I have sometimes issue with my FW1A, when I insert the battery and screw the head, flashlight turns on and stays on, there is nothing I can do, only unscrewing the head and screwing again helps. Is that a bug or I’m doing something wrong?
Doing the R&D and manufacturing to make a reflector perfectly match emitters (plus ensuring QC is good enough to actually align everything in the final product) is probably WAY too costly for most companies, especially when lights from the same brand often use the same hosts+reflectors but just have different emitters, drivers, etc.
Imagine if Convoy had to design a perfect reflector for every variant of their lights 
M4D M4X is doing a survey for a XHP50.2 driven FW1A: https://m4dm4x.com/fw1a-with-a-xhp50-2-feeler-list/
He’s posted it here also.
I am IN for that one!
The only realistic LED configuration not available that I’d be interested in would be an LH351D.
If we don’t need to be realistic, an XHP35 HI would be exquisite - but the XHP50 is too big and ugly for me to want it just to squeeze out a couple of extra lumens.
I'm really not aware of how much R&D is going into a light and how much of it is allocated to the optics, but if more budget oriented manufacturers can do it, then I assume so can a more premium one. If some common, around 15€ lights can have decent optics, then I see no reason for a more premium brand not to have the resources or expertise to achieve at least the same. Actually, I'm of the opinion that we're not even talking about quality here, but marketing and options. What sells more, is better. And what sells more is simply what most people want. Apparently, I just have a less common preference, that's pretty much what basically this is all about. Choice and preference.
You’re assuming the reflector and emitter interacting in a way that makes the beam you want to be intentional, there’s nothing that suggests that over it being lucky coincidence. Or even more likely, the Sofirn 1x and 2xAA lights may all use the same reflector, and since XP-G2 has been around for quite a while (and in MANY of their lights) they designed one when it was very popular and/or used the dimensions of a reflector that already existed for the emitter.
Again, the issue is the demand for companies to do this at all, let alone vs other beam patterns. Even if people would prefer it, if they aren’t asking for it, and companies keep selling lights nothing will change.
Check the driver retaining ring , if loose , will sometimes act that way . Sorry , thought you said FW3. Wouldn’t hurt to check though .
It’s probably the exact same issue which shows up on the FW3A sometimes. The inner tube ends up touching the ground path somewhere, which makes it think the button is being held all the time. Most FW3A / FW1A lights can be fixed by re-assembling the light and making sure everything is tight and in the correct place… especially the head/tail retaining rings and the tailcap. However, it can sometimes be quite finicky and may take several tries to get everything aligned just right.
Those were both examples of side-by-side beam shots showing cases where the only thing changed was the surface texture of the reflector. Each pair is the same light, same LED, same camera and settings, same reflector shape overall… but one had a smooth surface while the other had an orange peel surface. And I made sure to only use examples where the beam was well-focused and had no major artifacts.
The idea was to isolate changes to only one variable, to better demonstrate what that variable does.
The pictures show a pretty decent representation of what I’ve seen personally when swapping reflectors in an individual light. Some lights have come with an option of SMO or OP and I got both, though after doing that a couple times I stopped getting the SMO option because I found OP consistently gave me a beam I liked more.
In general, SMO provides a slightly brighter hotspot with slightly more throw, and sharper edges between parts of the beam. OP provides a slightly dimmer hotspot with slightly less throw, and different parts of the beam are more blended together.
Outside of the hotspot and corona area, there is no difference between the two. The reflector texture only affects those parts of the beam.
As per my initial impression, that just looks like an unfortunate pairing of reflector and emitter, or, simply a poor reflector design.
Just imagine a FW1A with a proper boost driver running Anduril and pushing a XHP35 HI to 2.5A turbo current. It would be magnificent!
Very interesting, thanks for mach stripes!!
As for this ideal beam, it is very, very similar to the SF KX9T head optics with cut center that gives some spill, the same picture on the right, but discolored
It would throttle just as fast as an FW3A though which would make the LED choice nearly pointless IMO. I’ve put a XHP35 HI and boost in a C8 and D80v2 and both get hot very quick. If you really need to see far it generally helps to have more than a few seconds to do so but idk.
My M1 and C8 running @ 6 amps don’t seem to get hot very fast FWIW, that could be thermal throttling on the Convoy driver though.
What Convoy driver supports 12V LEDs for those lights?
3V emitters and 3V CC driver. You’re right though, 2.5A on a 12V emitter is 30W vs 18W at 6A and 3V
I had 3x the current for 12V vs 3V in my head for some reason…
Yea it would be closer to 10 or 11A from battery.
Is anyone doing a review on this light? How does it compare the S2+ other than the UI? How does it compare to the FW3A?