Best would be an UT02 with TA triple channel driver and Narsil FW…
But yeah, I think I’m gonna like the D1S anyway.
Sorry, Mizou, I don’t own the P30… maybe Nitecore could send me one for review to compare :-p
EDIT : the UT02 has an XHP35, and so is not usable with TA driver sorry…
If we’re talking about modding, the choices I like are:
D1S with dedomed SST40. Serious thrower, not expensive
UT02 with TA and SST40. More expensive, throws even better
UT02 with Schoki’s MP3431 driver and XHP35. More efficient than the above, throws nearly as well with a little larger hotspot. I intend to build one.
UT02 with Schoki’s MP3431 driver and dedomed XHP50.2. More efficient than the above, throws about as as stock D1S / UT02, but with 3 times larger hotspot.
UT02 with a battery is bigger and almost twice as heavy as the P30, for my usage that is a pretty big difference. the two things I would change about the P30 though are
Neutral tint option (not a big fan of cold tints)
I want to be able to switch between turbo and a lower, more sustainable level easily and often. this is where the D1s UI is awesome I imagine…
I have the P30 but I’m considering the D1s. UT02 looks like the best option for a thrower that’d live in the car (where USB charging would be useful).
This is not simple to estimate or even measure as D1S doesn’t have regulation. It’s powerful on a fresh battery, but progressively gets weaker as battery deplates. P30 and UT02 maintain full output until the battery is nearly dead.
To get a good hunch of efficiency one should integrate output over time.
Then, efficiency depends on mode. The harder driven the light, the lower efficiency. Well, at least somewhat. To tell how efficient a light is one should plot efficiency against output.
After doing so we’d arrive with (approximation of) a curve for each light. That’s something that we can compare directly, the higher the better.
But I’m pretty sure that the distance between curves won’t be constant, i.e. you won’t get a simple rule like “A is 20% more efficient than B”. More like “At output X A is 20% more efficient than B”.
When reading product descriptions or reviews of flashlights, which information should I look for to find if it has regulation or not? I take it that if it says “constant current output”, then that means it has regulation. And if it says “direct-driven”, then it’s not regulated. And there are some that are a combination (eg. BLF A6, etc).
It would likely be quite difficult to compute total light output (eg. xxx lumens per unit of time, and then sum them up). But from what I understand, regulated would generally lead to higher efficiency, right?
Would be nice to have something like that with 18650 lights… might be time-consuming for someone to do though, considering these are done on their free time with their own limited resources…
I forgot to mention: efficiency of directly driven lights is heavily dependent on the cell used.
VTC5A will drive a LED higher than 35E making it less efficient.
That’s correct.
I don’t think that integrating output over time would be difficult really for people who do output vs. runtime charts. Though I guess most use phone apps and phone light sensors which would add a margin of error when comparing different lights. But would it be too large to invalidate the results? I don’t know.
Right. Also, efficiency depends on how it’s regulated.
In general there are 3 types of drivers:
linear ones burn the excessive voltage as heat (drivers that are pure linear in any mode are very rare)
linear + PWM run LED at high current and PWM down to the desired output. They too burn excessive voltage as heat, but also drive the LED in less efficient region than others
induction-based drivers (buck, boost, buck-boost) are more efficient
buck-boost is less efficient the pure buck or pure boost as sometimes it has to do 2 voltage conversions
XHP35 drivers are less efficient than f.e. XHP50.2 ones because they need to do a bigger voltage boost.
Also, efficiency depends heavily on LED choice. XHP35 is more efficient at high outputs than XP-L HI. IIRC it’s less efficient at low outputs.
Don’t forget about optics. AR coating of the lens (or lack of it) can be easily more important than driver choice. Reflector quality matters too.
Thermals matter also, though to lesser extent. Especially in lower modes.
UT02 is boost + XHP35.
P30 is buck-boost (I can tell so because it can drive XP-L with either 1 or 2 cells) XP-L. The driver efficiency is probably similar to that of UT02, but at higher modes XHP35 wins.
D1S is linear + PWM at low modes, then has a single linear mode (If you remove power and turn it on you get to this mode). Then it’s semi-regulated, PWMing between linear and direct drive. At the highest mode it’s unregulated….unless thermal control engages.