C8 Clone (Kegos KE-1) XM-L reflections after about a year

LED Flashlights – General Info 18650 Flashlights
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Have been walking the dog a lot lately with the KE-1. A couple of thoughts I would like to state FWIW.

First the smooth reflector in that size is really nice for my taste. Plenty of flood and good throw. It is fun to shine the deer and really puts out an amazing amount of light. Much better than my C1 P60 XM-L.

What I really want to say is perhaps blasphemy on this forum;-) In the end I think I am most impressed with the XM-L on low! Holy cow. Driven at roughly .07 A, this thing puts out more than enough light to walk around with. At barely more than 1/4 Watt, it puts out way more light than my 2 X AA maglight. Sure I like to use High and it really impresses people. However, when I consider that it uses roughly 31X more power on High, I think low is actually more impressive. It doesn’t seem to me that I am getting any where near 31X as much light. Perhaps it is just a perception issue.

The last thing I wanted to share is that apparently some maintenance is required. On another thread I asked if this light was direct driven because the best batteries I had only pulled 2A and some Tenergys were pulling 1.8 or less. I just did another charge cycle and was testing when I saw that I was only getting about 1.6! Tested it with the Xtar, which had been pulling closer to 2 and it also was only getting about 1.6. Turns out that the aluminum barrel was getting a touch of corrosion where it was making contact with the pill. Simply shining it up on my T-Shirt (mistake for the laundry;-) fixed that problem. The Tenergy now pulls 2.2 and the XTar a little over 2.1.

A year into this I’ve been pretty good at holding myself back. Lots of gifts and a few nice lights for myself. In the next year, despite my genuine admiration of the low power utility of the XM-L, I will likely have to splurge and get a 2010 or an E1320 mod. I would like to have one that draws over 3A with a good reflector.

Thank you everyone for a year of learning and the opportunity to learn enough to give people lights that are way better than anything crazy people like us would even know existed. The people I give them too think it is more than a bit odd that I am so into flashlights but they sure appreciate and are amazed at what there gifts can do. (Hope that paragraph wasn’t too out of place in the 18650 forum as I don’t give those as gifts.)

Wade

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I agree, I have XML and XPG lights driven right to the edge of smoking, yet I find I use low & medium for walking the dog morning & night. The high is great when I need to spotlight something at a distance, but the lower outputs get 90% of my daily use. My 219 lights are used on low 99% of the time, but have plenty of “oomph” when needed.

Double yep on keeping your contacts clean. I use a high temp silicone grease on all the threads and contact points, no issues since I began using it.

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Yes Blasphemy! Actually I agree with you. I appreciate a light having lower levels with good runtime for the "normal" use. I'm disliking lights with Med and Low not being low enough (like a Medium of 50% and low of 25%). I'm still happy using some of my "hardware store" LED lights (like my 3AAA Rayovac Sportsman Extreme which I know will give me 6 hours of 80 lumens and 22 hours at 30 lumens and provides plenty of light for my usual tasks).

I'm also thinking to mod my HD2010 with a 3.5A driver for that "WOW" factor. (Also because I think direct drive is just inefficient.)

-Garry

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With a well driven xm-l, for my regular use, medium or low is the best bet, I actually find a q5 driven at about 1a is mostly adequate.

As you say though, it’s nice to have that blistering high, for when your round a campfire etc and just want to show off. :bigsmile: