Hello from Dereelight (Shenzhen) — we never went away, we just stopped talking

LED Flashlights – General Info
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Hi everyone,

Alan here, from Dereelight in Shenzhen. Some of you may remember the
name from the DBS, C2H and Javelin days.

I’d like to clear up two things right at the start, because both of
them are on me.

First: Dereelight has been listed as out of business in at least one
thread here. We didn’t close. What actually happened is that for the
last several years we put nearly all of our capacity into wholesale,
OEM and ODM work — and we let the retail side, and our own name, go
quiet. We never stopped building lights. We just stopped talking to
the people who actually use them. That was a bad trade, and I’m here
to undo it.

Second: we are not only an IR company. IR illuminators are what I’ve
been pushing most recently, so that’s what people see, but Dereelight
is a general LED torch manufacturer. IR, white, red, green, 850nm, 940 nm —
we solder whatever LED the customer asks for, and that applies to a
single unit as much as to a container load. If you have ever wanted a
light built around a specific emitter rather than the one somebody
decided to fit, that is the part of this job we enjoy most.

What we still build, and still believe in:

  • Tool-free pill / drop-in modules — the LED module swaps by hand in
    seconds, so the lamp gets upgraded instead of thrown away
  • Single 18650 hosts, four output levels
  • Custom builds and short-run OEM from 120 units (4 cartons)
  • Same factory, same people, since 2007

I’m not here to drop a catalogue in your lap. If there is something
you want to know — an old model, a driver, a beam profile, whether we
can still build the thing you remember — ask me and I’ll answer
straight, including the parts that don’t flatter us.

The old catalogue is still online at www.dereelight.com. It’s out of
date in places and I’m working through it, so if something looks
wrong there, it probably is, and telling me helps.

Thanks for having me.

Alan
Dereelight, Shenzhen — since 2007

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Have a pleasant time at this friendly forum, dereelight!

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I have an original DBS with a cree xr-e. It was a good light. I love rotary light user interfaces too.

What white LEDs are you offering in your lights nowadays? Anything with good CRI?

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Four output levels is fine with me.
I almost always get single 21700 flashlights, though (if I exclude keychain flashlights.)
A 21700 cell isn’t that much bigger than an 18650 cell, but nice 21700 cells have significantly higher capacity than nice 18650 cells. :man_shrugging:

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That’s a fair point, and you’re right about the capacity gap — a good
21700 is a real step up over a good 18650.

Honest answer: our current hosts are 18650 because that’s what the
existing platform is built around — the pills, the tubes, the tooling.
Moving to 21700 isn’t a small change for us, so I’m not going to
pretend it’s around the corner.

What I will say is that we build around what someone actually wants.
If you want a 21700 host built around a specific emitter, tell me and
I’ll tell you honestly whether we can do it at sensible cost. Single
units are welcome — we don’t only answer to container loads.

Four levels staying, though. That one I can promise.

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Thank you — that’s a good welcome. I’ll try to earn it by being useful
rather than loud.

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That’s a good one to hear from — an original DBS with an XR-E is about
as early as our stuff gets. Thank you for keeping it.

On the rotary interface: that’s still how we do it. Our current 4S
hosts use a rotating head ring for the four output levels, no clicky
cycling. If you liked the DBS way of doing things, that part hasn’t
changed.

On emitters, I’ll answer it honestly rather than usefully: we don’t
really keep a fixed list of “what’s available in white”. The whole
point of the way we build is that the LED module is a separate,
hand-swappable pill — so we solder whatever emitter is asked for. Name
one and it goes in. That applies to a single light, not just to a
production run.

High CRI is no exception — it’s the same answer. Tell me which
high-CRI emitter you’d want in a DBS-class host and I’ll tell you
straight whether we can build it and what it would cost. If the answer
is that we can’t get the part, I’ll say that too.

What were you hoping to see in one? If you name the emitter, I’ll
give you a real answer instead of a general one.

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Thanks alot, dereelight. Now I’m gonna be spending my sleep time rummaging around my storage boxes trying to find my javelin…

Welcome back to the enthusiast life, btw

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Hi Alan,

Welcome!

Some hunters in Australia are using Dereelight. Red and white emitters with an aspheric lens.

Would Luminus SFT-42R 5000K or Osram CSLNM1.TG be possible?

It would be nice if the driver could provide a constant output and have a low voltage protection (2.5V cut-off).

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Here’s a review of my brothers Dereelight Night Master V2:

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Welcome, I 've kept a few of the C2H line. Enjoyed the accessibility and durability of the construction, and the Lego~ability of different battery tubes.

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Ha — I’m sorry about your sleep. I hope it turns up.

If it does, tell me which one it is. There were a few Javelin
configurations over the years and I still can’t always tell from a
photo which head someone ended up with.

“Welcome back to the enthusiast life” is a fair thing to say. That is
more or less what happened — we spent years building under other
people’s names and stopped having these conversations. Glad to be
having them again.

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Thank you — that’s good to read.

“Lego-ability” is a better word for it than anything we ever put in a
catalog. The C2H was built that way on purpose: the drop-in and the
battery tubes were meant to be mixed rather than matched.

Which tubes did you keep? CR123, AA?

That Lego idea never went away, by the way. It’s the same logic in the
pill we build now — the LED module still comes out by hand.

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Tim — thank you, and thank you for the review. I’ve read it.

Three things in it I keep coming back to.

You built your own lumen tube, forked bmengineer’s RuTiTe, calibrated
against maukka’s lights — and then published a note saying your own
figures may be off by more than 10%. Most people delete that line.

You measured 128,750 cd zoomed in. We published 106,000. You rated a
ten-year-old light higher than we did.

And your Cons list had one line on it: “Regulation could be improved.”
Four years on you’re asking for constant output and a 2.5 V cut-off,
which is that line spelled out properly. You also caught the 80 µA
still being drawn after it shut down at 2.40 V — I don’t think anyone
has published that about one of our lights before.

On the emitters: the SFT-42R is a 5050 with a round emitting surface,
which is what an aspheric head wants, and it’s the same reason the
standard white module we build uses a round die. The CSLNM1.TG is 3030
and 1 mm², square — it should out-throw the 42R in the same host, but
it needs a different board and centring ring and the spot won’t be as
clean. Furthest beam: the Osram. Roundest beam: the 42R.

One honest caveat on the 42R: reports from people running it say the
phosphor is more brittle than the rest of the SFT range, and that it
suits a large reflector better than a small host. If it’s pure distance
you’re after, the Osram is the surer bet.

On the driver, I’d rather not answer from memory and get it wrong.
Give me a few days and I’ll come back with what we can actually build —
whether constant output is available, and where the cut-off really sits.

And one question if you don’t mind: is the Australian hunting scene
still running red and white through aspherics? Is it mostly
spotlighting?

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I kept the AA and CR123 tubes for the C2H. Still a big user of both forms in virtually most chemistries. Options are nice, the world wide availability of AA is a good reason when gifting lights.

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Hi Dereelight and and welcome.
Glad to see you want to hear community feedback.

I’ll give you my personal opinions after briefly looking through your products.

  1. I see they are mostly aspheric lens models.
  • While I’m a big fan of aspherics and they have their place, they do not mix well with any kind of “high CRI” emitter since the beam profile, chromatic abberations and artifacts make it a moot point.
    So I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
  • I’d rather see a high powered, round domeless white emitter (HT70, SFT42R comes to mind).
  • large aspheric lenses combined with a small 18650 battery tube might not be up to modern standards anymore (bad weight balance, lower capacity, awkward head to body ratio).
  • having said that, most people have stepped away from asphericals and larger 18650 lights.
  1. What are your driver specifications?
    For enthousiasts, over the years I’ve seen models fail or succeed by implementing the wrong or right driver for the job. People nowadays want powerful buck circuits wherever possible.

My advice would be to see what is possible for a new model, based out of Shenzen, I don’t think that should be a huge investment if you are an established brand?

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AA and CR123 — got it.

“Options are nice” was more or less the whole point, so I’m glad it landed that way.

But the AA argument is a better one than we ever made for those tubes. Ours was always output. Yours is about the person you hand it to — someone who can buy a battery in any shop and never has to be told what a protected cell is.

We didn’t weigh that much at the time. Probably should have.

Do they go out with alkalines in them, or do you put NiMH in before you give them away?

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Haedesz — thanks for taking the time to look through the range before
answering. It’s the most useful reply I’ve had here, and I’d rather say
that than pretend we’d already thought of all of it.

To be clear about why I’m here: not to announce anything. We spent most
of the last decade building under other people’s names, and doing that
you stop hearing from the people who actually carry the light. Finding
out what you’d want is the whole reason for showing up.

On high CRI — point taken, and I’ll stop worrying about it. Chromatic
aberration through an aspheric eating the benefit isn’t something I’d
framed that way. It saves us chasing a number the optic throws away.

On the emitter, that part we already agree on. Our white module is a
high-powered, round, domeless white emitter. The beam stays clean
through the lens — no die shadow, no square corners, no artifacts.
That was the reason we went that way, so there’s nothing to change
there.

Where I’ll be straight with you, since you named them: it does not have
the raw output of an HT70 or an SFT-42R. Not close. We chose the round
domeless die for the beam shape and we live with the ceiling that comes
with it. If you want maximum lumens out of a big aspheric, that isn’t
this light — and I’d rather tell you than let you measure it later.

On the driver, bad news first, since you asked for buck: there isn’t
one. All four current models, the zoom hosts included, run linear
constant current — ±5% on a single cell, 3.0 V cut-off, PWM dimming at
33 kHz. Recent production moved the zoom hosts onto the same driver as
the illuminators, so the answer is now the same everywhere.

Why linear, and I’ll give you the reason rather than the excuse: these
sit next to image intensifiers, and a switcher radiates into a tube that
amplifies by tens of thousands. It costs efficiency and buys silence. On
a zoom host running white modules that reasoning is weaker, and I’m not
going to pretend it isn’t.

If buck is what you actually want: we can build it, we do build to
order, but it is not what ships today, and I’d rather say so than have
you find out with a meter.

On the host, I’m still not going to argue with you. Big head, 18650
tube, weight forward — that’s what we designed around 2010 and never
really left. You’re describing what people want now, and I think you’re
right about it.

On your last point: you’re right that a new model isn’t a huge
investment from Shenzhen — if you’re an established brand. We’re a small
factory that spent most of the last decade inside other people’s
product lines. The tooling isn’t the problem. Getting it wrong once is.

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Depending on the user, Nimh or L91 primaries. A Eneloop 4 pack and charger could often be found at remarkably good prices a decade or so ago . I don’t know about anyone else, but I really liked the simple and clean lines of the Dereelight lights, and when you gifted items to folks in the trades, it always appeared more tool than gadget.

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I couldn’t find it, it was a c2h, i believe, with a cr123 body +AA extension maybe? It has been a while, maybe I’ve passed it along or sold it some time ago, I really can’t remember. I still have the DBS, an updated emitter engine might be nice. sft-25R, or as other members mentioned, some other round domeless LED…

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Welcome back! Any chance you are still selling the Javelin or CL1H? Looked through the catalog but didn’t see them in there, would really love to snag one of each

Wanted to add there’s a gap in current offerings everywhere for the P60 format light, just waiting for someone to fill!

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