I bought an Ultrafire C8 with stainless bezel off ebay from Hong Kong and its quite bright. So my friend (who is young and broke) was impressed and got on eBay and bought a 18650 “starter kit” from Hong Kong with a C8, cheap blue Ultrafire battery and cheap charger (probably a different seller, we didn’t look).
His C8 is clearly dimmer with a bluer output color. When you look at the emitters, they both look like the XML-T6 with the 3 wire leads and 6 “divisions” in the Yellow part of the emitter. His C8 also feels lighter.
I’m alarmed at this disparity in quality/performance, which prompts me to ask…How many companies are making Ultrafire branded C8s? What’s a good strategy to avoid getting a dud C8, C12, WF-502b, etc?
Welcome to the chinese lottery… They can have different drivers (even 2 equal models), different tints etc.
The driver of the c8 of your friend can manage less amperes than yours for example. Get a convoy c8 or xintd c8 for no playing lottery…
‘C8’ is a pattern employed by many brands of Chinese flashlight. The WF-50X are P60 hosts and the P60 module itself is what makes the difference.
Likely your friend’s C8 is using a lower power driver. If you have a DMM (and if you don’t, buy one and spend at least $20 on it) check the current draw at the tailcap by removing the tailcap and using the DMM in it’s ammeter mode to bridge the negative pole of the battery to the body tube of the flashlight. Yours is probably pulling around 3 amps, your friends sounds like it’s around 2 amps and a different flavor XM-L emitter.
The light feeling lighter could be any number of things. Plastic lens and reflector instead of glass and aluminum, cheaper aluminum in the head/body of the light, ect.
Fortunately the C8 is relatively painless to disassemble and remove the driver from if you can solder. Buy a Njang 8x7135 driver from FastTech and swap them. And buy hims a couple decent batteries while you’re threre. Even genuine Ultrafire batteries are still the QC rejects/seconds/leftovers from the Japanese/Korean mfg’s.
Most **fire branded cells are unreliable and have poor performance and capacity. Spend a little more on genuine japan cells and buy a good charger. See HKJ’s web site for good reviews on chargers and cells. Better chargers are safer and will allow your cells to last longer.
I bought a 3040mA Nanjg for my Trustfire X9 and it draws ~ 2.9A. The 8x7135 you linked would probably give you another 300mA, not a whole lot. Illumination supply sells the 3040mA Nanjg, but it will be $10 shipped.
The guys here convinced me to buy an XinTD when I was looking for my first 18650 light, I wasn’t interested in cheap hit and miss Chinese junk I don’t work on lights and prefer Fenix, or something like Fenix and they claimed that the XinTD was a high quality, well built light at a bargain price, for a product built with a reputation in mind, well they were right.
Find out whatever the best new model of it is and try one, it is an enduring quality light with great performance.
Another product that the guys here convinced me to buy for the light, was the Sanyo 2600 protected cell, I’m glad I bought those.
For $5 more, I’d get a Convoy…rather than to waste any time on the generic junk Chinese lights with reject leds. For the price these Convoy lights can be obtained, they are the inside tip.
I looked at the linked webpage above, one of the setup options for the Qlite driver is a 4 mode with “5mA - 2% - 25% - 100%” settings. Sounds interesting because I really never use strobe or SOS, and I highly value good low modes. My question is…is the “5mA” choice basically a very dim “moonlite” mode?
ALL Nanjg 105C drivers use the same physical parts (or at least, interchangeable parts that are functionally identical), the differences are in the firmware.
I bought a C8 from Lightmall, price is around the same with the Convoy C8, stock quality is just okay and the high mode is quite bright. I didn’t bother with its quality too much because I bought it for modding.
Convoy C8 has better mode groups. I have not own one yet because my only complain is why almost all of their Convoy C8 use OP reflector.
Something almost every noob misses is the people who say buy a real battery ....they miss it because they are told they are safer amd ultfaXXX/trustXXX junk blow up etc . But not that it will make their light brighter ...
try swapping batteries with your friend first . maybe one of you just has a junk battery .
Second good piece of advice is to be here on BLF listening to what experianced flashaholics are saying