BIG change in Sofirn SC28 group selection - has it been mentioned before? (It has a "hidden" feature now!)

Wingman · December 20, 2024, 9:46pm

I recently made an impulse buy then the Sofirn SC28 was really cheap on Aliexpress. I’ve seen (and partially read) some of the topics about the UI discussion, but I never paid attention to it that much. After I recieved my SC28 recently and got frustrated that something in the UI diagram did not work on mine, so I put it away.

Today I decided to read up on it here on BLF, to find out what maybe I was doing wrong and certainly I realised that there are several big changes on my recent model, compared to previous models.

First of all: there are only 2 groups left; the normal/default group and the tactical group. The “Granny/Kid” group is scrapped. On basicly all the listings on AE I could find (including the Sofirn Official Store) all the 3 groups are still listed/advertised.

Only on Sofirn their own website (sofirnlight.com) I could find a mention of this, including this diagram:

BUT… this is still not how the group selection currently works on the SC28! On the above image, it still shows that there is a blink after 5 seconds and then you can switch between groups. But in reality, that blink (and mode of switching) is gone now!

Sofirn chose a completely different approach for switching modes, which you can spot in the (quickly) shot photo below:

Sofirn has now implemented a small (dip)switch on the driver itself!

The manual that came with the SC28 is updated and mentioned the switch, as can be seen in the photo below. (Sorry for the crappy photo, I just took a quick photo and did not take the time to properly get the exposure right.)

I still think that there is a mistake in the manual (and the one that frustrated me most initially), in that the “double click when on” doesn’t do anything, which puzzled me initially. Now, after the picture from the Sofirn website that I shared earlier, I think that it is a leftover from the time that you could switch the groups with a ‘double click’ after the 5 second flash.

So now, there is no way anymore to accidentally switch groups and it’s just a standard/easy forward clicky (momentary) flashlight in eiter “regular” or tactical mode!

Serlite · December 20, 2024, 10:53pm

That’s an interesting driver change, and a sensible way to deal with this interaction. Having the group selection completely separate from the mode selection feels rational to me, since with just a single button it’d be easy to accidentally get muddled up between them.

Now there’s less of a mental load incurred when trying to use this light, which makes it a much handier tool. It’s interesting how Sofirn made this change without obvious public feedback - the SC28 didn’t strike me as a particularly popular light among enthusiasts. I like how they’re exploring UI improvements that go beyond increasingly complex button sequences!

Also - if there’s no more blink after 5 seconds, I think that’s a major annoyance removed. I recall Convoy’s 2-group driver was quite unpleasant to me for exactly that reason.