The flashlight was provided by GearBest for review.
Price: $20.99 after “NicoNatureCM” coupon.
Overview:
- 26650 battery
- XM-L2 LED
- 6 modes: High>Med>Low>Strobe>Turbo>SOS. I that order. No memory.
- Good build quality and anodising, no flaws. Smooth threads.
- Size, light output (on Panasonic NCRB) and throw about the same as Convoy L4.
- Tailstands well
- Easily fits longer protected cells. Spring positive contact to fit flattop cells.
- Padded cardboard box, no accessories.
Construction/Build Quality:
The flashlight is well made and feels good in hand. Machining is good, no flaws no sharp edges. Threads are triangular with rounded edges, smotth and anodised. The anodising is matte black and looks nice. The switch feels nice and solid with audible click. The bezel seems to be aluminium or silver painted aluminium, it doesn’t look bad, but still disappointing compared to overall quality.
The head, compared to C8 (left) and Convoy L4 (right):
The flashlight has deeper reflector than C8 of about same diameter:
Disassembled (click for larger pics):
The pill has solid top. Emitter start is glued with thermal compound. The pill was glued with a drop of some clear stuff (not same as thermal compound) but it came out without any special treatment, with needle nose pliers and enough force. The pill doesn’t have any holes, but the star is glued strong enough and provides good grip for needle nose pliers. Note than the pill comes out of the back, when unscrewing from the front you need to rotate in reverse direction.
I had to drill holes in the retaining ring to get it out. The existing caveats on the inner side of the ring didn’t provide enough grip for pliers.
The driver looks the same as Lucky Sun D80 and my Palight V5, except it has a spring contact.
Light Output:
The flashlight has 6 modes: High>Med>Low>Strobe>Turbo>SOS, no memory - always starts on High. PWM on all modes, quite bad on low. Some traces of PWM on turbo as well, barely noticeable when shining on PC fan.
Compares very close to convoy L4(left) (both lights on Panasonic NCRB cell):
Based on L4 reviews I would guess 800-900lm, 30-40kcd. XXX-990 has tighter spill, tighter hotspot of the same or very close intensity, wider and smoother corona than L4. Driver should be direct drive on turbo - braiding the springs and using high drain cell will likely improve performance, but I don’t have any to test it.
Overall it’s nice flashlight. Well built and with good performance. The cons are the weird mode order and silver painted bezel.
