Imalent SR32 Review, Crazy Photos from my Drone, LEDs burning up is a problem though.....

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UPDATE: Imalent fully refunded me and are sending a new head for free. They wanted to thank me for the effort that went into my review, so that’s very kind of them tbh. A very unexpected outcome.

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Thanks for your hard work! Awesome video :+1:

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Really great review. A shame such an expensive light was released with any of the problems that you describe. Most especially the burned LED disaster.

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Great review.:ok_hand::clap::+1:

I love the beam shots and especially the aerial photos from the drone.

So unbelievable how some of these manufacturers do not want to be accountable for their product.

I’ve had two occasions where an LED burnt. First one was a Thrunite TN32 single led. They sent me a replacement immediately. Actually
Illumn sent me the replacement and David from Thrunite came on my thread and apologized.

The other was a Haiklite… do not remember the model number. It had five LEDs and took eight batteries. One of the LEDs got fried. To my surprise PayPal sided with them and I had to pay for shipping back to China which was $75. I didn’t do it. I took the loss. The light was sold for like $70 to a modder. I would never buy from that manufacturer again.

I hope you get compensated somehow. You deserve it and everyone else does who have that light. I would not be happy if I had expensive light like that and one LED fried , yet alone 8…I think you mentioned eight of them?

Haiklite LED

I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Olight, Thrunite and Fenix.

Thanks for the honest review.

I do wonder about the often repeated claim that lower CCT LEDs make it easier to see a target, due to less Rayleigh scattering presumably.

Do you have first hand experience with this?

Anyone else care to share their experience with this? Who’s performed a side by side comparison?

Edit: After a quick search, several people confirm the claim with first hand experience. Less bugs too, apparently.

I can test this claim myself to some degree because I’ve got a ~16k lumen incan and a BLF GT70 with cool white LED. High powered Incan seems like an ideal way to test the theory due to the output spectrum consisting almost entirely of the upper visible wavelengths.

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The problem with these kind of discussions is that information presented is anecdotal. Between the differences in our eyes and brains and human propensity for confirmation bias, nothing is actually proved. (some of the scholarly scientific articles quoted in the first linked thread show that there should not be a difference)
IOW, people who like lower CCT lighting will find ways to justify their preference. Of course this behavior is definitely not limited to the world of flashlights!
BTW, I have moved to preferring NW (4500 to 5000K) lights. This from buying lights just based on output numbers for years. (6500K for the most part). But so far I have not been able to really see where lower CCT lights allow me to see a target more easily in any conditions. I think a narrow beam and the beam angle used has much more impact.

I would love to hear about your testing if you get around to doing it.

There are conflicting results among studies related to the subject.

This one is interesting but I don’t think it directly correlates to flashlights because of the way the lighting and targets are arranged:

I’m not so concerned with fog as I am typical summer humidity. I’ve got a Thor X Colossus conversion planned which will use an array of XHP50.3 Hi leds, and there will be a choice to make when it comes to color temperature. I could go as low as 2700k.

When I’m out on the farm I notice that cool white is like the beam is hitting wall, no penetration at all. Warmer tints and red light shine through much more effectively.

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With increasing light frequency, particles on wich the light gets scattered, decrease in size. This is a linear relation.

It boils down to (1) the fraction of particles in the air in the range of the smallest wavelength. The more particles there are in it, the more scattering there is, and (2) the angle of diffraction in the spectrum.

There is actually an effect, but I don’t know of any quantitative study. My eyes find that the effect is significant (@Mandrake50 , I like neutral CCTs :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)

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More and more these days, so do I !!

UPDATE: Imalent fully refunded me and are sending a new head for free. They wanted to thank me for the effort that went into my review, so that’s very kind of them tbh. A very unexpected outcome.

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Well, hopefully the new head has been tweaked so it doesn’t just burn up again :confused:

They said “we will send you a new upgraded SR32 head for free” so I’m presuming it should be fine. The High level steps down immediately, so hopefully this is one of the fixes. I’ll test it and provide an update on my channel and here also.

Well that’s a relief, it’s good to hear that they aren’t leaving you with a ~$600 loss. I hope they are helping non-Youtubers in the same way. Their initial reaction made it seem like an average buyer might have issues.

I received it with a reviewer’s discount, but certainly not free :slight_smile: other people are reporting that Imalent are covering the return shipping and shipping a new head. Imalent said the issues have been resolved, but then I hear from multiple people saying their SR32 or replacement head is being held until they figure out the cause. I have no clue at this point whether Imalent know exactly why it’s happening. Unless Imalent know the cause and are having to open and inspect every unit. They said it was just flux splashes from soldering, so maybe they’re opening and cleaning all LEDs.

Sounds like they’re looking after their customers at least. I can no longer say anything negative about them, I think it could have been also down to poor communication from my contact when I thought I had to cover the return shipping. Returning just the head was $107-$200 nzd, so I was fairly upset at that point. They still want the faulty head back, but now that I have my money back I’ll send it as economy for $50, instead of courier standard for $107 or Express for $200. NZ Post for exporting is expensive.

One thing that is risky, is that they ask for a customs declared value of $15 usd so they don’t have to pay tax. This was very concerning for me because if lost, I’m only compensated for $15. Then the question in my mind was, are they going to still send a new head if the package doesn’t arrive?. As a large company they should be paying that tax and allowing the customer to value it at what X part would cost to replace.

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A little update from Germany:

The TLF has a tradition of doing pass-arounds where a manufacturer or dealer provides a flashlight that is passed around between usually 10 participant, each for 1-2 days. Two weeks ago the first Imalent SR32 died with a burned LED, already at the second participant! It hasn’t seen much turbo at all.

It got replaced by Imalent via a well known dealer from Germany. The pass-around continued. Two participants later it died again, this time with two burned LEDs.

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Imalent refunded me and replaced the SR32. I think they sent me a replacement head because they ideally want a positive review from me.

The new head has been perfectly fine with multiple turbo runs without any burning LEDs. There are a couple of black specks on some of the LEDs, but it arrived like this and haven’t developed into burns. Imalent said that it’s QC issues from CREE. If it’s poor QC from CREE, then maybe, just maybe Imalent should improve their own QC and not install the LEDs with these black marks.

Imalent shipped me an SR16 for a comparison video and I see the same black specks on one LED on the SR16 too.

The SR32 and SR16 had a layer of glue over the handle contact, this caused the handle switch to malfunction. I scratched off the layer of glue and both units have been working flawlessly. Imalent just need to improve their QC.

Imalent informed me that only 4 units including mine had the burning issue, but this is simply not true.

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Imalent lies.

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Does this firework have regulated turbo or direct drive turbo?