Is the king of tube light 21700 throwers still the Convoy S21B with the Osram boost emitter or are there new contenders? Aliex is so flooded with convoy stores it’s hard to figure out if they’ve released anything new and interesting
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I have the L21B with sft40 and it does about 1200 meters (I forget exactly), so not the best out there. You might get more with the Boost HX but probably not much more. It’s probably the cheapest long-throw light out there though, about $40. The only other options in this category are much more expensive (Speras T3R, etc).
Depends how big the “tube” is. Does it matter if the head is bigger than the body?
As for 1200 meters that is 320,000 cd. Unless you put an actual laser in the S21b you won’t get near half that!!!
Not 100% sure on the reflector size/depth of the S21b. A Noctigon KR1 or Emisar D1 mini will do about 100,000 cd with an Osram W2. Not tube lights but compact. I suspect the S21b would be more like 20,000-30,000 cd tops. But could easily be half that amount still. The reflector certainly looks pretty shallow.
L21b is the 61 mm reflector version not the 21700 size tube. I think I misunderstand. The S21b is small and won’t throw that far with a W2. For max throw, get the W1
The S21B is good for 480m with the culpm1 and 6a, it would be interesting to see what it does with the cslnm1. That would have to be an emitter and drive swap though because Convoy doesn't offer it.
I recently tried for a tube light thrower as well but it didn’t go so well - I bought a Convoy S2+ with the 1mm Osram CSLNM1 but found it is lucky to really illuminate something 50m away, whereas I have a C8+ with the same emitter and the C8+ is good for 200-300m before my vision becomes the limiting factor. (I know you said 21700, but hopefully this still helps).
Whatever you do don’t use Convoy’s 5A driver with the NM1 white, I’ve had multiple turn purple and/or burn out. Convoy’s solution is to use the 3A. I only stock in my store the S2, C8, and L21B NM1 white running 3A drivers. On the chips that run okay on the 5.7A, but slightly purple, only lose 30m at 3A. It’s clear that 3A is around the sweet spot for the chip
I bet that’s because of what I’ve written above and the 5.7A has damaged the chip. I order them with Convoy’s 3A driver and measure just under 350m and quite nicely light up trees at 140-150m. I bundle them with a remote switch to hunters and they love them.
I have an S2+ on the way with a W1. But I struggle to believe 350 meters. The reflector on the S2+ is super shallow.
Guess I’ll be able to see when it arrives. I’m keen to see how it does compared to my XP-L HI S2 (not a +) which has a much deeper reflector and my Convoy S4’s also with a deep reflector. The S4 has a de-domed XP-G2 and 3amp driver. The XP-L HI the BLF A6 driver.
Might be a fun little project, maybe I’ll get bored enough over the winter to try it.
No, I have seen the threads from you and others regarding the CSLNM1’s output and the overpowered 5A drivers. I only run mine on the 50% setting. It’s just because of the reflector size; the beam is much tighter with the C8+ (as is to be expected).
Surely 50% power must be pretty low output overall…… have you measured tailcap amps or anyway of measuring throw?
Just an FYI, you could use the Wurkkos 20350 HD20 short tube with the S21B CULPM1 and it makes a very nice compact and light thrower.
Threw an Ultrafire pretty far in the back yard one time because it had a flaky switch and pizzed me off, so Yeah,
Ultrafire for the win 
I haven’t measure lumens or throw but others here have; apparently the output is almost identical at 50% vs 100, due to the LED being overdriven at 100. Here’s Funtastic’s thread measuring throw:
Convoy 5A driver killing Osram CSLNM1.
There is another BLF thread on the CSLNM1 where someone measures lumens at 50% and 100% and from memory the results are within 30 lumens.
I measured tailcap amps; my S2+ with CSLNM1 @ 50% power = 2.65A.
For comparison: my S2+ with XM-L2, and after I fitted an old 3.04A Qlite driver @ 100% power = 2.10A.
Also, Funtastic, sorry if my post was misleading earlier. When I sad the S2+ with CSLNM1 “…is lucky to really illuminate something 50m away…” I don’t mean that the light doesn’t reach 50m, I mean if you really needed to see something bright and clear like identify someones face or uniform, or spot and track a dangerous animal (mountain lion, etc) I wouldn’t trust the S2+ to be useful for more than 50m. It does light up things a lot further than that, just poorly, and for anything over 50m I would grab my C8+ with CSLNM1 instead.
Still not sure I follow tbh.
More lumens should increase throw and be quite visibly different. I have the 5amp Convoy SST-40 driver in a couple of lights with the Osram W1, not sure if it is the same driver. But 100% is clearly quite a bit brighter than the mode below. I see 4.75amps tailcap on one of them. Neither look to be overdriving the LED and the tint remains nice and white.
In a C8 with this setup I’m getting 107,939cd and 657m. And that is using an OP reflector, a SMO would be even bigger numbers. My lightbox says a PEAK of 555 lumens OTF.
As an aside I use the Qlite in a lot of lights, tailcap amps can vary on the on the LED and measurement setup, but I’ve always seen right around the 3amp mark in most cases. I run it on XP-L, XM-L2, XP-G2, XP-G2 triples and Nichia 219b.
The 5A drivers used to be 4.8A until a bug was discovered on the 12 groups firmware causing a mode reset. The fix involved changing components and that increased the current up to as high as 5.7A. There was quite a big thread about it.
You’d have the earlier version of the driver.
That aside, I assume 50% or a mode down from High would still produce significantly less lumens and throw than a driver operating correctly at the maximum intended amps.
I still have 3 units with the 5A driver, so I grabbed one and measured it on 50% at 8 meters and achieve 335 meters. I then turned it onto 100% at 5.7A and instant purple tint.
These photos are taken at 50%, I measured 2.8A and the tree and house are 150m away from me.
Benz - If it’s only offering decent lighting out to 50m then there’s something wrong with your flashlight or maybe you need glasses. I thought my BLF GT was under performing until I got an eye test! lol
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