What a fun wee model. First light from Manker that I’ve played with. Falls short of its lumen claim for both an 18350 and 18650, but still fairly happy with it due to the size. Same sustainable output as the much larger Wurkkos TS30S Pro set at 55°C limit, shows just how bad that Wurkkos driver really is.
Thanks for your nice review
Hey Funtastic, thank you for the review. Need your input, I’m looking for a small pocketable 18650 SBT90.2 light with a sideswitch. I’ve narrowed down my choices between the Manker and the Emisar D1. Here’s my question, do you notice if the Manker has a donut hole in the hotspot ? I’ve seen a few comments that the Emisar with the SBT90.2 has one, so the hotspot isn’t as intense, and the beam is ringy outside the spill. When I examine your video, it appears the Manker beam is pretty clean outside the spill. Modder Vihn from Skylumen sells the Emisar D1 and adjusts the height of the LED pill to tune out the rings as much as possible. But it still seems the donut hole remains.
I have a Hank-made D1v2 SBT90 and it has a pretty nice beam, no donut hole that I’ve noticed. Maybe it was on older lights?
Yeah, the MC13 here does have that donut beam and also one ring inside and two outside the beam. Definitely could be improved. I did talk about everything, but I do understand not everyone has the time to listen.
Thanks for your review. I like listening to you and watching it with all the nice beam shots.
I am very open honest and direct. Please don’t be offended by that.
I don’t use flashlights like the average person. So my feelings and preferences may be different. My preference is Turbo until it gets too hot then I cool it down on a low setting. And then right back to turbo. I’m on the hiking trail 10 miles a day 80% of it in darkness.
The way this light acts is totally expected. An LED that is way too powerful for it ,batteries that don’t have the capacity, a host that is too small.
When it comes down to it, you have a turbo burst and then you’re basically have medium and low modes.
I seem to do better with written explanations, or when people verbalize it through a review. Graphs are not my strong suit.
The Screenshot was from another review. When I saw and substantiated the fact that there’s no way I want this light! That’s just me in the way that I use them. And like I said you really can’t expect more with the size of the light, the power of the LED and The Limited capacity for the batteries.
Manker told me that the step down is a thermo step down which is set at 65C. As you can see from that screenshot it’s already at 40c in 8 seconds and in 30 seconds it passes 65c and shortly after is around 70c.
I am guessing but that light would have to cool off probably for 5 minutes before you could use turbo again. And by that time the battery would be depleted.
It’s a beautiful light.I like the telescopic battery tube it’s just impractical unless you like the lower settings.
Thanks again
One thing I forgot to mention which he said in the screenshot that I provided. He said the light was hand friendly for 10 minutes or so on turbo
That is unintentionally misleading.
It’s on the turbo setting but obviously not doing turbo numbers. The reason it’s hand friendly is because at 10 minutes on the turbo setting it is at 443 lumens.
Bottom line, this is a special flashlight and it can be practical, or impractical depening on how you use it. If you’re using it on Turbo all the time, it won’t be practical. High and Medium modes are much better for usability. I didn’t expect it to be a wunderlight, and it wasn’t. However, the fact it has a modicum of practicality is impressive. Would i buy one? Probably not, but there’s folks out there who would.
It might be misleading if he didn’t include those graphs front and center but he did
Because of its small size, LED capabilities and limited battery capacity, because of those, one could not expect to use turbo most of the time.
I guess what I’m trying to say with this light is once that 30 or 40 seconds of Turbo is used, that light is so hot ( about 70C) you probably can’t go back to it for a long time.
The normal everyday flashlight guy doesn’t care about high output for extended times like I do. So for them this light is perfect.
The output on high is about 1,100 lumens after 30 sec… It can sustain that for about 4 minutes if I’m reading this graph right. One reviewer said it gets very hot even on high.
Different light, different LED but similar size.My Thrunite Catapult mini is about 1100 lumens on turbo. Unfortunately they have a 70 Second (claimed 80sec.)Step down.
The light never gets hot so I keep stepping it up time after time again. The switch probably will be worn out before the year’s out!
I tried to convince Thrunite to have a thermal step down instead. Set at 65C like this Manker torch.
Thrunite liked my beam shots and asked permission to use them for promotional purposes. I gave them permission, but whether they use them or not is another story.
One thing I noticed about so many of these lights the last year or two, is the specs are so overblown and then when many of the great reviewers we have test them, they’re several thousand lumens lower!
I forget the light manufacturer, it was rated at 17,000 lumens and to reviewers tested it around 12,000. These exaggerations are much worse than they were 5 or 10 years ago. Those are like a bigger version of this light. Because those are short bursts before they step down and the batteries no way cam maintain that high output especially on a single 21700 battery.
Yes I’m long-winded.
But I would rather have and I’m grateful to have a light like my x65 mini. Sure It can get very hot but I can use it on turbo, which is 10,000 lumens anywhere from 2, to 7 Minutes depending on the time of year. That’s much more beneficial to me than a light that will blast 20k, 30K lumens for 30 seconds.
While im not okay with shady and misleading advertising, its here to stay. Lumens sell, candela figures sell. There are ‘more’ honest companies like Fenix, Nitecore, Olight, etc. Who actually test their lights exhaustively and post what I call real specs. Most of the lights I test are within 10% of the advertised output, but some aren’t. The main areas of concern for me as an evaluator are the thermal regulation, runtime, sustainability, driver performance/efficiency, the charging system (termination voltage, charge current), LVP, those things that make a light more user friendly and reliable/safe. Generally, this has improved across the board in the last 4 years, but I can’t help but see a plateau looming.
Now that I think about it. Most of my lights are named Brands so the false lumen ratings do not apply. That’s why I haven’t bought any of those other off brands.
And the modified lights that I have that aren’t Supbeam/ Acebeam,Fenix ,Olight, Thrunite have been tested and modified by people on BLF… numbers that I trust and if they’re off it’s not by much compared to the over-inflated numbers that were already mentioned.
Its the cheaper brands that usually post the fake ratings. Astrolux, Mateminco, Sofirn, Wurkkos, Trustfire, Nightwatch, Haikelite, amd even some.pricier brands like Imalent and Fireflies and Skilhunt the worst offenders I’ve comes across. The Haikelite HT90 I tested was down 10,000 Lumens from advertised, and the Mateminco MT-911 was down 3100 Lumens from spec, the LT40 was down 3200 Lumens as well. The NS14 from Nightwatch was down over 10,000 Lumens and the NI03S was also down 5000 Lumens. See a trend? These lights are probably un tested or at least not thoroughly tested, and some don’t even have runtime specs and forget ANSI. If you want reliable, real specs, just spend the extra money for a betteroew reputable brand.