I have been looking at the reviews for the cheap $13.99 Akoray K-106 (6-mode) and its identical twin the $13.99 Trustfire F20. These used to be receive consistent rave reviews. But now complaints are trickling in about DOA, flakey mode memory, not working with alkaline AA, mode-changing upon light bump, etc. What do you think? Is this par for the course for any chinese light? Are they just receiving more negative reviews because everyone is buying them? Or do you think that the quality is shoddy and the actual percentage of defects is going up with these lights?
In the end its really about QC.....if the lights are not checked then of course your going to have some lights that are not going to work properly.....
Unfortunately this tends to forget the reason for its initial success. And if you are going to modify them, the AA-S1 is cheaper and by the sound of things better made. I imagine these different branded ones with identical bodies are essentially factory mods - They have a warehouse full of random parts and toss them together in a way that they hope will attract sales. It seems that all the faults reported are driver issues - sub-par components used?
Get an AA-S1 and a known good (insofar as this is possible) driver sounds like the way to go. Or bin the driver, use an appropriate value of resistor for current limiting and direct drive it off a 14500 though tis precludes alkalines on voltage grounds. Then it is down to how much heat the LED and your hands can take.
Hmmm, yes, the manufacturers obviously use a lot of the same parts, in fact I think most of the brand names are probably from the same manufacturer.
I just wonder about the Akoray and Trustfire. They have been a runaway success from the looks of it. If they maintain their DOA or malfunctioning rate at, say, 5%, there will logically be a lot more failures and complaints if they sell 500,000 instead of 10,000. And when customers go to a review forum (like the DX forums) they tend to go to post complaints, and the greater majority receive a functional product and don't post anything.
I do tend to forget that the complainers are far more motivated to post than those who are happy.
I really have no idea how big the market actually is - a (very wealthy) ex-flatmate now lives in Hong Kong and makes a good living from selling fashion belts made in China, branded by him and marketed globally. His idea of a good living is a LOT more than I get paid. And I wouldn't have thought there was that much of a market for those either.