That is correct. Anyway I suspect the ver 1 drop in module might have some electronics fault as well. DOA is not the same as thermal issues. Correction, the screw in and original ver 0 should not have thermal issues. The issue is heat dissipation from host to ambient. The light is generally ok, as long as you adhere to common sense, ie do not tailstand the light in high mode. One mistake and it gets too hot to hold = damage already done and it would be downhill. Unless it is still snowing in your place in Greenland now. I know even Yakutsk does not snow now right? Well Australia is in winter. LOL!
Comparatively, a lot of the branded lights castrate the output/current be it single or triple T6, or they use electronic means to cut from Turbo to High after a certain time.
And it is not limited to BLF, CPF Budget light has a thread which some users reported DOA, granted some post in both forums so do look out for them.
Wow! In straight-up brightness, that TK 35 was blazed by the Skyway, even on medium! I almost want to get it again. Just don't want to wait all that time for a dud.
The Coleman 500 MC-E has that green tint. Yuck! I'm glad I got the UF C8 for that reason alone
Maybe Version 0. I have had it in high mode whilst tail standing but I've only run on on high for no more than 1- 2 minute's so far. Its a bit to urban here to have it blasting around the neighbourhood. I'm planning a visit to the country later this year and hope to give it a work out spotlighting animals.
At about 17k on the DX meter (it under-reads a bit so perhaps its 10% compared to other better meters like Mastech etc) it is not going to spotlight much....but still very decent range. The thing is, you'd see the whole herd instead of 3-5 animals. LOL!
Discussion about the 3mode version that it is a dropin but i suppose it is now screw in as it is rev2? And the 3 mode seems to be not as good as the 5 mode. What feels strange to me is that all these changes of this happen within 1-2 weeks. I was waiting to order after my holiday (which is now over) but as there seem to rise issues with this former 'perfect' light i might wait a lil longer with ordering and hoping at the same time for a 5 xml :)
Beyond a certain point, it's not practical anymore since there's only so much heat you can dissipate and so much weight you want to carry. 3 xml's are getting close to that point.
Are trustfires more than average? Because now I'm dunno if i would wait for a 3 mode triple trustfire version which looks more solid to me than the loosy looking sky ray :)
Both the trustfire and sky ray use the same electronics inside, and it's the electronics which have been accused of being the weak point, bear in mind that added heatsinking only really protects the leds which have not been an issue beyond slight output sag on the unmodded drop-in versions. Heatsinking hardly affects the electronics and none of the lights were ever thermally potted. In fact I would bet that every single model since it was first made uses the same driver etc just with slight programming changes for the 3 mode. It's just that now we have had a few reports of lights not working suddenly the whole run is labelled as rubbish. It's buyer psychology rather than a serious change in quality.
Nobody has the TF so it's a little early to claim it's the same thing inside. It's also not true entirely true that the added HS only affects the LED's, since the former driver was screwed directly to the body and that's obviously not the case wi/ the dropin.
As i've said, i have pushed the light from 4.2V to cut off with the best 18650s around multiple times. Some lights like the Fenix already cut down automatically for ya. LOL! Either that or they drop it to a nice 1011 lumens for another brand. But the TK70 I read has no restricted speed limiter and can gun from start to finish, hope they have everything covered (that is why I purchased it even though it is not a budget light).
The driver PCB is not those special type which are designed to conduct heat away, which in this case is at the PCB edge. Not sure if you can stick some RAM heatsink with Fujik, it seems awfully small and you can only do it with 1 transistor. I already tested my light till failure for you guys with a working light, so now you should be able to gauge when to push and when not to push. You can bounce a Jap car off the rev limiter for 10 mins, but do it 20 times x 50 mins = 1000 mins, i am sure it would spoil too.
This is why I still purchased 2 other "lower-end" triple XM-L lights, I already got the info that I wanted....now its real usage time. Not sure how the TF drop in driver is fixed to the walls/bottom part, but i think compared to the SR the working thermals shouldn't be that different. Now I really wanna see how Fenix does its job.
Fenix TK70 is an amazing light indeed but way over my budget and also too big to be useful to me i think. As you PM'd me about the thrower stl v2 and the sky ray I think the features of a light like the SR or triple TF might be the best for me to have a nice overall lighting and still being able to look quite a distance. I'm not getting both :) but i will get a trust or ultrafire C8 from manafont which provide lots of light in a small package. Now I'll just wait a bit with ordering until this settles down :)
agenthex says their will probably be no 3 mode that would s*** and limit my options to the sky ray.
You have an old car? Because on my 4 year old ford galaxy the highbeams easily light up areas few 100m far and i don't mean just a faint glow but really a throw with a nice spill :p
Maybe it is a little early to be sure, but I would bet a lot that these lights are outsourced from the same OEM manufacturers, just like many chinese 'budget' lights. The drop-in looks uncannily similar to the original SR image shown on manafont. I really think they will be the same inside, and would actually be dissapointed if not, as the SR driver was a true buck regulated one, very rare for such a cheap light.
Yeah, I see how the better heatsinking can effect the electronics a bit. But the heat is generally not transferred from the electronics nearly as well as from an led. Added heatsinking is often not really that relevant to the heat of the individual components on a driver board other than reducing the overall surrounding temperature for it.
The dropin's look pretty dissimilar to me except for maybe in size. The TF has the "threads" whereas the SR only has those big "fins". Clearly not the same folks, but who knows what's inside.
Lets hope it's good when i receive it. There are quite some people who got the Fandyfire with good working drop-ins, and some SR drop-in which are working. Could be the person doing it, and the QC. I asked Manafont to test mine before sending it out as i mentioned there are quite some SR mentioned in the forum which aren't working.
Posted by vingyune54, the Dry 3 x T6 probably has the same LED front-end and head as the Sky Ray, but obviously not the same electronics >> Just got my Dry 3*XML ... Damn this thing is bright Ceiling bounce my Skyray 3800 read 260 but the DRY read 370! Freakishly bright! I highly doubt the Big Bruiser can be this bright.....Beam shots tonight