightbringer. The unit I order on the aliex black friday sale landed yesterday. The UI on this model is no anduril, but it’s just as fun to play with haha! I really like the “infinite gradient mode” and the intensity of the individual RGB leds.

When the WK30 came out on Amazon, I tried it out but the UV and red leds seemed underwhelming. Ended up returning it, but this one is a keeper. So cool that it can shine any tint of the gradient and pause the cycling. It has a decent price for something unique like this.

Also thought I should mention that the shorty tube was missing, but I messaged Wurkkos store on aliex. They said it would be sent out, I just had to pay one of those 5¢ orders for tracking purposes. So if anyone else gets one with a missing shorty, should maybe reach out to them.

I actually loved (and still do) the WK30. I used the red quite often and UV as well.

I don’t mind “regular” red for the simple reason that the eye doesn’t see “deep red” or “photo red” as well, and brightness of deep red has to be cranked up to get the same brightness as regular red.

And 395nm UV is perfectly fine, as I really haven’t seen too many things that need 365nm and won’t fluoresce under 395nm. Moreover, visible spillage from 395nm is purple, whereas visible spillage from 365nm is usually a hideous greenish-white. Negated by a ZWB2 filter, of course, but there are so many lights that don’t have it (including the new WK30, and the UV thrower, I think Sofirn’s SPsomethingUV).

So the old original WK30 is to me a keeper, and ain’t nobody prying mines away from me. :laughing:

That said, the WK40 is hella nice in color-mode. As I mentioned (had to look up-top) I’d do away with white-mode and just keep colors. Easy to flick between all 4 colors, and the dial makes it hella nice to separately switch brightness on the fly and visually (ie, you see where the dial is and know which level vs guessing if it’s on level 1 or 2 or 3 or whatnot).

Hmmm… anybody know of other use for the blue light?

K-Mart Blue Light specials of course!

Looking at the yellow dots on stinkjet printers.

The deep royal blue 455nm does make some things fluoresce. It’s been shown that some species of ticks do this (more on the ventral side than dorsal but it depends). There was a biologist on here awhile back that was building a light box to study this fluorescence with frogs and other critters. I didn’t get around to doing it this summer but I’m going to put one in a T3 to use for tick checks after hiking (especially for a friend’s dog and if it works well I’ll probably give the light to her and build another). I don’t think much else happens in this wavelength range until you move up into the cyan area. The deep royal blue looks really NEAT, though, creates a different world kind of like the good deep red emitters do.

Thank you for your review.
Good news, wk40 is available on amaozn US, thanks.

http://amzla.com/rhrorm088rax Link

I ended up grabbing one of these in the AE Anniversary Sale. Very nifty, and can confirm they now come with additional mixed colors in the color switching mode, so instead of R/G/B/W it is now blue/red/green/pink/yellow/cyan/white.

It memorizes the group and mode you’re in except not the “pause on this color” submode of the gradient blinky mode which is a shame. Also would love to have independent control of the different emitters to create (and memorize) the perfect color mix, but I can’t really see how that’d be possible with this mechanical switch.

Mmm, there might be a way to use ramping for each color-channel to create a color, then have that “stick” once memorised. Complicates the UI, but would be doable, I imagine.