I’d like to see a reflector version of the DT8. Kind of like a killer bike light, or very wide field illumination.
A Hank headlamp would be awesome too. Still rocking my old 18650 Nitecore with a 6500K primary and red/green/blue auxiliaries
I bought the Acebeam X50 to check all these boxes. But before I did I asked Hank if he had any plans to make something like this. I also have the X80GT which is perfect as a very even flood - perfect for working on things. I have 3 Hank lights and so many others. By far the one I grab the most for around the property now is this X50, it really surprised me how good it is at throwing and flooding. USBC charging is so convenient. If Hank produces a new light like this I will definitely buy it!
The Imalent MS08 is pretty cool. Throws out a massive amount of light and I love the cooling fan feature. It would be a 10/10 light if there was a way to lock out the cooling fan but I often bump the button and hear it running
Hey what would be the advantage of the 519A’s?
- higher output than 219B, 219C, SST-20 and higher efficiency
- Ra>90 R9>80
- good current handling
- neutral or a bit below the BBL
- large range of CCTs available (2700K to 5700K)
- Very easy to dedome for higher throw and lower duv, could be done by the flashlight maker.
Wow! My all time favorite emitter is the E21A R9050 2000K but it certainly doesn’t put out much light and gets hot
The Acebeam x50 and Manker mk38 seem like the flashlight that check your requirements!
This is it. You beat me to it.
Guess I wouldn’t be mad at type C charging though too.
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You forgot one thing though. Magnet in the tail strong enough to alter the earths orbit.
I have the NW X50. Great light. Does sound like what’s being asked for here. Mostly.
There is also a 95CRI 4500k GT-FC40 version of the Acebeam X50 as well.
I’m down for any Hank creation
If Hank is ever gonna read this:
Please, please make one with 519a option, K9.3 style on-board USB-C Charging, 1/4” mount, and aux LEDs.
I don’t know about that. Hank lights tend to use standard cells. They don’t use battery packs that are sold as complete units with the lower half of the flashlight for $100.
Personally I think that design is kind of evil since it means:
- $100 to replace the batteries for those unable to rebuild a battery pack or are unaware of the option. Acebeam is apparently targeting users who they don’t trust to buy replacement batteries nor put them into a carrier in the correct orientation so they do expect to sell some of these.
- If a couple of cells fail and degrade the performance of the pack or cause overall failure, the whole bundle of cells will get tossed. (again, by Acebeam’s target audience of non-enthusiasts)
- The entire lower half of the flashlight also gets tossed and replaced for NO GOOD REASON if the batteries are replaced as designed. This means more garbage in landfills and more manufacturing emissions.
I don’t consider myself to be a particularly “green minded” person but I think companies need to be making sustainable choices since every negative thing they do is multiplied by hundreds or thousands.
On the contrary, it's for your safety instead (the customer) that the manufacturers do that. It's almost important that very high powered flashlights like the X50 or MK38 have a built-in battery pack to properly and safely handle the charge and huge discharge requirements, as well as cell balancing and so on.
Tactical_grizzly has done a good teardown of a X50 battery pack: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/69378
For a variety of reasons, having such a high powered flashlight with individual user-replaceable cells becomes very problematic. There is a discussion of some of the issues on my MK38 thread. https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/69119 . Even flashlights such as the D18 which puts 3 user-replaceable high-powered cells in parallel is arguably (and I know an unpopular opinion) borderline dangerous as a consumer product (but yes I understand that it's fine as an enthusiast item). Any accident caused by improper use of the flashlight, even by the user, can be a big liability for the company since it is their responsibility to engineer a safe product.
It's definitely possible to design a decently powerful flashlight which accepts 3 individual cells, and has all the appropriate electro-mechanical protection, and also supports USB C charging and powerbank functionality, but you'll be looking at a $200-300 product at that point, not close to the $100 price-point of the D18 or similar. The MK38 comes in a user-replaceable version with no USB C charging, but I do hope it has the right protection inside. If you compare the integrated and non-integrated versions of the MK38, an extra $60 gets you a completely different machined body, a decently implemented USB charge and powerbank circuit, 3 very decent 21700 cells, and (hopefully, I haven't verified this yet, but high likelyhood) an integrated BMS. For a product that likely sells only in the hundreds, the profit margins are likely not very high and I think it represents OK value.
Maybe I’m in the minority, I don’t know. I think companies should be required by law to make devices that are reasonably repairable. If doing so makes the device more prone to dangerous user error, then proper warning labels should be applied and documentation provided. At that point the company should not be held accountable. The problem I see is that a lot of companies don’t want their products fixed. They just want to sell another one.
Now Acebeam is probably motivated by covering its backside, but did they really have to glue the screws of the battery carrier in? That’s worse than just having a battery pack since it discourages even the knowledgeable from rebuilding the battery pack. And for $369 I think they could have the circuitry with removable cells and a warning label… maybe a whole sheet that details exactly what will happen if you mix cells or something else equally stupid.
I guess I should blame our lawmakers for failing to properly motivate companies like Acebeam to make products that don’t fill landfills. But I still think Acebeam is doing worse with the x50 than it would have to. They could have used some less common screws so they could say that no person would casually open the battery pack.
IMO, the main strength/appeal of the D18 is its small size.
It’s incredibly compact for the amount of LEDs and sheer output. It’s ~15K lumens you can legitimately shove in your back pocket. The 3x 18650 form factor is awesome. It throws surprisingly well for a floodlight.
There’s simply no similar light of the same size that compares. The Fireflies ROT66 was somewhat similar, but only has 12 LEDs so it wasn’t as bright, and it’s discontinued now.
There’s TONS of options for bigger/ can style flood lights with more output/performance, and features like integrated charging: Astrolux MF01S, the upcoming MF01X, EC06, Lumintop GT3, GT94, upcoming GT8, Tons of Imalent lights, Acebeam X50, X80-GT 2, Manker MK38, Sofirn Q8/Q8 pro, Haikelite MT09R, HK04, HK07, and lots more. That’s just the ones I can think of right now. All significantly bigger than the D18.
Not saying I wouldn’t buy a D18v2 if it was 3x21700 or something, but it would be entering a pretty crowded market, and would lose its main appeal to me.
The main thing I’d really want in a D18v2 is for it to retain its small size. If adding integrated charging or aux LEDs or more power would make it bigger, then I don’t want that. I’d be ok with a SMALL increase in size only if it improved the driver, allowing for higher sustained/stable output. Having 3x18650 in series with a buck driver would be super nice for the extra power and regulated output, but it might make the light pricier than Hank would want to make, and I’m OK with the D18 being a FET hot rod. Maybe increase the CC driver to 9A or more instead of the 5A it currently has, and maybe make the flashing pads accessible. And more colors available.
Only other thing I’d want changed is the button being hard to feel for in the dark. Adding something tactile like a tripod thread opposite the button would work, or just a slightly raised retaining ring.
But yea, if you want a bigger, brighter D18, there are so many options! But if you want a small-as-possible can light with 10k+ lumens, the D18 is pretty much the only thing around!
I’ll skip the quoting this time, but really, this is not a terrible idea for this type of light/power source. Collect, in your half example above you maybe suggested that if one or two cells were bad in the pack, you would go in and just replace that one or two, leaving the other(s) in service? That’s a really bad idea and maybe the best example of why packs - even nice ones with good cells and BMS like that one - tend to get sealed up and out of reach for joe public. That isn’t a simple 3A or 5A light, you realize. The cells need to be married and matched as best as possible. On the other hand, I’m 100% right there with you for serviceability. There’s no reason that a “pack” can’t be just a carrier with replaceable cells as we see in other lights, other than generally achieving a better electrical contact with solder instead of cell ends and spring or hard contacts (can be somewhat important for drain and charge integrity with a BMS especially if the device may get knocked around and jostled a bit where cell/contact may change a little). But then you’re still faced with the importance of marrying/matching cells for the light, and that’s something that many consumers don’t know about, can’t do easily, and probably don’t want to invest the money to make that feasible.
The epoxy is a pain but not all that difficult to overcome correctly and retain reassembly characteristics…same can’t be said for many potted products (ugh). Right to repair isn’t about making it easy, it’s more about making it possible for skilled/educated repair folks to do, and making parts available/compatible.
What I really hope is that Samsung doesn’t ever decide to really lay down the hammer on controlling their cell availability and where those cells end up - they’ve made efforts, and if they did want to I’m fairly certain they could be successful with it and other manufacturers would likely follow suit. The more “accidents” and oopses that happen, the more likely this is to materialize. We’d probably be left with protected cells and then have to risk other accidents removing that protection so we could enjoy our light hobby the same way. So…discouraging easy access to potentially dangerous parts of a product isn’t the most unwise thing to do, in all honesty, but in particular a multi-cell light drawing high current needs to be given some respect all around. If a company doesn’t care about someone’s face or hands, then at least the reality of actual legal costs for just one suit (even if you win or have it dismissed early on) will tend to make them attempt to…keep everyone safe. Maybe a sound alternative would be to require them to provide access to easy recycling, similar to what many states do with requiring manufacturers of e-waste products to have a program available such that consumers are less likely to chunk things in regular garbage. Dell is pretty amazing about this even where not required.
IMO, I genuinely feel Manker MK38’s approach to this problem is the best I’ve seen in this industry: offering two versions.
Recently I acquired two MK38s. One for myself (loose cells), one for a non-flashaholic family member (non-user-replaceable cells). Manker also glues the caps etc on the non-replaceable ver. IMO, it’s not good enough. They should have soldered them solid. Never in my lifetime would I ever want to give non-flashaholic non-electrician mid-aged people the slightest opportunity to mess around with several high-drain loose cells in one powerful light. They’ll just ignore the warning signs and never read manuals and treat them as AA batteries and who knows what would happen.
While not agreeing with Acebeam on not offer two versions, I can kinda see why they did that: more options = more SKUs = higher average cost on every SKU. Especially when soda-can lights is such a niche market they won’t sell that many.
There might be, just might be, another reason to make it non-user-replaceable, like what Nitecore did with TM10K: soldering the battery to the light prevents oxidization on the contact points, which reduces internal Ohms.
Not in the same light. Most enthusiasts have other single-cell lights that the survivor cells could repurposed for. The main thing is not throwing away perfectly good cells with the bad.
Managing/matching cells isn’t something that everyone knows how to do? Sure, but I can go down to the hardware store right now and buy all kinds of dangerous stuff that I have no training for or knowledge of how to use. I think that’s the way it should be. If a tool isn’t obviously dangerous (like a high-power flashligh) then a company’s obligation should begin and end with providing highly visible warnings and a manual. I don’t want to live in a padded cell world where corporations and the government decide whether every little thing is too dangerous for me to have—where I need a license to do anything besides eat and sleep. I know that scenario sounds dramatic, but I think it’s the logical conclusion to this line of thinking where corporations must prevent people from harming themselves. I think personal responsibility needs to make a comeback.
I think this statement is slightly contradictory. Skilled and educated people are busy and may not wish to waste time on a simple task that has been made needlessly difficult.
Furthermore I believe right to repair isn’t just for third party repair but also for individual people with the willingness to study.
Well I don’t want that to happen either but this doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. As I said before, the epoxy was a step too far. Acebeam could have used an uncommon screw for safety. A determined person or repairman would order a new screwdriver(or have it already) while a normal user would most likely leave it alone. Screws can also be hidden either by clever design or behind warning labels.
Easy recycling access sounds good in theory but I’d have to see proof of it actually happening. I know that in some cities the recycling center carts material over to the waste disposal plant to be burned for energy. I know this happens in my city and it’s in a blue state with a democratic mayor. They need fuel to burn and so they burn the fuel that’s available. I HOPE that doesn’t include stuff like batteries but you see my point, just because you recycle something doesn’t mean it necessarily gets recycled.