This light was kindly donated for review by LighTake. The light itself has some good features not often found on the cheaper lights which I'll explain as we go through the review.
Firstly the light itself. It is an unusual color being dark Bronze. Its quite attractive compared to all the black lights I have. Does it live up to its reputation as an Ultrafire? I believe the next few pictures shows it does.
And a picture with a well and truly used and abuse little brother.
Size wise it fits right in between the SK68 and Ultrafire W878 26650 lights.
Again the step in reflector size is pretty uniform though the night shots show that reflector size does not tell you how the beam pattern size will be.
On disassemble the good points outweigh the bad points.
The lens has a lot of very small bubbles in it though you cannot see these in normal use (I did not notice them at all until I took this picture). The lens is glued into the bezel. The bezel itself has sharpish edges but not the normal knife edge sharp you get on some lights.
The Tailcap spring is firm with the normal style sleeve covering it. The switch cap does stick out very slightly causing a very minor wobble when tail standing. The switch itself has a very firm smooth push to it. The oring is cosmetic as it does not seal against the body. It will need a slightly larger section oring for a seal. The threads are a step above the normal very rough cut threads on budget lights as they are throughout the whole light.
A shot of the ends. The cover surrounding the LED was pressed in and not floating. Again the oring on the head end of the light was to small in section to seal.
The pill has a brass sleeve holding the 20mm driver in. This was not removed. The driver is your normal run of the mill 5 mode driver except for one thing. It does not have next mode memory. It always starts on high. High runs at 2.25 Amps. Diameter is 20mm. The spring again had adequate stiffness to it. With springs at both ends of the light the longest and shortest batteries should fit without issue. 70mm long batteries were the longest tested in this light. The oring for the slide gives a very positive motion to the zooming function. Carrying the light in a loose pocket will not alter the zoom at all.
The LED is advertised as being an XML-T6. Not sure on the U2 bit though. The star is the usual aluminium. Diameter was not measured but I'd suggest it is 20mm. What lies under the led? Aluminium. It is not hollow like a lot of other SK98s. Good move.
The machining on the body was very well done along with the anodizing. The belt clip was your typical very firmly sprung clip. Heat could be felt throughout the light after a minute or so of being run on high.
In order of top to bottom is the SK68 running 1.4 amps, W-878 at 2.25 amps and the SK98 at 2.25 amps. The SK98 has the largest beams zoomed in and out.
SK68.
W-878.
SK98.
SK68.
W-878.
SK98.
There is a few more night shots here comparing lots of lights.
In all I did not know what to expect when this light was offered to me for review. There is a lot of these types of light on the market. I would have to say after testing I'm please with how good the light is compared to some on the market, though it is not the cheapest. The main let down was the oring sizes that were to small in diameter. I'm not sure if the battery tube was sealed with the proper sized orings whether this would cause the zoom to zoom out automatically with heat. The main pluses being firm zooming function, not having next mode memory, reasonably well driven, solid pill, battery lengths able to be used and my opinion only, the color.
) thing is crazy bright…but I removed the entire emitter cover and epoxied the star to the pill…no more rings or artifacts in the light at all…plus nice to look down inside and see the copper star and contact pads