I've been a long-time lurker of this site, often referring to it whenever the urge to get a new flashlight came up. This past year I became curious about some very cheap flashlights being sold on eBay and AliExpress. I was able to find a couple reviews of individual lights on YouTube which suggested that, for the price, they were actually quite decent, and might make nice gifts for friends, or even total strangers I meet while traveling. I bought one, then another, and soon decided to just buy every different cheap single AAA I could, attempting (and mostly succeeding) to find each for $2 US or less, and then do a comparison of all of them, so that others would know the gems from the junk without having to waste their money.
For my first post on BudgetLightForum, I present to you the video I've made comparing all 12 lights. I hope this helps any who are curious.
I enjoyed the video and I actually have one of those skyewolfeye zoomies. If you are into that, they all get brighter and with better tint if you swap the harsh cool chinese led for a brand led, like a Cree XP-E2 or a Luminus SST-20.
One particular use case for zoomies is the flashlight muggle auto mechanic. To preface, it would not be my choice when working under my hood but the even and wide zoomed out beam can be great for general work lighting while the zoomed in beam can help locate a dropped bolt or tool that fell down a dark crevice.
Thanks for the feedback! How involved is the process for swapping out the LED? If it doesn't require too much time or any special tools (beyond a soldering iron), that's something I may try.
Swapping leds requires a solder iron to solder the wires off and on the ledboard. The led itself is reflow-soldered on the ledboard, which requires a different trick: there are several ways to do that, from simply heating the board in a frying pan on the stove to regulated hotplates or heatguns. It helps to have solder paste (powdered soldertin/flux mix) at hand. Search BLF for ways to do it, i.e. vestureofblood made some helpful videos on the subject.
Welcome to BLF.
Thanks for the test video.
I always have a soft spot for cheapo AAA lights.
I have all 3 of those zoomies.
The first 2 (#7 and #8 in your line up) are running dedomed Cree XP-C here, giving them a really narrow but pretty bright beam.
Number 7 in your line up is pretty good actually, and because of the bigger lens has the narrowest beam and the driver is more powerful.
I’ve got #2 also. It’s cute, and some day i’ll rebuild it with a better driver and LED.
I’ve got number 7 and I really dislike it. Performance is good but has some electrical issues and changes modes when I zoom.
EDIT:
That turned out to be easily fixable by tightening the pill.
