Fasttech Sky Ray king $42 Fake?

LED Flashlights – General Info 18650 Flashlights
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Well thought the thorough cleaning had fixed it, but no. Last night using it it started to flicker and light output dropped- flexing the head would cause it to work then cutout. When it was working it was actually significantly brighter than before.

I think the other posters are right that the body is not machined well and only has intermittant contact with the driver board. I decided while we were all waiting for Fasttech to return from hols I’d see if a DIY fix worked.
I cut a ‘washer’ ring from a plastic container lid (was going to cut up one of the GF’s high temp silicone baking dishes but got caught… :zipper_mouth_face: ) using the driver as a template to trace around, then sat it in the flashlight body under the driver- the driver still has just enough room to snugly fit without being loose.
Then I thought seeing as the batteries seem to be a very tight and might (?) be causing the driver board to flex, I’d place some washers (1mm approx) under the end tailcap board.
Putting it back together now it feels everything has a nicer fit and so far I haven’t noticed any flickering even when flexing the head- will test more when it’s dark again.

My bezel seems to not be magnetic- wouldn’t matter to me if it was though.

I feel a bit sorry for Fasttech- obviously their supplier has let them down with this batch, given how nice they are to deal with thus far I’m sure they won’t let us down with a reasonable solution hopefully.

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Bought a 4-pack of Gillette Mach 3 blades from fasttech - they are rubbish. Blunt rubbish. Certainly fake.

My gold Sky Ray King, which arrived in the same package, is, however, a very nice piece bit of gear. Tried to post pics, but failed. Having trawled the internet for pics of ‘authentic’ SRKs, mine does appear to have most of the ‘authentic’ cosmetic features, as well as being very tight, and very bright. No complaints whatsoever with the gold $42 SRK (so far!).

Just stay away from the Gillette Mach 3s!

83

Hmm. I have the UV-S5 and the threads are anodized and the switch is fine. It’s also incredibly bright, but I don’t have another SRK to put it up against. I bought one of the early UV-S5’s before the cheaper ones came out. If you notice they still have both on the site. It makes me wonder if the more expensive one came from a different factory or at the very least if the later run was skimpy. My suspicion is that quality control is going to be all over the place on all of these models.

As for the NW tint I agree. I should have gone for that. This one is just glaringly white. I much prefer the tint of the Trustfire 3T6 that I have, but it’s not even close to being as bright.

84

I think the idea is to get one that a magnet doesn’t attract to, meaning its stainless steel. Magnets don’t attract to stainless as well.

My fandyfire SRK has a dull looking bezel that a magnet doesn’t attract to…

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Whether bezel is stainless or cardboard…doesn’t matter. S5 has to be an alloy which is probably what most others have. Non-magnetic it is. Stainless steel will attract magnet. So will chromium.

The guts is where it’s at. Bright, well made. superb. Fandyfire uv s5.

The notion that stainless doesn’t attract well to a manget is not true. Stainless contains a blend of steel. True alloys are non-magnetic, and so is the bezel of the Fandyfire uv S5.

86

Bought mine 12/7/2012 and there was no cheaper ones back then.

EDIT:
Oh, cleaned threads properly and those are/were anodized, but are crappy and have lost some anodizing.

87

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Bought mine 12/7/2012 and there was no cheaper ones back then.

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Hmmm, even more interesting. It seems that it was hit and miss back then as well. The threads on mine are most definitely anodized unlike the Rook I bought from them (which I love anyway). The switch is solid. The batteries also don’t rattle as some others have mentioned, but I am using Sanyo protected ones.

I guess I just got lucky. I had it up for sale in the classifieds and decided to take it down before anyone bit on it. I’m glad I did now that I’m reading more stories about the bad ones. My only complaint was that it came in a skimpy little white box with no padding inside like the one shown in the pictures. It came in a bubble wrap mailer that had dead bubbles. The box was smashed, there was no 0-ring and the lanyard was as cheap as they get. It did however come very fast and it’s been a great light.

It gets HOT though, I’m talking about wow this sucker is hot I need to put it down hot. I only ran it on high for more than a minute once, it’s that hot.

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of animosity directed towards Fasttech .I doubt their aim is not to flip the switch after carefully crafting what I feel is a pretty darn good start of a new company,to all of the sudden throw their hard work out the window and knowingly start to sell junk.Whew…that’s a long sentence.I’m sure the’ll do whatever it takes to make things right with the “faulty” SRK. I have 5 SRK’s from 3 dealers.Yeah there is a variance in brightness among all of them….whatever.I will continue to do business with Fasttech because…well they DO seem to care about their customers.That’s all I have for now.One more thing…in this flashlight hobby ,which can get above my budget real quick, I find the SRK still to be cool enough that if I get a dim one …I’ll drop another $39.00 to try again.

89

^Yup. One or two bad products does not make a bad dealer.

What makes a bad dealer is an unwillingness to listen and change according to customer feedback and needs.

They are my no.1 battery supplier as of late with the exception off the standard 26650 KingKongs and all their batteries have been top notch for me.
Even the CheapoFires. (Yeah, I'm a cheap ass. But I'm not going to buy NCR18650Bs for a $6 Sipik Clone)

It's really hard to ensure that all products you sell are top notch especially if you add like 50 products a day as FastTech have been.

Just a bummer that it was the SRKs they have seem to all be screwy since they are so popular. Lots of bad publicity, lol.

Eagerly awaiting my Roche M170 to come, and hopefully a P25 in the near future. :bigsmile:

90

Okay, I’m thinking of getting a fasttech SRK before the stock changes again and we have to go through this all over again. If I’m reading this right, the UV-S5 is fine and a great example of the SRK, even though it may not techically be an “actual” SRK. Am I correct? And it is the $45 UV-S5 and NOT the $37 one, correct?

I read this thread a few times, but I just want to make sure before I pull the trigger.

Thanks!

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I can only speak for mine. It’s the $45 dollar one. $42.75 with the coupon code (BLF). It has anodized threads, the switch is perfect and it’s extremely bright. One of the reasons I bought it in the first place was that someone on this site said a while back that their’s was brighter than the genuine SKR that first came out. I can’t compare mine to another SKR, but it is much brighter than the trustfire 3T6 I own. It does have the wow factor.

I guess you could always wait a couple days and ask them some questions. A simple question would be “Are the threads anodized?”. I wouldn’t buy one unless they are. Otherwise you need to take the batteries out or you get parasitic drain.

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We are very sorry about the bad lights.

Although we try our best to quality check products before shipping, we sometimes have to rely on information provided by factories/distributors. We don’t make any products (so we often don’t know the exact internals) but we do back our words up. When FastTech claims a feature (authenticity included) that doesn’t exist, we take returns and reimburse fees.

We used two sources for this particular light and to-date, both of them claims they are real. We have since found that the one that supplies filled logos is probably telling the truth. But looking at this thread, there doesn’t appear to be a definitive way of independently verifying authenticity (?).

If you have received an unsatisfactory SRK

Please open a ticket. We’ll accept returns and send full refunds. Return postage is reimbursed, provided that you have opened a ticket first.

For upcoming shipments

If there is a definitive way to independently verify the authenticity of the SRK’s, let us know and we will screen all lights before sending them out. Output is certainly the primary concern here but it doesn’t seem to be something that we can reliably test in the warehouse.

From this thread so far it appears that a real SRK should probably feature a) stainless steel bezel (non-magnetic), and b) filled logo and text (vs. outlined). We will only send lights meeting these criteria from this point forward.

On a side note, as the Gillette issue has came up a couple of times here before, a while back we have compared them to the ones found in Walmart here. We hand-on tested them ourselves and found no discrepancy between the ones that are shipped and the ones that are sold for retail here. These are, however, meant for distribution within China only. If problem persists we will consider removing them.

The Nitecore’s are definitely real. We are in direct contact with Nitecore and that’s how they notified us of price issues recently.

If you have questions and/or noticed something I’ve missed. Please post — I’ll follow up on this matter.

Jasmine

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Jasmine. Hope you had a nice holiday. A side note and product request.
Maybe if/when you find a good supplier you will be able to get a good Sky Ray King driver circuit board for sale? That would be nice. :slight_smile:
Lots of SRK owners on this forum and other places. I am not aware of any store who sells a (good) replacement driver.

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Can I ask how you have since found out that the one that supplies the hollow non-filled logos is probably not telling the truth?
As in the pics above that’s the one I received… even with improving the contacts it still doesn’t output properly and only pulls 4A at the tailcap- others seem to get 6+ amps

Great to see the genuine response to this thread Ftech, I have responded to your ticket replies for both my faulty items so hopefully your reputation carries through to issues like this, and that someone figures out how to identify a SRK that actually puts out decent light so I can order a replacement!

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Another good indication of a ‘genuine’ skyray king is that the two dips in the heatsinking fins nearest the bezel are equally shallow, but that the three below that are equally deep; 2 shallow, 3 deep.

Also, on a ‘genuine’ logo, the star should only extend to the left side of the ‘y’ in SKY, and not above the K as well.

The original genuine ones also used centering mechanisms which go all the way to the side of the emitters, meaning the PCB behind is invisible, but they may have changed to a different type now. I would still expect the genuine ones to use some form of reliable centering mechanism though.

The machining on the base of the light is also different between originals and some fakes, but that is hard to describe. Maybe someone can link to the comparative picture? I can’t remember where I saw it…

96

My recently arrived black SRK has the filled in logos, and the 2 shallow, 3 deep bezel, which imply it is real.
The star on the logo does extend over the K aswell as the Y, which implies a wrong ’un.
Very confusing.
However, I can confirm very disappointing output, it is easily outshone by the single emitter Nitecore EC25.

97

I’ve looked up some reference photos and it appears that the majority of Sky Ray’s has filled logos. Is this a correct indictor?

Thank you very much. We will use these tips for upcoming screening. Don’t get me wrong but I’m just curious that, were these characteristics identifiable via the product photos we took

In the future, if we can make product photos thorough enough that they show tell tale signs of quality or authenticity issues, some customers will be able to spot them prior to purchasing and thus avoid incidents like this.

Since the two distributors we used are still on holiday and we don’t have any new stock on hand, we don’t have further updates right now. We’d like to find out if Sky Ray has changed their latest batches as per some have suggested in this thread.

Most distributors are due back in a few days and we’ll dig and find more information on this. If we can get a replacement driver, we’ll do so.

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The one I just received has the filled in logo, but a magnet does stick to the bezel. Not sure if that is an accurate way to tell if it is genuine or not. Since FastTech said that one was and the other was not. I guess mine is the real deal. It works and is bright, not 2500 lumen bright, but it gets it done. Like I mentioned earlier I would put it at around 2000 lumen. Give or take. I compared it to some other “similar” lights and it got beat by them all. TK70, BS Terminator, ZL S6330, and I also compared it to BS Darth and a TN30. It was hard to tell against those two since they are NW. Mine works and seem legit.

Also wanted to say GREAT job FastTech for addressing this situation and stepping up to take care of the customers who have had issues with their SRK. Hopefully you get this headache straightened out!

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I also respect Fasttech’s response.

This morning, I am testing the gold Skyray King fully. I have cleaned it out, which made it a bit brighter, and appears somewhat close to the 1700 lumens of the TM 26.

Question:

With good batteries (new Nitecore), how long should the High Level last for? (even on average)

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I run Panasonic NCR18650 2900mAh's unprotected.
I have the CNQG/FF version.
Both my CW and NW have same runtimes.

On high: ~2hrs continuous, or 2.5 hours burn time in 1hr intervals allowing to cool between each interval.

On low: 18~20hrs continuous, >24hrs burn time in 6hr intervals with 1hr rest time between intervals