What a cute little light.
Okay, first things first. The box came with the light, a Micro-USB cable, and a Klarus branded 10180 battery with a claimed 0.26Wh battery, which I suppose comes out to 70mAh. It’s small.
My edition, which at the time claimed to be the last one in-stock on banggood, came with the battery discharged to ~2.35V. I was pretty cautious charging it - and, honestly, would have been anyway with a battery this small. It has built-in USB charging with a Micro-USB connector, which is accessed by unscrewing the head. The head has a second set of threads by which it is held captive when charging. You can leave it loose, but I tend to engage those threads because my chargers are fat and they fit better with the tiny extra bit of room. I need to test the charge current with a USB meter, but don’t have one handy right now. There is a red light for charging and green for done, on the opposite side of the tube from the Micro-USB connector. I did charge it fully (and it works fine); the charge terminated at 4.163V.
When I was researching this style of light, it seems there were several very similar 10180 lights (several of them also available in Titanium). I chose this one in part for the captive head during charging, which some of the others definitely didn’t have (and some, I could not tell). The Jetbeam Mini-1 Ti was tempting with XP-G2 and a nice two-way clip. I also looked at the Astrolux M01 and a couple others. There were some very high-end (read: “other forum” type) lights in 10180 at the price points I’d usually expect an 18650 Ti light at (or higher).
I was hesitant because the Klarus M1 Ti came with everyone’s favorite XP-G3 LED. However, when I saw it was using a pebbled TIR instead of a reflector, I was a lot less worried.
The construction is pretty nice. The body itself, anyway. The internals seem a bit small and cheapish, from what I could get to anyway. The spring for the positive is slightly crooked and tiny, and the negative end of the cell just rests on the titanium body for contact. The dual modes are accessed by twisting, and then twisting more for brighter. There’s a sort of button in the head, which I imagine to be the mechanism by which this happens. First, the post in the post in the body would make contact with the metal button top, sending current through it. Tighten a bit more, and the button depresses, and now current goes through two paths. That’s just a guess, though; I’ve not disassembled the head. The light has O-rings at both ends, and the O-ring is past the charging port so I imagine that’s their waterproof charge-port solution. There’s no way anything is waterproof when charging, though. There is also no glass in front of the pebbled TIR, for those who care.
The beam is pleasant enough. No hint of the XP-G3 ugliness we all know and loathe. All praise the TIR. It is a bit cool-white, though. There’s something down in the head that looks like a retaining ring, so I’m debating trying to swap a Luxeon V2 at 4000K or 5000K.
I’ve not done a runtime test, nor tested for LVP. I should probably do that, though, because the battery is unprotected and tiny.
I don’t know if I can honestly recommend this light or form factor over something like the Nitecore TIP. If you’re not after the “nerd metal” appeal, I think the TIP is probably overall more useful. Or a 10440 light. This guy only qualifies for really small keychain light stuff, and when you don’t want to pay $12 retail for a battery swap on those 3x LR44 lights.
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