Hello all, i’ve been lurking for several weeks reading up on which lights I want to purchase. I decided to finally join as I have a question about genuine skyray king lights.
I’d like to add one of these lights to my collection, but with so many copies, clones and versions of the ‘king’, i have a question about the possiblity of 2 different versions of authentic skyray king.
I noticed in another thread post #23 that there was a member mentioning that on eBay there is a seller advertising original high output skyray version.
Is it true that there was a high output version of the authentic skyray king?
I noticed there is also a lot of talk about manafonts king mimmick for $43. SKU: 11818
Does anyone know if anyone has a genuine skyray high output original version (if there is even such a thing as an ‘high output version’) that can compare against the manafont fake side by side?
The first thing you should understand is that CREE XM-L LEDs aren’t going to be putting out over 1000 lumens in any budget flashlight, pretty much ever. So that puts a hard 3000 lumen cap on something like the Sky Ray King, whether it’s an “original” or not. In reality, a Sky Ray King is going to be pulling somewhere around 7.5 amps which, divided by 3, is around 2.5 amps to each XM-L ignoring losses. At only 2.5 amps, a single XM-L is not going to be putting out anything close to 1000 lumens. It would be about 800 at the most. 800 x 3 = 2400. So in the best case scenario, a Sky Ray King might put out close to 2400 lumens. Probably a bit less.
if the srk is direct drive in high, was there ever a original version that might have had a boost like a turbo mode? I’ve done a ton of reading ‘hours’ about the srk and a few times i did hear about this mysterious high output version. wondering if there was ever such a thing? i messaged the eBay seller and asked why it is advertised as being original high output, and I’m awaiting the reply. this is the only advertised srk that I can find mentioning it is the original high output version. is it snake oil advertising, or something more?
The bottom line is that it would be absolutely impossible for a Sky Ray King to put out 5000 lumens. The seller is lying his ass off in his listing, so I wouldn’t trust anything he says in his reply to you either.
Now, let’s look at an absurd hypothetical scenario to drive the point home. Imagine that you had a Sky Ray King that was driving each XM-L at an insane 5 amps. What would you get? Still less than 3000 lumens. In fact at 5 amps you get less than you would at 4 amps, because you’d be pushing the emitters so hard that the heat begins to reduce their output. In fact in a flashlight, this would happen well before you hit 5 amps because the heatsinking would be nowhere near as good as what Match set up in his testing. In real world situations, anything over 4 amps would be counterproductive. In fact in a Sky Ray King, with multiple emitters contributing to the heat build-up, things are even worse.
Now that you understand that, it’s also important to understand that once you put an emitter in a flashlight, behind a standard reflector, behind a standard lens, you lose lumens. This is basically because a certain number of photons get absorbed by the various surfaces. All these things conspire to ensure that any Sky Ray King you’re likely to find will be putting out a lot less than 3000 lumens.
And those are raw emitter lumens. The reflector/lens will gobble up 25-35% of the emitter lumens. I measured my shiny new neutral white SRK at 1700 lumens, quickly dropping to 1500 lumens: Review: SkyRay King - yet another review
The cool white ones may have 20-25% more output than the neutral white ones…
I have a black King with U2’s and my brother has a gold King with T6’s. I’ve tested both several times. The T6 king is usually right at 2400otf at start up and drops to the 2150-2200otf range after 30seconds. My U2 puts out about 2600otf at startup, but the heat drops it quickly down to about 2100otf after about 30 seconds.
