What are the options for a general purpose flashlight with the following requirements:
9080 CRI
800+ lumens for 1 hour steady/regulated (ideally 1000 lumens).
Good tint
21700 battery or smaller
Mix of throw and spill - like SC700d. TIR OK.
Jacket pocket carry is OK - doesn’t have to be ‘EDC’ size
Durable enough to not need baby-ing
I have been lurking in the forums for a couple of weeks now, surprised that it is hard to find a solution for this. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
Fireflies E12R with dedomed 519a. Kind of floody, but the beam shape is good IMO. It isn’t as durable as a zebralight but it’ll survive most things.
If you were ok with a larger 26650 battery, I would also recommend the D4Sv2 with boost driver and 519a, it is a good “jacket pocket” size. Make sure to get the steel bezel and a polycarbonate lens (plastic) so it doesn’t break easily. The D4Sv2 can be very tough, u/PointyDogElbows on Reddit tested it to (eventual) destruction and it held up to much more than expected.
Fireflies is on my radar.
But their poor customer service makes me reconsider.
Apparently they shipped 80 CRI instead of 9080. And made it difficult for people who reported it to send replacements.
For one, they sent a replacement after weeks of convincing.
For another, they sent an LED board to manually solder instead of just sending a fully done head.
Hank’s D4S is probably one of the best options. But it uses 26650 cells instead of 21700, so it’s wider and shorter.
Something seems a little odd about the spec list though… you listed 9080 CRI but nothing about CCT or duv. CCT and duv are the things which make the biggest difference in how a beam looks, while CRI is a fairly small factor that only makes sense to optimize after the other two factors are good.
Anyway, a D4S with 519A (probably dedomed) and boost driver would probably work well. Dedoming a 519A makes the CCT significantly warmer and lowers the duv (less green, more pink)… in addition to increasing throw.
I didn’t mention CCT because I am OK with anything between 4500K and 5600K as long as it satisfies other requirements.
duv - I prefer this to be slightly negative or neutral.
Anyway, a D4S with 519A (probably dedomed) and boost driver would probably work well. Dedoming a 519A makes the CCT significantly warmer and lowers the duv (less green, more pink)… in addition to increasing throw.
I’ll check the D4S2 out. That sounds like a good recommendation as long as I relax the battery size requirement.
Dedomed 519a 5700k is between 4200-4400k and ranges from slightly rosy to very rosy (depends on bin). Haven’t tried it myself in the D4S for beam pattern but the D4S optic tends to cause a slight green shift so it should be fine.
You can use some 21700 batteries in a normal-length D4Sv2 if you use a spacer on the tailcap (a bit of copper wire works) and some rolled up cardboard or a plastic tube to keep it centered.
Hopefully Hank releases a 21700 tube for it at some point (considering 21700 is catching up to 26650 in capacity), like the way it works on the DM11v2.