Good points there, and again interesting re the topic.
I THINK I’m right in saying Olight is or was originally a Chinese company? the difference I observe here is that they ‘let go’ of their Chinese business model, and let the USA take it over in the USA - the net result being a huge popularity and market share. They were origianlly called Fox Fan… proves my point. Fox Fan is a crap name, and is not catchy or anything like - they realised it and I’m guessing the Olight bit was chosen by the USA wing.
What I mean here is most Chinese companies tend to stick to Chinese employees - by that I mean their avertising, their selling model and most importantly (which for me is a silly move) they rely on Chinese people (or google lol) to translate their info, instructions and marketing into English - and it just DOESN’T work! Don’t even get me started on brand names…talk about financial suicide in other English speaking countries! some, in fact MOST Chinese brand names are frankly rediculous! I don’t know if it’s a good Chinese name that didn’t translate properly (but sounded great in Chinese), or just poor choices.
Use an English speaking (or whatever counrties language it is) professional marketing person/company living in the country you are trying to break into do it, they live there, they know how it works, trends and so on.
Finally there is ‘ownership’ of your brand - seems to me the Chinese have no concept of this, you only have to look on aliexpress or temu - thousands of clones of clones, largely made in 1 or 2 factories which are ever so slightly different, but you can see they are the same (the driver may be different, but that’s about it). There was a zoomie brand posted on here the other day, I didn’t want to say in their thread as it felt rude, but search on temu and they already exist under hundreds of other brand names, and are ever so slightly different in the actual design - but yet they are the same and they cost about £10 or less. That doesn’t help when you are trying to make your brand stand out.
Olight seem to have this pinned down well, I don’t know how, but you don’t see Olight copies - or at least I haven’t.
It’s because they use aggressive shill marketing tactics, I think. Just go to /r/flashlight when olight are having a sale and look at how many clearly-paid olight posters there are, who mysteriously disappear when the sale is over
Ecosystem lock-in combined with aggressive marketing. Proprietary everything, and relying on people not knowing there are better options out there, or not wanting to switch because they already have all the proprietary gear.
@Barry0892 This would definitely be possible, if you use the t1616 and the same UPDI flashing pads, then it would be fairly easy to implement a more basic UI, which could even reuse some of the code, then you don’t need to have production of two different drivers for two versions, and could even reflash between the two if needed to adjust stock levels. Plus, means as someone graduates from newbie to enthusiast, their original light remains useful to them with just a firmware upgrade.
Only if they had anduril as well. Olight’s UIs are terrible. Honestly, if they ditched the proprietary stuff and started selling anduril lights, I’d buy them regardless of LED - for me, tint and CCT are secondary, and power and customisability matter way more.
Oddball sizes and/or both the positive and negative on the same end (which is less safe than normal batteries)
A bit like Apple then in some respects lol! "the best phone ever, camera ever, the longest battery life ever, the best software ever, we were the first to do it and so on…) all or most of it marketing gunk.
But again, it does seem to work for them - though I have to say Olight don’t pester me, and I’m signed up to their emails.
Another plus is they always bung you a free light with every order, which is great for gifting! (even though you’ve obviously paid upfront for it lol).
I only ever buy ‘on sale’ I’ve kept one, the rest I’ve given away to friends. I did buy an exploit rolling bag with a voucher ecently for £8 which is fantastic! I also like their loyalty point thing which you can trade for freebies or vouchers.
I stopped chasing that years ago, though when I was younger, new phone every year plus I used to be into flashing new software on to it which it shouldn’t really run! I remeber an old HP touchpad tablet that crashed almost immediately and was discontinued, but lasted years after running android which it was claimed it could never run lol, those were the days!.
Nowadays I buy a good year old model, keep it for 3 years or so then give it to one of my kids - it’s something most grow out of in later years keeping up with the rat race I mean.
I also agree. I own a single Olight (S2R Baton II) and swapped it to SFT-40 5000K. It’s thinner than my SC64. Driver is efficient. TIR is great. Clip sucks though.
Someone mentioned a unicorn EDC light, here’s mine:
18650 or 14500 (standard batteries)
recessed side switch (like Zebralight). Easy to find and almost impossible it’ll go off in your pocket
TIR lens (nicer beam, no hard cut-off and allows a shorter light)
519A at 4500K or 5000K
screw on bezel instead of press-fit (for LED swaps)
efficient driver
deep-carry single-way clip (or throw two clips in the box, single-way and dual-way)
Anduril 2 or a simple UI like Olight or Thrunite
USB-C charging (but no flap, put it behind the threads)
For the muggle, the Olight UI is good and is at least somewhat consistent across their range. I have no issues with it.
Note: I’m only familiar with the Baton series
click once for on/off
hold from on for L-M-H
hold from off for moon
double from anywhere for turbo
has memory for last mode (except turbo…and maybe high depending on model)
Seems fairly similar to Anduril simple stepped mode. Anduril has the advantage of being able to set a manual memory mode (with timer if you choose).
…except on anduril, you don’t have to have autolockout if you don’t want it, and if you do then it doesn’t even go as low as 30 seconds, the minimum possible is 1 minute.
The only sofirn I bought this year was the sc32 HCRI. I’m very happy with it. I chose to buy another light that I don’t really need because it has a set of features that I found interesting (small size, single 519a LED with a TIR, and tail switch). It would be wonderful, in my opinion, if it had Anduril and aux LEDs.
My point is that if your company keeps innovating, we’ll probably keep buying.
Well, it’s pretty simple. There’s more fet drivers running Anduril than buck/boost drivers. Fet drivers are good for making maximum output, which makes for good marketing. However, you get poor sustained output with fet drivers, the brightness drops quickly as the battery drains and under voltage sag. Plus the flashlight gets really hot if you don’t set the thermal limit correctly. buck/boost drivers are way better for sustained output, better runtime, and lower heat production. With a efficient LED, you get really good runtimes. Way better for small flashlights with single cells, but bigger lights benefit also. Buck/boost/buck drivers are getting cheaper to make and buy, sp there’s really no excuse to not include them at least as an option for those who want them.
For Anduril…there are other manufacturers who are making really good and useful UIs with smooth and stepped ramping, good thermal regulation, batt check, basically a simplified version of Anduril thats less complicated to use and really only gives up the advanced tweaking and settings. I personally like both Anduril and proprietary UIs, and like it when they use the best features of both.
I think if Sofirn started using more regulated drivers (or at least offering them as an add-on for the end user), even with Anduril it would be good for sales. Wurkkos is working on a TD01 with regulated driver and I hope Sofirn makes one too.
I agree this light would be a great anduril candidate. It even has a similar tail switch to the TS10.
This is a great suggestion. Anduril isn’t just a single version released at one point in time. It’s an opportunity for the company to invest in a reflashable platform for all lights. Imagine if all that old stock could be sold with a newly-updated Anduril 2 version straight from the factory, or switched to offer a non-Anduril interface all by making use of the exposed flashing pads?
So hopefully Sofirn will continue to see the value in being part of the open-source UI ecosystem even if some specific models haven’t sold as well as expected.
There is a lot of competition in the budget flashlight market at the moment, and for me Convoy is winning with some very good drivers and amazing LED options (including colour LEDs and warm to cool white), and Wurkkos are regularly coming out with innovative new designs. When on flash sales, even Olights with their very efficient drivers are verging on affordable. Skilhunt are also on the rise, with some innovative new models such as the MiX-7 and solid M series lights.
Sofirn are falling behind in their offerings, with the IF22A (budget compact thrower) and D25LR (high CRI and red headlamp) being the only Sofirn lights I would currently recommend over alternatives from other manufacturers. The Sofirn OEMed LightPainter - Ryu’s Lightworks flashlight being discontinued has also left a bad taste in my mouth.
I only try anduril in my TS10 and I like it but most of my flashlighthokolic friends are not very excited with it.
Flashlight with good and efficient driver and with clever setup of stepped modes is first choice for most of users.
Personaly I would like flashlight which have stepped and ramping modes with good selected speed of ramping and little lcd display which show voltage of battery and current which driver pull from battery or which flow througt led.
Power and lumens can be optionaly data on display.
I think that when you see voltage and current, you can know how much of battery life you have and which power you push in led and it is easier to setup power level througt ramping which is optimal for situation in which you use flashlight at that moment.
I feel like for a driver to be good, the UI needs to be good, and the UI is by far the worst thing about Convoy.
Not implying it’s coming any time soon, but I have done a little research into implementing display support on anduril, and it’s certainly at least feasible for simple text using i2c, but personally I don’t strongly feel like I need a display (but will definitely work on support for it if it helps more manufacturers adopt anduril), so I’m not exactly sure, what sort of things would you want on it? Ramp level? battery voltage?
For me important information is battery voltage when light is powered on, so you can see voltage sag on battery and current which is pull from battery so you can see power level and how much time you can discharge battery with that level of power.
Maybe it is stupid for many users but I think it is usefull data for everyone who knows a little more about voltage, current, power and battery discharging capacity. It is like you have multimeter in flashlight. Another possibility is that flashlight doesn’t have display but you can connect it with your smartphone and read parameters through mobile application.
Every optional data like power, ramp level, lumens, light colour temperature is of course usefull.
I have purchased many flashlights from aliexpress for my friend. I think that I buy for them more than 30pcs of Convoy lights. And almost everyone of them use it in mode 2 with memory, maybe in 4-5 cases without memory. I see that they like to change levels in circles and show to the others how much is their flashlight powerful. I see that ordinary users of flashlight with bad U/I after some time use it as is and forget bad things in it. So I can hear from people which have Zanflare F2 that it U/I will be good when it doesn’t have strobe but after some time no one talking about it because they use it in always one mode, usually medium or high and say that they never had better flashlight in their life.
Many options is not always good thing for ordinary users.
The single very worst thing about Convoy’s UI is that the groups are badly designed. I want to have battery check, but to get to battery check, I need to go through strobe, and then cycle back round from moon to high. If the groups didn’t feel like they were actively designed to troll people, it wouldn’t be as bad.
In terms of the actual implementation of the UI there’s nothing wrong with it per se, it’s not hard to use (e.g. it’s way too easy to accidentally enter config mode on Reylight’s UI and then screw something up as a result, which isn’t true with Convoy’s), just I feel that the choices of levels in the groups are kind of weird, and placing battery check after strobe is incredibly annoying and just reminds me of $5 zoomies where you need to go through strobe to turn the light off, and there is no mode group with battery check but no strobe. If anything, group 2 would be perfect but it lacks battery check; one of the entirely useless groups like 7, 8, or 9 could be replaced with 2 plus battcheck maybe. Another improvement would be to give every group strobe and battery check, and just make those modes toggleable as to whether they are included (e.g. how on reylight you can enable or disable moon mode). Another thing that would drastically improve usability and cut down on duplication would be an option to reverse the selected group (the best thing about Reylight’s UI), since several Convoy groups are just another group reversed.
Maybe anduril just spoiled me there, I guess, and if I could actually manually enter values for my own group (might go something like moon, medium, turbo, high, battcheck) it would possibly be the best reverse clicky UI out there, but I guess I just can’t understand what the thought process was behind the majority of the groups, especially when some just duplicate others with small changes.
Main problem there is the signal problem - because the body tube is the battery negative, it needs an external antenna, which is more cost as well as durability and waterproofing issues. Might theoretically be able to put it in the optics, but signal would still probably be fairly bad overall.
