Too cheap? Yup. I know the LED will be cold and trashy, and who knows how weak the driver will be. But with only 1 mode, hopefully it won’t use PWM. So, I’m basically planning on it being a dirt-cheap host. In for 3. If they mod well (emitter swap, resistor mod), I might even get more. They should make a great recipient of the $0.46 Luxeon V2’s I picked up from Arrow a while back.
PS - there are a couple other listings with slightly lower prices: link1link2
PPS - when they come in, I’ll try to come back and post comparison pics with my Jet-u and overall impressions
I found this nice triple. The copper looks good. The price is cheaper on the english Taobao site than the Chinese Taobao site. Is this English Taobao site legit?
Well, I ordered 3 of these two weeks ago at $1.37 each. They just showed up today. They’re pretty much what I expected:
Slightly longer than a Jet-u, but dimensions otherwise the same
Cheap, glossy black anodizing
1 of the 3 is missing it’s o-ring
The emitters are definitely angry blue
Pill is easy to remove. Driver is press-fit but also easy to remove.
MCPCB is 8mm and has a XP-E looking LED.
I measured output at 48 lumens
The head is slightly too long. You have to really tighten the head down to make electrical contact with the tube. A little filing will easily take care of this.
So they’re not without their faults, but seemingly worth the price paid. I can’t wait to swap the emitters. I might end up playing with the resistors too.
Pictures:
Update: I just reflowed a Luxeon V2 5000K into one. So much better now that it’s neutral instead of angry blue. And I picked up some lumens: it went from 48 to 71.
5000 m, 3.1 miles from a XM-L2, 146 mm diameter alum reflector. Might be interesting with a SBT90.2 at high amps. Looks like 4 18650's: 2700x4 = 10800 mah. Plus has a red light and side light, USB charging, etc. Lots of things for $56 shipped.
The claimed lumens output is a realistic 1000 lms, so you gotta wonder bout the claimed throw...
Realistically it's impossible - 5000 meters would be 6250 kcd. I'd be impressed if it did 600 kcd with a stock XM-L2, but there's potential with such a big reflector and actually with a small investment. I know there's been other efforts here on BLF with some large, cheap reflector lights and I think they all ended up a bust.
You are not right… There are other China 21700 zommies out there… And the one I saw is made for 1x 21700 cell, had 3 x inbuilt led emitters (white, green, red) switchable by a knob on flashlight + additional dimmer switch to control brightness of each light mod (white, green or red).
It was declared as a hunting light but to large and heavy for hunting light imho. But it really does have cool features as handheld flashlight.
