(updated) $4 (now $40) Triple XM-L Dive Light Review - with teardown pics

LED Flashlights – General Info 18650 Flashlights
1

This light was briefly listed at Lightinthebox.com for $3.99. I ordered at that time, but I'm not sure if this was either a pricing error, or a limited promotional pricing, as the price on this light was quickly raised to $39.99. If this was a pricing error, I'm impressed that LITB would honor the sale and ship the light rather than process as a refund after not shipping.

http://www.lightinthebox.com/single-mode-3xcree-xm-l-t6-led-stepless-adjusted-diving-flashlight-1000lm-2x18650-black_p808163.html

LITB also has what appears to be the exact same light under multiple listings with wildly varying specs, ranging from listing it as a 7x emitter light, to being a 2x 26650 light, and with prices from $29.99 to $44.99, or for $79.99 as a kit with batteries and charger.

This light is very well sealed. This light has double O-Rings at both ends of the battery tube, and has a sealed magnetic switch. The Glass lens at the bezel appears to be very rugged, and is secured with a thick O-ring. I am confident that this light would function as intended, for diving/underwater use, without any leakage issues.

The switch works well, but is only OFF/ON; there are no modes or stepless adjustment as described in the product listing. (This is a feature to me, I prefer the single-mode operation.)

The light has 3x XM-L emitters, which are very cool white, much cooler than my XM-L U2 EDC.

The emitters are very gently driven, with only about .5A being delivered from 2x 18650s. As this is a dive light, intended to be used underwater, heat shouldn't have been a concern. This does mean I should get plenty of runtime from freshly charged cells though. The heatsinking does seem to be effective on this host, as the head/body do warm up after being left tailstanding for several minutes.

The light has a parasitic drain of about .23mA (as measured by my cheap DMM) when powered off.

OD of head is about 43mm, overall length ~29cm.

Longer protected Sanyo protected cells fit, but just barely. I would expect to use this light primarily with unprotected cells.

The light has a long dive-style lanyard attached.

A couple of minor issues to report with the light:

The reflector has some defects, and there was a deep scratch on the inside of the lens. Fortunately, the scratch is not over an emitter, so it doesn't affect the beam.

As appears to be normal in budget lights, the threads on the battery tube are machined off-center, resulting in square-cut on one side, triangular on the opposite.

I had ordered two of these lights at the reduced price, and this is the first to arrive. I'm still awaiting the arrival of the second light, but until it arrives, I do not intend to tear this light down further. I intend to replace the emitters on one of these with XP-sized UV emitters to make a waterproof UV-triple. I will keep one of the two unmodified as I like the idea of having a light than can be used in the lake/pool, etc. without worrying about water damage. Once I have the second on hand, I'll do a tear-down and report back with the mod potential of these lights.

I don't own any other dive lights to compare against or base my opinions on, and I don't know what you would expect to spend on a comparable dive light, so I'm making these statements per my opinions compared against my normal budget LED lights:

For $4, I am VERY HAPPY with this light. Of course, you can't compare this to anything else, as buying the emitters alone would cost more than this entire light. It's waterproof, and light comes out of the end. Not much more you could want for the price.

For $40, I would be disappointed. This light should be priced somewhere near the middle. I would expect better machining, cleaner reflector, and more power for the full-priced light. If you absolutely need a dive light, and can't find anything better, buy the $30-listed version instead.

2

As usual keltex, nice, concise review. Not bad at all for $4.00!

By the way I noticed LITB changed the listing to read “single mode” and “stepless”.

3

$36.29 @ KD

4

Thanks for posting the deal… I was surprised too when I received 3 of these lights yesterday… I don’t have any dive lights… so these would be first and maybe last ( at the price of $4 anyway) I guess it will come in handy someday when I have to use it in the rain… I wish it would ran at higher Amp… but then again maybe not for dive light… the last thing you want is to run out of juice while you’re underwater :slight_smile:
I guess I’ll open one of them and see what’s the driver look like

5

i have received it , and very bad flashlights, no more than 200lumens with 3 xml emiters. JUNK

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It just need some caressing… that’s all… find a way to put BLF driver into it and you can say it’s a nice junk :wink:

7

Since the off center threads were cut after anodizing and therefore after the o-ring grooves I wonder if this will cause pinching of the o-rings on one side and looseness on the other side of the light resulting in leakage at depth.

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That could be a possible concern. Of course, I won't be using it at any great depth though to test for leakage.

I just want to keep it as a waterproof flashlight for in the rain, at the beach, or while boating. I'll likely toss it into a swimming pool when it gets warmer, but the only pools I have available to swim in are fairly shallow.

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Mine came 2 days ago, pleasantly surprised that they manned up and shipped them:)
Now for the teardown/mod attempt.
Got the bezel off and the thick rubber o-ring, but the lens seems to have another GITD slim ring near the base of the bevel on the glass.
I don’t know whether to try to push the whole assembly out form the driver side to get that lens to pop out or to try to get under the lens, not a lot of room inside head.

Keltex78, have you gotten lens out yet?

Thanks!
Keith

10

Not yet, I'm not risking damaging mine until I have a spare on hand... I ordered both the same day, so I'm hoping the second will arrive very soon as well. Once it arrives, I'll be trying to disassemble one of them.

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Funny thing about the different arrivals when you ordered them on the same day. I ordered one for myself, then told a friend about the deal and he had me order two for him the same day. His two came in the mail two days ago. My one hasn’t come yet. :~

12

I wonder how many lights were sold before they realized their pricing mistake?
I’m sure the cost of mailing those 3 heavy lights almost cost them the same amount of what I paid for them :bigsmile:

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I got my $4 flashlight in the mail today, so I proceeded to test it out. Compared to other lights I have, it does seem to put out the rated 1000 lumens, or very near it. keltex78’s test showing 0.5A at the tail would agree with that, if you do the math. :wink:

I noticed it has a terribly ugly beam pattern. The centering rings come up to high around the emitters, and the individual reflector areas for each emitter are fairly tiny.

So, after playing around a bit, I decided to try getting the head apart. It turned out to be pretty easy, in fact. I unscrewed the bezel, then gently pried the thick, oily o-ring away from the inside wall of the head with my pocket knife. After I pulled that out, I was surprised to find the thick glass lens following quickly behind. So quickly that it hit the concrete floor of my basement! It wasn’t bothered by the fall, because it’s so thick. I haven’t measured it yet, but it looks to be about 5mm thick to my untrained eye. Behind that, the reflector, emitters, and driver are all assembled into something like a drop-in. I haven’t taken that apart yet, but I’m planning on it.

As for overall quality, I’d give it a 2.5 out of 5 overall, with high marks for using thick solid materials, but lots of demerits for shoddy poor machining! I’ve never owned a P60, but I’d say this light was built like one with a terrible heat path from the pill to the outside shell. Even in water, I’d guess this thing would have a hard time shedding heat if it had any serious amperage going through it. Maybe that’s why it’s so underpowered.

Edit: Okay, I did it again! J) I took the pill apart. The driver is press fit in the bottom. Once you pry that out, there is a screw that goes all the way through the solid but thin pill shelf to the bottom of the reflector, which is itself machined out of a solid piece of aluminum. So, if you want to take care of those nasty blemishes in your reflector, you can sand all the coatings off, and polish the aluminum smooth. The MCPCB looks to be really cheap, and weirdly traced. It’s aluminum, and I doubt it’s DTP. It’s a triple emitter PCB, but only two emitters are traced together! The manufacturer of this light ran small gauge wires from the positive and negative pads of the two connected emitters to the positive and negative pads of the lone emitter, making them all wired in parallel. The wires from the MCPCB to the driver are also thin and relatively long, but at least those are silicone insulated. :~ Under the MCPCB is one blot of thermal grease that isn’t spread out very well at all, so it’s probably doing more harm than good, holding the MCPCB off the pill by that much distance.

The good news is that there is plenty of mod potential in this light, because the manufacturer left plenty undone or half-done, probably just cause they know we love to mod so much! 0:) With a little more care, they really could have made this a very nice light, well worth the $40 current price, or even more. But, I got mine for $4, so I’m not complaining! :bigsmile:

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Pictures? How is the switch made?

And no way you can get with 0.5A and two cells 1000lm….never ever!

15

Is it a standard sized pcb? So is it possible to replace with an XP board? Or are we stuck with xm-l?

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This one was $4.99, I ordered 2 and they came today
http://www.lightinthebox.com/lt-single-mode-3xcree-l2-super-bright-led-diving-flashlight-980lm-2x18650-black_p808142.html

A little brighter than the XM-L T6 model, pulls 1.2 amps on low impedance batteries.
Still way under driven.
Anyone else get this model?

17

My two $4.00 lights came today. 18 days from ordering to receiving. Not too bad.

I have no way to provide pictures nor am I a modder like some of you talented people but I’m very satisfied. Neither of my two have any major defects to speak of and lenses and reflectors are clean with no chips or scratches.

Beams on both have no artifacts and are both nice, white CW with no blue. I’m very partial to CW beams and in IMHO, these have a beautiful bright white corona with nice, wide spill.

Again, I have no way of measuring lumens but I can guarantee you it’s way more than 200.

These are built more solid than a lot of way more expensive lights that I have. Sure, I wouldn’t call the build quality top notch but it’s more than adaquate.

My real complaint is it only has the single high mode. It would be really nice if it had the ramping feature of the red dive light in the other thread or at least a low/high. In fact the magnetic sliding switches on these have a much better feel and don’t slide near as easy as on the ramping switch of the red dive light.

Junk? No way. For $4.00? Absolutely no way! :slight_smile:

18

I’m sorry, you’re right. My brain isn’t working exactly right since I’ve been sick this week. For some reason I was thinking of each emitter getting that amount, even though I knew he was measuring at the tail. Forget I said that. But, it does LOOK like it’s putting out about as much light as my Lumintop BLF LD10 that Rey did the GB on a while back. I’ve got that running on a 26650 right now, and the two look comparable side-by-side. I just looked back at the GB to see what the spec is for the LD10, and it doesn’t say total lumens, just that it is rated at 3A on high. With a single XM-L2, that is around 1000 lumens.

Edit: Oh yeah, I thought about putting up pictures, but then decided I’d leave that up to the OP, since this is his review, not mine. The switch is a magnetic slide switch. It just doesn’t have dimming. It’s a little bit weird, because the on point (sliding up) is not the same as the off point (sliding down). I don’t pretend to know how these things work, but it must be a magnetic sensor on the driver, because there is nothing visible anywhere else that coincides with the sliding mechanism. And, when I put the head back in, at first it wouldn’t work. I had to take it back out, rotate it 180 degrees and put it back together. The bottom of the pill is notched on two sides, with corresponding places in the shell for those notches to rest, so there are only two ways to put it together - right and wrong! :bigsmile: The magnetic sensor used for switching would mean that the pill gets power all the time. In fact, the pill is electrically connected to the shell with a thin wire (clip? spring? something?) and the driver contacts the positive battery terminal with the usual thin coiled spring.

Edit2: According to Cree PCT, it should be ~600lm total at 0.5A but I’m still sure I’m getting more than that. Maybe I’ll measure my tailcap amps tonight when I get home from work.

19

Thanks for the switch details, kind of weird that it doesn’t have dimming.
How looks the driver have you spotted current sensing resistors for possible mod?

20

The more the merrier I say. What’s the difference between text and picture spoilers? Unless the OP objects, I hope you do share pictures, and especially if the OP’s second light doesn’t arrive soon.