How does it compare to the legendary sk68?
Many thanks.
Sad that buying it in the UK makes it so much more pricey though. $9.99 is only £6.32 and somehow I have a hard time justifying to myself that paying £15 for the same light is good value for money. I’d happily have paid £9.99 + free shipping however.
Yes, I understand you. I’m in the same situation, if I want to buy it must spend 20 euros=25$ from Usa. :~
My Coast HP1 arrived today.
Here are my initial impressions:
- Feels good in the hand. the knurling is quite aggressive and the flat black anodizing looks very nicely done. The light looks and feels much higher quality than a Sipik 68. However, I assume this is the same Type II anodizing used on some LED Lensers and will wear quickly. I suspect this would feel excellent in the hand with the clip removed.
- The bezel on mine was not glued on. It came right off when I unscrewed it. The emitter is a CREE XPE.
- The light is single-mode, with a driver. This isn’t surprising as direct drive wouldn’t work with a 1.5v single-AA cell and a CREE XPE.
- The switch is a forward clicky that allows always on or momentary.
- The lens setup is indeed the LED Lenser style reflector/lens incorporating a TIR with a mild aspheric, with the LED mounted on a post instead of a traditional star. Like LED Lenser, Coast purposely chose not to have the spot beam come to a sharp focus of the LED. Instead the spot beam is a fairly tight circle with fuzzy edges.
- The center aspheric portion of the lens is still mostly flood even in the spot position. This is different from the lenses in my previous LED Lensers. This means that in spot mode there is a considerable amount of spill outside the spot.
- The flood mode is very wide. At least twice as wide as my Sipik 68. Maybe even wider. The extremely wide flood is beautiful. It’s much wider than the flood on my earlier model LED Lensers.
- In my rough ceiling bounce test there was no noticeable loss of lumens when shifting from flood to spot. Actually, I think total lumen output in spot mode might be slightly higher than flood mode.
- The screws holding in the plastic cover over the LED pillar and the clip require a tiny star-shaped screwdriver. Definitely not a standard item. My hex wrench set was unable to unscrew them.
- My sample tailstands perfectly
- The light is larger than a Sipik 68. The head and body are about the same, but the Coast is around 1 cm longer due to the long tailcap.
- The clip looks useless to me. It’s right on top of the aggressive knurling. I couldn’t imagine trying to clip this to clothing.
- With a fresh Kinoko INR 14500 in each light, the Sipik 68 had noticeably more throw in spot mode than the Coast, but the Coast’s overall beam pattern looks much prettier and more useful in both modes.
Overall this looks like a good little light. If I had to choose an unmodded light between this and a Sipik 68, I’d take this.
Thanks, Firelight. Glad I ordered one. Using nearly all the light in spot mode must be much better when you are alone in the woods, but in the city I prefer not to bother people I am not looking at. At least it will broaden my collection in a significant way. I have a small fixed focus TIR light, and I do like the way the spot blends into the spill.
Turns out I did have the right kind of screwdriver set in the toolbox after all.
With the clip removed the light feels quite nice in the hand. Very grippy.
Still needs a lot of work before it will meet my standards for EDC though. At bare minimum it needs a driver and emitter swap. After that, I’d probably need to see if there is any practical way to shorten the light. It’s a bit longer than I’m used to.
Not sure I want to make this my next mod project or work on a different light. I have a different 14500 budget zoomie that uses a standard aspheric. If I do my side-switch mod on it, I figure I can get it below 80mm in length. I might try that one first.
One other observation on the HP1:
Beam shape - looks beautiful in both spot and flood modes. However “in-between” looks ugly and ringy. This light definiitely isn’t meant to be used except at either full flood or full spot. This is different from my aspheric zoomies which tend to look smooth at both ends and every point in between.
The bezel finally yielded. I did a quick partial teardown and snapped some photos:
Screws for the clip and the LED retention are standard Torx T-6
I removed the plastic cover over the LED.
Underneath is the expected aluminum pillar with a tiny rectangular star on top. I estimate the star is maybe 8mm x 5mm. The star itself is made of copper and the plastic LED cover is what holds it on. Not sure if it’s direct copper or has a dialectric layer. Underneath is a layer of grey thermal grease. Looks like Arctic Silver 5.
I’m pretty impressed to find a copper star and AS5 thermal grease inside a $10 light. The internal construction looks to be miles ahead of a Sipik 68 in quality.
Other features:
- The battery compartment has a spring at both ends. This should provide much better shock protection to the cell than just having a spring at the back.
- The light has a lot of o-rings and most seem well-greased. On mine the main o-ring for the sliding bezel is split and actually sits on the inside of the bezel than around the pill. This leads me to believe that this might not actually be an O-ring. Instead I think it may be a rubber C-ring, and the opening is the vent to allow air pressure to equalize when the zoom is cycled.
- On mine, the bezel was not threadlocked and unscrewed easily. The pill threads were threadlocked with a small amount of clear threadlocker that broken when I unscrewed it.
- The driver appears to be 14mm
Did a quickie mod on this light tonight.
I replaced the driver with a Nanjg 105c with 3-modes and off-time memory from Mountain Electronics, because that’s what I had on hand. Had to file down the edges of the driver, but it fit and still works.
Then I replaced the XPE with a dedomed XPG2. I’d have preferred a dedomed XPL, but didn’t have any on hand.
Not bad. It’s definitely brighter than before, but still nowhere near my XPL and XML2 lights.
Some points:
- The modded light is slightly longer than the original mainly because I didn’t bother to file down the pill prior to sticking the new driver on the end. The next step will be to disassemble the light, remove the driver and file down the pill to save as much space as possible. Enough filing and I might be able to shave a mm or 2 of stock.
- The only thing holding the tiny star to the pill is the plastic cover. I’m a little worried it will melt at higher current. No idea how temperature resistant it is.
- Soldering the driver wires onto the tiny star was a pain. It’s critical to get the bonds as flat as possible so the plastic cover can lie flat. But the star is so tiny it’s very hard to keep in place. The easiest way to do it is to glue the star to the pill with arctic alumina or other thermal glue.
The head gets noticeably warm with the new setup showing that at least some heat is getting out of the LED into the body. - In most zoomies negative contact is made through the pill to the un-anodized threads at the top of the body tube. In the HP1, those threads are anodized. For negative contact there’s a wide spring at the top of the body compartment This spring presses directly against the bottom of the driver.
How does it throw with the XP-G2 compared to the XP-E? Also are you comparing to XP-L in a zoomy? I’ve personally never thought much of any XM-L zoomy I’ve seen in terms of throw.
I didn’t measure the throw before I took the XPE out. It throws further though. The light is noticeably brighter in both flood and spot.
I have a couple other modded zoomies that I recently switched from dedomed XPG2 to dedomed XPL. They have much more flood and noticeably more throw with the XPL when run on a 3 amp driver on a fresh Kinoko INR 14500. These are tiny zoomies… just 87mm x 21mm. But they get around 17k lux and probably put out around 1000 lumens, both have much more throw than the Coast HP1, but perhaps that’s not surprising since the HP1’s spot mode is also designed to have some flood. These same lights only got around 15k lux when they had dedomed XPG2 inside.
My brightest zoomie is my modded Aleto N8. Currently with a 20mm aspheric lens inside. It’s smaller than the HP1, but runs on an 18650 and has a FET driver. It has a dedomed XML2 instead of an XPL and gets 31-33k lux…. much better results that I got with XPG2.
Sounds like it has thermal limitations, including the SK-68s main one which is the space below the pill that can take a 17 mm. driver.
It seems, on general principles, that one should usually get more throw with a smaller led, because it is easier to cool and to power.
Note for modders:
The tailcap on the MT-104 from DealExtreme MT-104 has threads that exactly match the threads on the tailcap of the HP1.
The nice thing about the MT-104’s tailcap is that it’s half the height so shaves around 5mm off the length of the light. It also accepts standard Sipik 68 type switches.
I finished modding my Coast HP1 last night. I’m quite happy with it.
New features:
- Length reduced to 94mm. The unmodded light is 104mm. Reduction in length came from using an alternate shorter tailcap and from filing down the pill so the driver sat closer the emitter allowing the head sit further back.
- Stock 14 or 15mm driver swapped to Nanjg 105c from Mountain Electronics with off-time memory. 3-modes: moonlight-25%-max.
- Emitter changed from XPE to dedomed XPL cool white. Used the stock tiny copper star, though I had to glue it in place with arctic alumina thermal adhesive to get enough stability to allow me to solder on the driver wires (It is still removable in case an emitter swap is desired.
- Switch changed from stock forward clicky to a reverse clicky taken from some generic budget light.
- solder braided tailcap spring.
Some observations about the modded light
- Flood mode is 90 degrees. That’s slightly wider than the flood in any of my modded aspheric lights and MUCH wider than any unmodded light. The only light I have with the same wide flood is my modded Aleto N8 zoomie with the fresnel lens installed. Even the unmodded stock HP1 has a flood angle approaching 90 degrees. Put it side-by-side with a Sipik 68 and shine them both at a wall and the circle it produces looks to be about 3x as wide.
- Spot mode isn’t like the spot mode of a typical aspheric. It doesn’t produce a focused image of the LED, and still contains a substantial amount of spill. It looks more like the beam you’d get out of a traditional reflector light equipped with a small or medium emitter such as an XPE or XPG. As such, this isn’t the best choice of light for when a pocket spotlight is needed to see things 100+ meters. However, for medium range or using as a pointer at close range, it is excellent.
- The beam pattern in flood mode is perfect. Completely uniform with soft edges and no rings.
- The beam pattern in spot mode is very nice. A fairly tight central hotspot diffusing into a medium amount of flood. One very diffuse ring outside the flood.
- the modded light is about 2mm longer than a Sipik 68. The head is about the same width, but the body tube and tailcap are much narrower. With the clip removed this is much more comfortable in the hand and pocket than a Sipik 68.
- for both the modded and unmodded light, total lumen output in both flood and spot is pretty uniform. There’s no dramatic reduction in output in spot mode like there is for typical aspheric zoomies.
- the light is much brighter than a Sipik 68.
- The clip mount is hexagon shape and acts as an anti-roll device.
- The aggressive knurling feels great in the hand, but it would have been nice to have the same knurling on the head for additional grip.
- bezel travel is very short. In transitting from full spot to full flood, the bezel only moves 5mm. This is shorter than the travel on most of my aspherics.
Some notes on making the mod
- Unlike when I mod Sipik 58s or other aspheric zoom lights, no refocusing was needed with this one. (with the aspherics it’s almost always necessary to readjust the focus position. I do that through trial and error by adding different sized strips of aluminum bent into c-rings below and around the pill.
- Negative contact is achieved through a large spring that sits on an unanodized ledge just below the pill threads. This ring is designed to press against the bottom of the driver. This works great for the stock driver, which is flat on the bottom except for the positive spring. It didn’t work so great for a floating Nanjg 105c as the spring would constantly catch on surface components when unscrewing it.
I considered removing the spring and anodizing from the top of the tube and having negative contact through the pill, but then I’d have the problem of connecting negative contact from the pill to a floating driver. I’ve had mixed results soldering a wire to a hole in the side of the pill and then using conduct epoxy to hold it in place.
I decided to stick with the stock spring. I solder a bit of solder braid to the ground tab on one of the 7135 regulator chips and bent it over the top of the chip. When the spring hits it very good negative contact is attained.
To prevent the spring damaging any components when removing the pill, I use a small dental pick like tool hooked over the end of the spring from inside the battery compartment. I pull down on the pick to pull the spring out of contact with the pill then unscrew the pill. I also covered some of the board components with arctic alumina to prevent the negative spring shorting across the off-time capacitor.
Internal space below the pill is about the same diameter as in a Sipik 58. This means a 17mm Nanjg105c can be used as long as you are very careful not to file too much off the edges.
Thank you so much for all the information firelight2! Very helpful.
I replaced the stock bezel on my modded HP1 with the one from this light from DX:
The new bezel fit perfectly. It’s narrower and has cut rings on the outside to provide grip when zooming. I removed the press-fit aspheric from the B26. Then I filed down the edges of the HP1’s TIR and the bezel of the B26, then glued in the TIR with Norland NOA61.
The beam looks the same, and it slides almost as well as before. The light feels narrower. However, I might go back to the old bezel style when my “replacement parts” HP1 arrives tomorrow. The new bezel looks cheaper. And the Norland ran a bit and got a little at the edge of the reflector in a couple spots. The new bezel also looks like it would break if the light fell onto concrete bezel first, whlie the old bezel looked and felt really strong… and had better water resistance due to an extra o-ring.
I’ve ordered another B26 from DX to play around with adding a side switch. If I apply my side-switch mod to it (same one I used on my 18650 Aleto N8), it should make the smallest 14500 zoomie yet. Something like 70-75mm long. One advantage it has over other small zoomies is that the tailcap female threads are on the tail instead of the body. This makes it far easy to cut the tailcap down after removing the switch.
I received mine today. It is nice and unusual, but I am not rushing to replace my SK-58s with them. The head of mine does not unscrew open easily.
The optics has two independent zones. The inner part is a converging lens, similar to a regular aspheric zoomy except that it is small and does not slide out far enough to form a focus of the led. It goes from full flood half way to throw focused position and forms the smaller “spill” part of the beam in throw mode. The outer TIR part transmits very little light in flood mode and contributes the central spot in throw mode. It is similar to the mirror of a fixed focus reflector light except that it extends as a hollow cone nearly to the front of the bezel. So the TIR back surface over-focuses and then the front refractive surface de-focuses back to focus at distance. The converging lens part is therefore well protected. The reason the pattern is ringy in between is that the center part of the spot fades away before the outer part of the spot does, as it is pulled back from throw position. That is because, as the TIR surface moves back farther from the LED, it over-focuses (more than is compensated by the diverging lens surface at the front). This version seems to be optimized for flood. To optimize for throw, they could have made the inner and outer zones focus at the same head position. As with a conventional reflector light, the spot is warmer colored than the spill.
This is a bit like a Fresnel lighthouse lens, except that there are only two zones. (This fact may be useful to anyone who wants to copy it. Only the detail of the design is proprietary.)
The knurling is neat and “aggressive” but a zoomy should have knurling on the head. The SK-58 has finer knurling with better grip on the head than on the body.
The LED is an XP-E with three wide bands. Efficiency is better than that of an SK-58 with more light output with half the battery current. This is due to the driver, the LED and the optics. My guess is that the largest part is due to the driver. I like the forward clicky switch.
I got the bezel ring off, with Liquid Wrench penetrating oil, acetone, green masking tape, German pump pliers and long jawed mini Vice Grips. It is only slightly scratched.
I think it was put together correctly. With adequate tools I could have taken it apart with no damage at all. There was a bit of a soft clear substance between the threads of the sliding head or bezel and those of the bezel ring.
The bezel on mine came right off with just my hands. I didn’t even realize any threadlocker had been used until I looked inside and saw a small amount of clear stuff.
Will protected 14500s fit?
I have some Nitecore 14500s @ 51.5mm…