The S2 certainly has good rep. I see it mentioned here many many times. I may look at one to replace my pos crapfire tube torch.
Great post 1dash1!
What 1dash1 said 
The S2+ is an awesome light for the money & will blow you away with it”s performance,quality & useablity for the price.
It is an excellent entry into the world of quality high powered torches.
Recently bought the S2+7135x6 5B, and the S3 7135x8 3B. Have to say very pleased with the quality & Simon’s service is great.
Thanks for the great info 1-1. I appreciate the suggestions re: LED types and lumens. How do I order from Convoy directly? Your links take me to Aliexpress.com. Is this Convoy’s direct sell website?
EDIT - I see in your post that you mention Aliexpress is the direct sell website for Convoy.
Re low voltage protection: On the website it says “low voltage warning”. Does this mean you will get flashing which tells you to turn off the light, as opposed to low voltage protection that would actually turn off the light when the voltage got to low?
I’ll certainly buy this light! Are there other lights that actually turn off when the voltage gets to low? I’d prefer something like this if my wife or friends will be using the light.
I see the C8 on the Aliexpress website also, for under $10, but don’t see any comment about low voltage warning or low voltage protection. Anyone know if the C8 has this?
Thanks!
Mtnelectronics is US based and also sells Convoy S-series lights along with good chargers. Owner Richard(member RMM) is a regular here and very helpful. The silver unanodized version of the A6 is a good choice but ordering from overseas comes with a certain small but unavoidable risk which some don’t seem to handle well. I’ve had good results by and large but the odd problem as well. It comes with the absurdly low prices and free shipping we’ve come to expect. I buy from MtnE whenever Rich has what I want since he is so much faster and more dependable and to support him as a unique resource.
As another newbie who obsessed over finding an 18650 light you won’t find a better value than the blf a6 / astrolux s1(basically banggoods rebranded a6) for $30 minus coupons. Has the flood you’re looking for, optional memory, multiple modes, lights up my garage and attic perfectly and is powerful enough to light up the end of my street. I picked up the astrolux rather than a6 and haven’t had any problems.
Sacrider,
The Convoy S2+ has a low voltage warning flasher only. It will not cut off the battery.
Please give us the link to the C8 “for under $10”. I can’t find it in Simon’s store. The brand Aliexpress is a third-party marketplace (like Amazon). It is the shell for many, many different vendors. For more information, see: My experiences with AliExpress
As to your concerns about family members and friends, I’d suggest not giving them the flashlight without instructing them on the basics:
- Lithium-ion battery safety 101
As to loaning them the flashlights, what’s the problem? Unless you’re worried that they are going to take the batteries out and start using them as nutcrackers or baking them in an oven, for a single cell flashlight, there’s little risk of fire/explosion/venting while actually using the flashlight. If they accidentally overdischarge the battery:
- They will harm the number of cycles the battery can recharge. How much harm depends on how low they discharged the battery. It could be a few cycles lost to permanently killing the battery (the battery will no longer recharge).
- They possibly may do so much damage as to set up a scenario for the battery to catch on fire/explode/vent during when recharging it. But you would be in charge of that process. You should be very careful when recharging the battery if is under 2.5V. At 2.0V, I’d recommend discarding the battery.
- Moreover, I’d conjecture that the risk of overdischarging the battery is probably fairly low to begin with because most people loan flashlights only for very short periods of time and the dimming of the flashlight will make it very obvious when the battery begins to run low.
I’ve loaned quite a few of my flashligthts out to friends and family (I’ve got a reputation as a flashaholic,so I’m the “go to” guy when they need extra flashlights). I’ve never given them any special instructions, other than not to ding some of the more expensive or cherished ones.
Aha! Another potential convert to the S2+ sect. }
Yes, to everything that you said about the A6. Compared feature by feature, the S2+ in no way competes with it. As you most succinctly summarized, the A6 has it all.
The S2+ is a simple flashlight. But what it does, it does extraordinarily well.
Try one, I think you’ll like it.
Here’s the link to the Convoy c8 for about $8.00. They’ve got an $19.00 one that says “new Convoy C8”. Does anyone know if the older $8.00 convoy C8 has low voltage protection or warning?
Can someone give me a link directly to Simon’s store, if it’s different from Aliexpress?
No that is not a CONVOY C8. see how carefully they avoid showing the branding?
You see CREE on it,but most likely it will be LatticeBright LED and have UltraFire written on the other side.
Also there is no way of knowing this will have low level cell warning, the cheap C8 I have sure does not have this. The feel of the cheap is not quality, it does not lockout, cheaper less nice LED. It was nice to bake it so it turned a copper color but still we do not use it at all, it just stands there, and do not see it getting used either, the real Convoys feel so much better and have the warning for low battery, why would I use a similar ight that does not have it.
Simon
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/330416
The C8 click
.
.
.
Aliexpress is a platform where small and bigger vendors can have their shop.
You buy from a store, but pay via AliExpress system and are protected with it.
So ordering 20 things can mean you are ordering from 20 vendors, but only need 1 account and do not need to give credit card info to 20 vendors, just the platform, and all orders are managed inside the platform, 1 time login to see them all.
Fasttech accepts paypal, have a BLF coupon discount, have the full range of genuine convoy flashlights in many tints and power levels, and have proven to be trustworthy to shop at by many BLF users.
See their convoy range here (329 different versions today): https://www.fasttech.com/search?convoy
All the links to the different colored S2+, shorty tubes, and clips available in Simon’s store are in the message I posted earlier. Just click the links.
=
The link you posted goes to the store “Shenzhen TSF Technologies Co., Ltd”.
Simon’s store is “Shenzhen Convoy Electronics Co., Ltd.”
The owner of the store you posted is “Tony Tong”.
The Service Center contact listed in Simon’s store is “Simon.”
BTW, 2000 lumens output from a single XM-L T6 emitter is laughable. If it had a genuine CREE emitter and a good driver, 1200 lumens would be possible. But it’s probably got a cheap Latticebright emitter and an equally cheap driver, so I’d guess it’s probably more like 600-800 lumens.
Hmm, I might have to buy a Convoy C2+ and a real C8. In Aliexpress it says shipping is on time if within 60 days. Is that standard for shipping from Aliexpress? Is it the same for fasttech and Mtnelectronics?
Thanks again for all the help! I’m kinda fired up, and don’t want to wait 2 mos for a new toy!
I’ve placed 8 orders from Aliexpress in the last 6 months. Average time from order to shipping = 4 days. Average time from shipping to delivery = 17 days. Total = 21 calendar days.
My waiting for Fasttech deliveries have been much longer, see: FastTech New Arrivals & Promotion - #47 by 1dash1
Ordering to Richard at Mountain Electronics, I think the longest I had to wait was 5 days. Of course, he has an advantage by shipping within the USA.
Thanks 1-1, you’ve been a big help! I’ll post my reactions when I get my new toys!
Few pictures of Convoy flashlights
Convoy C8
more are here:
Convoy S2+
more are here:
Kind regards
VERY useful info on this thread. Thank you!
(yep, just subbin’!)
What flashlights are the other ones?
This isn’t quite true.
With cells in parallel, the main dangerous condition would be rapid, uncontrolled balancing. A cell in a low state of charge is inserted in parallel with one or more cells in a much higher state of charge. The high cells charge the low cell with as much current as they can provide, which causes all of them to overheat. In quality cells, the PTC responds to the heat by increasing resistance, throttling the process. All the cells lose a few charge cycles worth of lifespan, but there’s no drama. In lower-quality cells, this doesn’t happen, they go in to thermal runaway and vent or explode. Standard LVP can’t detect this situation, and most parallel lights don’t have a way for the driver to disconnect the cells from each other, so even a shutdown of light output wouldn’t stop the rapid balancing.
With cells in series, the main dangerous condition is reverse charging. This happens when one cell has less charge, less capacity or more resistance than the other, and the group is run down to low enough voltage. With many cells in series, this can happen easily while the total voltage of the group can still be well within the normal range with one cell at zero. On the other hand, a light like the Olight M3XS-UT, which has two cells in series and a 7.0V low-voltage shutdown[0] would be fairly difficult to get in to a reverse-charging situation. Even intentional abuse by putting in one full cell and one empty one would get you 4.2+2.8=7.0V and the light will refuse to turn on.
[0] There are possible configurations of this light with up to four cells in series, and this claim does not hold in those configurations.