I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but I've been playing with my T70 for about 2 weeks now and while it is greatly improved in some areas, it is cumbersome in it's interface. The hold to turn on is far too long and having to hold to turn off is a PITA. It would also be nice if it had some semblance to mode memory at least until the master power is reset by turning the battery compartment. Using the light on low and turning off is nice not having to cycle through modes to get to off but turning it back on it goes right to high again and not for a quick couple clicks to get back to low. You have to hold it in high until the light stays on before you can bring it back down to medium or low. It's a real suck.
The main let down, at least in my sample, was the 2,581 OTF lumens compared to the 3,174 OTF lumens of my 1st generation XM-L-U3 Terminator. That's a huge decrease in output, folks!! The lack of PWM in the lower modes is really great but why the hell is output reduced? It should be at least as high as the previous generation! It's only 81% as bright as the old one.
I have notified Helen of this and am waiting for a reply from her.
For comparison, my very first Terminator, an XM-L U2 version did only 2700 lumens and it was unacceptable by BlackShadow so they sent me an XM-L U3 model which did 3174 lumens OTF. I replaced the emitters in the first U2 model with dedomed XM-L2 emitters and while throw was obviously improved, the output in lumens stayed at 2700 OTF. Since lumens always decreases when you dedome, had I left them domed I should have seen an improvement in OTF lumens just with the XM-L2 swap. The hotspot on my dedomed 1st gen BST is obviously much brighter than the T70 but what surprised me is the spill almost completely drowns out the spill of the T70. That's how big a difference there is.
This new T70 with its XM-L2 emitters, having all other things equal, should be at least as bright as my XM-L U3 version but it's dimmer than my original U2 version by 100 lumens. I hope the ones they send out for this group buy are better than my sample unit. I will try to get them to send me another sample and will hope I simply got a dud with this one. That said, how many other duds are there with low output?
I agree. Does anyone knows which kind of electronic driver is it ?
I ordered one and plan to see how we can mod it.
Are there already any open source project (hardware/firmware) for custom made electronic driver (for 4 cree LED) ?
That would be nice to dump/flash/reprogram the microcontroller firmware or modify electronic logical circuit.
Also, the best would to the flashlight to have two power button one on the side and the other on the removable handle. (Then the removable have to be modifyed to have a power connector and still matching IPX-8 : / )
Concerning, power consumption, autonomy and max power output, I think it is also possible to change LEDs and make a better driver.
