Nope, I think since they went the Home Depot way with a bunch of cheaply made lights, that they felt it's time to ditch Maglite. The junk Chinese lights are taking over here now. Look around. I see them at all the big retailers and even the smaller ones now. Hardly any Maglites around any more, but what is most upsetting, is that these lights coming in are actually worse quality than what we buy and the pricing is totally crazy. Way too high for most of them, as far as the quality goes.
I predict that within 3-5 years Maglite will either be sold off to a Chinese company, or made in China and assembled here. A way of life here, is almost totally gone, but then, so am I...
5 years ago Maglite announced some parts were manufactured in Croatia.
I don’t know if sales figures are in decline. I think Maglite is a private company without public quarterly reports. http://www.croatiantimes.com/index.php?id=3074
I also read once that 300 million minis have been sold since 1984.
Tried a freshly charged 14500 and a dummy cell both in Eneloop AA to D adapters.
Modes worked fine, pulled 1.85 amps.
I may consider making my own wood dummy cell of the needed size to run one 26650.
That should yield tons of run time.
They went back to full price after Thanksgiving here but seem to be selling briskly anyway. I don't think there will be any left for after Christmas clearance sales. It looks like few people noticed the XP-G and XP-G2 difference, the packaging is nearly identical.
For those that didn’t get one or unable to get one for whatever reason. The light is fair. I returned 4 lights. All 4 led are off center. I kept the 5th although the led is off center. I gave up looking for a decent one. I think it also have pmw on low.
I kept one only because it makes a good emergency light with my AA to D adapter.
I also pretty much agree with this assessment. Pretty good light at $14.97, anything above that kills the deal. I also don’t like the way the power is transmitted from the switch to the driver. Large stainless or whatever material tab coming off of the switch that hits the spring on the underside of the driver when the head is screwed down. Problem is, it’s just hanging out there unsupported. Might be ok with positive support on the back side. As is, there’s not enough pressure between the tab and the spring to maintain good contact. There has to be a pretty good current loss through this connection. That’ll be easy to fix though.
Plastic reflector |( |( |(
I like the design but build quality on these does seem to be pretty substandard. I also ordered a small single AA Lux Pro light. Nice little light, except it came with the driver spring off center such that it only makes intermittent contact with the battery. Again, easy to fix, but shouldn’t have to be.