OK, first off cards on the table: I don’t know how I got on the “reviewer” list, but I was lucky enough to be contacted to receive a pre-production model and it was shipped 2 day express from Hong Kong. Got it last night.
My background is something along the lines of I like lights, have a decent number of odds and ends of them around, but I’d say my knowledge is more or less along the casual lines and most any of you know a LOT more than I do.
So, as far as the light itself. It arrived well packaged but more or less in a plain brown box with the Manker logo. No instructions or anything. Thankfully my contact had already sent me a jpg of the instructions.
My main thoughts are as follows:
-It’s a pretty nice, fairly small light with quite a bit of power.
-Seems well built.
-Is not the most intuitive to control. I’m getting the hang of it, but it’s going to take some practice, and it wasn’t until I looked at the directions again this morning that I think I understand how to get into the whole second set of controls which look twice as complicated as the first, but also I guess the only way to go full turbo mode…
-Basically in the “normal” mode side of things, you have to hold the button to get it to turn on. Then single click to change brightness. And a double click to get it to go into the flashing/sos/whatever mode.
-Then it seems I have yet to try this 10 second hold to switch over to the “special” mode, which is similar to everything I just described except it looks like there’s about 3 settings for each of those modes, plus a battery level indicator and direct current mode which does have a warning about how hot it’s going to get.
-I’m waiting for a shipment from Battery Junction for some real batteries(Eneloop pro and a 14500). The best thing I had laying around was a relatively new Rayovac rechargeable from Walmart.
That said, it throws some serious light. I stopped for a couple minutes this morning on my way for a run with my Petzl Nao(supposedly 575 lumen) to compare to the supposed 500 lumen of this T-01. I’d say that’s about right. The Petzl covered a wider area, but couldn’t reach quite as far as the T-01.
And from what I’m reading once I get a 14500 in there, the light ouput should be more than 50% higher? Yowza.
Like I said, I’m a casual reviewer, so picture me trying to do the best I can with a good cell phone camera and kids screaming in the background(and wanting to steal the light).
So I’ll attach what I can of some pictures that were sent to me by my contact that I didn’t see on Manker’s site, a few pictures trying to show the difference in brightness modes, and a video of the unboxing and again, trying to show the different modes. Sorry for the lack of quality.
Levi
Low: Dim enough to not be seen by my camera
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